The Second Time Through The Good Place

I mentioned a few months ago that I was rewatching The Good Place, but I had a very different reaction to the ending this time around. If you haven’t watched the show and don’t want the ending ruined, click away now.

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Okay, you were warned. I had to speed through the final three episodes because the show was leaving Netflix, so I watched them back to back one night while I was home alone.

The first time I saw it, I felt weepy, but I was watching it at the beginning of the pandemic with all of the unknowns in front of me. Like Chidi and Eleanor, I just wanted time with the people I loved.

In fact, that’s exactly how they describe paradise: “This is what we’ve been looking for since the day we met. Time. Yep. That’s what the good place really is. Not even a place, really. It’s just having enough time with the people you love.”

Once you feel you’ve had enough time, you can walk through the final door and become a particle in the universe. So first, Jason decides to leave. He is leaving someone (not a girl) behind, but she doesn’t process emotions in the same way as a human, so when he leaves, she just returns to still being with him because she is experiencing every moment of time, all at once. Tahani becomes an architect (so is still accessible), and Michael becomes human (so not as accessible but still out there).

And then Chidi tells Eleanor he is ready to walk through the door. She is not, and she tries to get him to stay, but then decides to support him because she says it is selfish to try to get him to stay because she isn’t ready. And I didn’t feel awwwwwwww about it this time around. I actually felt angry at Chidi.

Look at that quote above that he said. The good place is about having enough time with the people you love. So he knew the point of the good place, but he didn’t give Eleanor enough time. He gave her a limited amount of time while he took enough time. She wasn’t full, but he took the plate away because he was done.

And I was angry because when they entered into a relationship, they entered into a social contract. To be there for the other person for as long as possible. It will never be enough, and time together with another person is out of our control. But in this case, it was entirely within Chidi’s control. And Chidi decided to leave early, even though Eleanor hadn’t reached enough. And she positioned it as “selfish” to ask him to stick to that social contract, when it is anything but to ask someone to do what they said they would do.

Clearly, I’m getting worked up just thinking about it again!

But the point is that I was enormously disappointed in Chidi for not staying and doing the hard work of getting to an endpoint together. Eleanor is presented at peace, albeit sad, with his decision, and there was only so much Michael Schur could cover in 37 minutes. So I’m realistic in that it was probably the better storytelling decision. But it made the series end on such a sad note for me this time around.

It will be interesting to see if my feelings change if I watch it a third time in the future.