The Good Place had its last episode this past Thursday, and The Wife and I watched it last night on Hulu, as we always have. I found it one of the greatest endings to a show I have ever seen. It stayed true to its poignant, thoughtful humor, and cynical hopefulness. But one thing that completely changed from its start to its finish is which religious heritage it was assuming would essentially govern the afterlife. In the beginning, The Good Place placed itself firmly in what I would call a childlike Christian view of the afterlife. It was not Thomas Aquinas and not Thomas Merton. It was more like what one would have learned in third grade Christian religious schools with the most simplistic focuses on good and evil. However, by the time of the final two episodes, we found ourselves confronted with Chidi Anagoyne, the brilliant, neurotic, and suitably in life agnostic, philosopher, quoting Buddhist afterlife beliefs.*
Along the way, however, was something far more subversive, which was the show's complete send up and ridicule of the very idea of an afterlife. First, there are no animals, especially no dogs. Just us humans. And the show implies so strongly in response to the lack of animals: Why? Then, the show tells us, again impliedly, we're such conceited schmucks for believing that it should only be us humans. Plus, the very idea that some limited time span on this planet should be cause for judgment for eternity is shown to be as unjust as it is ridiculous. For us, in 2020, we can now look into space and we don't see God hiding behind the clouds with his angels playing harps. We can now think about deep space and realize there may or may not be other life forms, but we are not finding God and the angels. And if we are all so different, and considering the tens of billions of humans born over human existence, well, it would have been very crowded up there in the atmosphere and close outer space areas--Oh wait, someone will cry. We must be shipped off into a worm hole far, far away. Yeah, that's it.
The ultimate message in The Good Place is its ridicule of our childish beliefs in the afterlife, even as we 'lived" with the dead characters in a crazy, funny, unjust, and yet hopeful afterlife. The show's writers, throughout the series, saved us time and time again from what they were implying, and we could even live with Mindy St. Clair, the amoral lawyer, in a sort of middle zone, which various Christian philosophers and Jewish rabbis also believe exists (With what evidence, you ask? My now departed grandmother's answer was essentially, Don't ask!). With the last two episodes, the show's writers helped us retreat again, but this time into a Buddhist completeness within Nirvana, and each of us deciding willingly to go into the void--but without reincarnation. Nonetheless, each time the writers rescue us, we are forced to accept what has been so strongly implied about the ridiculousness of the afterlife.
The Good Place had more plot twists than anything I have ever seen in a show only having four seasons. And the way the last episode resolved so many things that had cropped up during the show's run was so comforting that it almost seems as if I am saying the show was too sentimental at the end. But it is not sentimental as much as subversive, as we were constantly forced into recognizing the ultimate fantasy of any afterlife--though, I must say I am so glad Doug Forcett made it into the "good" place, and then later able to leave into the void. And no matter what the writers ultimately intended, Dammit, I still believe Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Lenny Bruce, I.F. Stone, George Seldes, and Robert Oppenheimer are still looking in on me. Yeah, I'm another sucker, Mr. Carlin.
UPDATE FEB 4, 2020: Slate.com speaks with the two philosophers who did cameos in the last episode, and had been advisers for the show's writers. This proves again what an extraordinary sit-com this was.
UPDATE FEB 4, 2020: Slate.com speaks with the two philosophers who did cameos in the last episode, and had been advisers for the show's writers. This proves again what an extraordinary sit-com this was.
* I should note Chidi is the most profound television situation comedy show character through now, with Detective Arthur Deitrich, from the old Barney Miller show, being a somewhat close second.
