Binge Break: Saying goodbye to The Good Place

The final season of the Good Place is officially underway, and the ending already feels bittersweet.

Kayli Reese, Managing News Editor

Every time a woman wears a power suit, five years are added to my life. This usually happens whenever I see a picture of Amy Poehler, but this past week it was Kristen Bell in the season premiere of The Good Place as Eleanor Shellstrop.

The brilliant show kicked off its fourth – and sadly final – season on Sept. 26 with Eleanor taking on the role her mentor-turned-torturer-turned-mentor Michael (played by Ted Danson, a G.O.A.T. if I ever saw one) in welcoming new residents into their Good Place neighborhood.

Eleanor has come a long way from being the woman stealing shrimp from fancy parties to one desperately attempting to save humanity, and it’s been a privilege to watch her grow. Many fans were shocked and upset to hear such a successful show was ending its run, but the last thing we need is The Good Place to stop being good.

There are only so many reboots and new dimensions we can crawl through before the tightly-wound plot starts to feel both stale and too extreme, and the best thing is to end the show while it’s still fresh, funny, and getting snubbed by Emmy voters.

The Good Place left off as a new experiment began: if Eleanor, Michael, and the rest of the gang can get four destined-for-the-Bad-Place humans to become worthy of the Good Place, the leaders of the Bad Place will stop dooming humanity to an after-lifetime of torture.

It’s a comforting argument the characters make, claiming that, once the stresses of the real world are taken away, people naturally become better and kinder. Big, overarching ideas about morals and ethics are what make The Good Place so fascinating to watch. It’s not just a great comedy with great actors. It makes you think, question what you believe, and examine your own life choices. It’s a rare jewel of a show with twists and turns around every corner and a complex, beautiful relationship between Eleanor and Michael, who both needed each other to evolve into the people they’ve become.