The Good Place is one of the funniest, most original shows I've seen in a long time
The third season has just started and it's as funny as ever. If you've never heard of it before, here's the blurb from Wikipedia:
The series focuses on Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell), a woman who wakes up in the afterlife and is introduced by Michael (Ted Danson) to "The Good Place", a highly selective Heaven-like utopia he designed, as a reward for her righteous life. She realizes that she was sent there by mistake and must hide her morally imperfect behavior and try to become a better, more ethical person. William Jackson Harper, Jameela Jamil and Manny Jacinto co-star as other residents of "The Good Place", together with D'Arcy Carden as Janet, an artificial being helping the inhabitants.
The Good Place received positive reviews upon its debut and has since gained critical acclaim. It has been praised for its performances, writing, originality, setting and tone.
Seriously, give it a shot!
I enjoy watching The Good Place because it's so dang cheery, even more so than most other light-hearted shows.
I'm not going to be as dismissive as a couple of the other comments already are, but I watched the first few episodes and it really didn't grab me. It was pretty predictable overall, and I can't remember anything making me laugh out loud or striking me as particularly clever. I didn't dislike it, but it just didn't make a strong enough impression to motivate me to keep watching it instead of something else.
At what point do you think the show really hits its stride? Lots of shows take a while to get to the point where they're good (sometimes they don't even get there in the first season), so I'm curious if I just haven't watched enough yet to really "get it", or if it just might not be for me.
I assume you haven't seen the season 1 finale then? If you did and were able to see that coming, well, than I guess the show really is too predictable for you :)
To be fair the show could have gone another way, the show could have been just stupidly boring (imagine a reality show or like a generic shitcom), which is what I expected going in, but was pleasantly surprised.
After the second chapter I looked at my partner and told them that haha, I guess it was clear for me (I'd go into detail if it wasn't spoilers, when is the spoiler tag arriving??).
@Deimos, I also didn't find it that entertaining until around episode 6-7, but I'm definitely very glad I stayed around.
For me, it was about episode 5 or 6 that the show picked up a bit. I enjoyed it enough and thought it was worth the watch, but it's not really topic picks for me personally.
Like Parks & Rec, or the Office before it, it takes some time before the formula settles and the magic gets brought out. In this case though, it's done with purpose. The beginning has to set a bit up. I'd say the best judgement point for the series is somewhere the beginning of the second season. If you're not interested by that point in its plot, then it won't do anything for you.
I have to say even when the show hits its stride I almost only ever laugh at stuff Janet does, Ted Danson does a decent job and I don't mind Kristen Bell's character but I really don't care for the other main characters. I do appreciate the that they kind of break the standard sitcom format in with how the consequences of season 1 influence the direction season 2 goes in a way that I didn't expect (mainly due to low expectations set by most sitcoms.) I'd disagree with OPs assertions that it's one of the funniest or most original shows, but I don't know what other shows they've seen. To me, it's cute, my wife and I enjoy it when we're looking to turn off our brains for 30 minutes, a solid 6.5/10 imo.
People are saying "wait 'til you get to the end of season one!!".
But the end of s01 is stupid, and so the beginning of s02 is the writers trying to escape the box they write themselves into at the ned of s01.
Some people like it. I found it mildly tedious. I mean, I don't dislike it. But there's so much great content that it's hard to keep watching something where all I can say about it is "it's not that bad".
I enjoy the show for two reasons.
Kristen Bell, who I adore.
Blake Bortles and the Jaguars are a running punch line in the show. As a big Jaguars fan, it amuses me to no end
OK, now I've gotta watch it. I'm not a Jaguars fan (I'm in the other corner of the country) but I do love @BlakeBortlesFacts on Twitter and anything that keeps up that gag sounds great.
I love @BlakeBortlesFacts
Also, in the show, the gag is centered around only one character who is from Jacksonville. So it won’t be an every episode thing. But when it does pop up, if you’re a Bortles/Jaguars fan, it is gold
I love Janet so much. She's my favorite not a girl not a robot. And while the humor doesn't make me laugh out loud constantly, it's warm and amusing.
Like any show I'm sure it'll eventually run its course with the concepts it's using, but I think so far they've kept things fresh by not getting stuck in a rut. (As others have said, it's really hard to explain how they keep mixing things up without giving away several twists.)
Thanks for reminding me about this — I've seen bits and pieces of the first few episodes when someone else in the room was watching. The premise was great and it seemed genuinely funny. Seemed like maybe a thin idea to build a whole multi-season show on, but it sounds like they're making it work. I should probably give it a try.
Started out a little slow, but I hung in there for the cast (notably Bell and Danson, but I liked the other three mains as well despite not recognizing them from anything) and because I was bored and had nothing else to do that day. I was confounded at the twist. Watched the Second Season live, which is rare for me these days and found it excellent. Excitedly watching through 3 as it airs now.
I just watched the first season because of all the good recommendations here and in other places. The plot twist was kind of a writing on the wall, but overall, I liked it. Definitely one of the funniest things I've seen this decade. Can't wait to watch the other seasons.
Thank you OP and everyone ITT.
Really? I went into the show blind and it was a complete surprise to me. Still, glad you liked it!
To be honest, the mere fact that there is a plot twist was a give-away, so the comments kind of spoiled the fun (but also didn't because now I feel like Mister Smartypants). Once you know something is wrong, it's not that hard to figure out, what would make a good twist.
Then again, I am a fan of M. Night Shyamalan (well, the good part of his ouvre) and I've watched almost an hour's worth of video essays on YouTube on the nature of good plot twists, so I may be an anomaly.
Ah, now it makes sense :)
I watched the first season of it and the twist that is introduced literally killed the show for me. It also seemed like a lot of the writing around morality was really simplistic. But that could change as the series develops. How do the second and third seasons compare to the first?
I just finished the second episode this week. Personally, it feels like the moral aspects are being over-simplified and used as crutches for conflicts which aren't actually that complicated. I'm also not taken with Kristen as a horrible person, but that may be from seeing her in too many other roles.
Someone on Reddit suggested this as a successor to NBC's Community, which doesn't make sense AT ALL yet. Am I wrong? How much longer do I have to 'stick this out' to see what the hell people are referring to here?
I haven't seen Community so I can't comment on that, but I'd suggest sticking for a few more episodes, say, 6 which would make it half a season. If you are still not enjoying it, then it likely isn't for you. We all have our tastes :)
I don't know. Kristen Bell gets on my nerves. Every character she plays is the exact same. Some tom boy ish woman who says dude and man every other word trying to seem relatable and not old.
That's heresy, please leave your club card at the reception on your way out.
Seriously though, I'm a huge fan of her ever since Veronica Mars so I can't relate ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Maybe it's just me but the twelfth dude man combination gets old.
Big TD fan though.
I assume you don't mean /r/The_Donald... what do you mean?
Ted Danson. He is on the Good Place.
Ted Danson
Thank you.
Really? I watched 3 episodes of it, and I thought it's the dumbest idea for a TV show ever.
Eh, not much to explain. I just think that the whole idea of a show based on a woman being sent to heaven by mistake is dumb. Apart from that, I didn't find it funny at all and the acting was pretty bad. Pretty much found everything about it contrived/fake/not sure how to explain.
To add to @Spel's comment, I felt the exact same way and dropped the show after watching the first two episodes. A friend kept encouraging me to watch it, and eventually I asked him if he could give me a compelling reason, even if it's a spoiler, to watch the show, and he did. I picked it back up, and enjoyed it a lot, especially the second season.
To give you a smaller spoiler than he gave me: The show has a few times that they subvert expectations, and they get away with that by foreshadowing things that don't happen, and avoiding so much as hinting at some of the things that do. But even some of the basics of how the show presents itself in the first several episodes end up wrong, and the motivations of the main cast change throughout the show. More to the point, you get the impression that the show is about her becoming a better person to fit in (which comes across as a bad premise as it shouldn't take very long), but that is not, ultimately, the direction of the show.