Eleanor Shellshrop (Kristen Bell) opens her eyes to discover that she is dead and has entered the afterlife, and is now in 'The Good Place'. Michael (Ted Denson), the first-time architect of this particular neighbourhood, explains that there are 'distinct neighbourhoods within the good place each containing exactly 322 who have been perfectly selected to blend together into a blissful harmonic balance.' At their first orientation session Michael explains that the reason they are all in the good place is because during their time on Earth every one of their actions had a positive or negative value - and only those with the highest score get into the good place. Eleanor is shown into her new home, a quaint and bright cottage of the Icelandic-primitive style that perfectly matches her essence and features many clown paintings, and is introduced to her soulmate, Chidi (William Jackson), who was an ethics professor when he was alive. But as Eleanor explains to Chidi in confidence, there's a major problem - the 'Eleanor' to which Michael thinks he is referring too (who spent her life as a lawyer getting innocent people of death row) is not her, just another woman with the same name. This Eleanor is a saleswoman that made a living by tricking old and sick people into buying fake medicine. Obviously, she becomes pretty concerned that when Michael finds out she'll be sent to 'the bad place'.
The pilot episode, also titled 'Everything is Fine' was very exposition heavy, as you can tell from above, as it tried to quickly accommodate Eleanor and the audience to 'the good place'. It was handled well, but such a large exposition dump leads to further questions. Just as Eleanor and Chidi tried to ask Janet (D'Arcy Carden, the neighbourhood's informational assistant) about 'the bad place' I had similar questions. Why do they need to eat and sleep as if they were still functioning humans? Wouldn't a lot of these people have found a soulmate while alive, and wouldn't it be weird for them to immediately start a new relationship with a new person in the afterlife? Who works at all those yoghurt shops, surely not other good deceased people? If Eleanor and Chidi are soulmates why do they live in separate houses while Tahani (Jameela Jamil) and Jianyu (Manny Jacinto), another pair of soulmates who are Eleanor's neighbours, live together? It was nitpicking, yes, but that's the sort of scrutiny a high-concept series invokes. Thankfully the series was able to start to balance itself a bit more in its second episode, 'Flying', after a bizarre ending to the first in which giant ladybugs and flying shrimp started to cause havoc in the neighbourhood.
Chidi realises that Eleanor's presence is the cause of the mayhem, but she asks him if he will help her learn to be good in order to prevent her from eternal damnation in the bad place. Chidi struggles with what to do for the episode as Eleanor tries to prove herself good by helping to clean up the neighbourhood, only for her to ditch her duties in order to go flying with the others for their Day 2 Orientation. Naturally Eleanor feels bad and eventually cleans up the entire neighbourhood when her bad deed resulted in a rubbish storm prompting Chidi to give her a chance.
The series could very much become too heavy-handed with its metaphors and lessons of the week, as well as it's orientation into the good place, but for me personally the most exciting part of The Good Place is its potential for future discussions of morals and ethical philosophy. Most sitcoms will aim for being funny over its characters being good (see the success of a series like It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia), so it's refreshing that at least for now The Good Place looks as if its primary focus will be Eleanor's attempts to learn to become a better person. So for now, I'm willing to forgive its predictability. And who knows, maybe there's a lesson or two the series could teach the audience in the process.
Rating: 3.5/5
Favourite quote/ scene of the episode: When Tahani, after seeing how her silent soulmate Jianyu has helped Michael says, 'Maybe I should be silent too.' She's silent for two seconds before saying, 'Oh, that was wonderful! So cleansing!'
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