My wife and I have extremely different tastes in film and television, so it’s rare that we’d find something we both enjoy. Once she suggested a show called “The Good Place.” Once I heard the premise, I brushed off the idea. A year later, after hearing some good reviews from Christians I respect, I thought I’d give it a try. My wife and I just finished watching the first two seasons together.
My early assessment: The Good Place isn’t Christian, but it sure isn’t relativist, either.
In the first few minutes, you see the main character Eleanor (played by Kristen Bell) waking up in the afterlife. Michael (played by Ted Danson) is a seeming mayor and architect of a village in “The Good Place” (the Heaven equivalent) and he welcomes Eleanor and explains to her the truths of afterlife. This explanation clarifies that none of the earthly religions got things correct, but her humanitarian work earned Eleanor her spot in “The Good Place” and not in “The Bad Place.” Eleanor seems overall relieved, but is worried, because she quietly recounts that she actually led a selfish life and was not charitable. Whoever or whatever arranged her spot in “The Good Place” made a mistake, but what should Eleanor do?
No, of course this TV show isn’t Christian. It doesn’t adhere to really any of the biblical characteristics of the afterlife, not even as much as C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce. In the afterlife, according to the Bible, there are no misplacements, misunderstandings or unexpected disruption in Heaven. We’re two seasons into the show, and we haven’t even seen the producers’ interpretation of Hell (from the tormented’s perspective). If we take the theology of The Good Place literally, it’s a “works-based salvation” type of universalism. So, of course, we’re not going to hear about the transcendent veracity and authority of Bible and the Penal Substitution view of the Doctrine of Atonement in this TV series. This is a show that doesn’t take its own theological interpretation of the afterlife seriously. It’s not The DaVinci Code.
However, this TV show is not, however, a politically-correct shrug to moral relativism. In this show, as Eleanor juggles her aforementioned dilemma, morals matter. There actually is a good place and a bad place. There actually are good things to do and bad things to do. What you do in your life on earth matters. The level of selflessness matters. Underlying motivations matter. Being selfish and striving for whatever is one’s fulfillment is certainly frowned upon. We should do good, not for its rewards, even though it is difficult. These are the kinds of themes one might hope to see deep didactic dramas like West Wing or any recent movie with Captain America, not a 25-minute comedy show. Sometimes it kinda feels like a very light-hearted version of LOST (and sometimes the light-heartedness feels strange when eternity is at stake). And the show is really funny, largely without being raunchy or profane.
The violence, sex, and language of The Good Place have it rattling between TV-PG and TV-14 (leaning much more toward the former). The Good Place is certainly not a show you show your friends just before you read the the “Romans road. However, it’s a very funny show that regularly tells viewers that selfishness is bad. That there is a such thing as universal right and wrong. And that life is not all about individual fulfillment.
So, no, The Good Place doesn’t teach biblical doctrine. But, to our pluralist, selfish and confused world, it tells viewers that there are right and selfless things to do, even if they are costly. And that’s a good thing.
