The Good Place is hands down one of the most clever, funny and innately human sitcoms to come down the pike in quite some time.
In two brilliantly-imaginative seasons it has managed to ask some pretty intense questions about the nature of good and evil, life and death, fate and free will, and still manage to be off-the-wall surreal and every bit as consistently hilarious as any of the great sitcoms before it.
All of that brilliance can be sheeted home to creator/executive producer Michael Schur and his team who have demonstrated an admirable ability to pivot the show’s premise on multiple occasions and not diminish one iota of their output or lessen the impact of this one-of-a-kind show.
It’s an extraordinary achievement, one that I’m certain the upcoming third season of 13 episodes (the first one is an hour long) will more than do justice to, with Mike Schur promising that Eleanor, Chidi, Jianyu and Tahani are really back on earth as if they never died:
“Normally I don’t like to just flatly state what’s going on, but here I don’t see the benefit of people experiencing ambiguity: the four of them are straight-up back on Earth, in a new timeline where they didn’t die.” (Rolling Stone)
The million dollar question is, of course, whether all the morally-uplifting, soul-bettering experiences of the first two seasons will stick with them back on Earth.
Kristen Bell, who plays Eleanor, seems to think so.
“Metaphorically, this next season is about how you can play chess with people who don’t know you’re playing with them and doing so in a way that doesn’t affect the greater universe.”
She added: “Our characters don’t know there’s a greater mission. We’re meandering on Earth… all left on Earth separately. And what we learned from the first two seasons is that our strengths come when we’re together.”
To catch on what they have learned and where it might take them, check out RadioTimes and get ready to get your shrampie on when The Good Place returns to NBC on 27 September and internationally on Netflix.
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