The Good Place - Season 4: Part One
THE GOOD PLACE - NBC
The fourth season of The Good Place is the ultimate challenge — the heroes are the designers, architects and creators and thus have to prove that there is good inside people. This is the show doing what it does best: shaking up the status quo with a great purpose behind it.
Last season left off with the gang in charge of a neighbourhood. Eleanor (Kristen Bell), Chidi (William Jackson Harper), Tahani (Jameela Jamil) and Jason (Manny Jacinto) have a year and four humans picked by The Bad Place. With the chance and obligation to prove that those new tested humans could be guided into being good people, just as it happened with said protagonists, the show mirrors the position the group had in the initial first season.
A group which started as bad people —being tortured by demons using their weaknesses as weapons — now continues as good, or better, people still tortured by demons taking advantage of said weaknesses. A weird albeit intriguing and engaging twist of fate now with the gang in a position to fight and rectify the more significant mistakes and miseries of what their actions have caused.
Nevertheless, as a show about people trying to be better and more beneficial, one can wonder if there is a point where the funny quirks and endearing weaknesses will disappear. If the protagonists are now watered-down versions of the characters previously portrayed, will it lead to stagnation and regurgitation of events and character trajectories?
Thankfully not. The show does an excellent job of showing how people grow and evolve while maintaining an element of humanistic flaws. Sometimes people return to old habits, have a moment of insecurity; these characters are reflective of their own mistakes. It does not matter how long Jason or Tahani have come. The characters can improve as people while still being funny, strange, silly and distinctive.
The only one that feels maybe less used is Jason, who is still a very charming, goofy and sweet character, but is not the centre of the show — Eleanor and Chidi are. Eleanor is practically the driving force of this season until the last episode that aired, The Answer, where we find out that there is no such thing as that — thanks to a retrospective through Chidi’s life. Chidi, who has been convinced of the possibility to solve every problem, slowly realizes there is not an answer for everything.
The show loves the character of Eleanor Shelltropmore than any other one — maybe even too much — which is not a bad thing because that love does not overshadow the excellent work that Kristen Bell and the scripts do for her character. Just a girl from Arizona, a very flawed and self-hating person who tricks and deceives people her whole life and now is in charge of proving that humans are worth saving.
Even when Eleanor quits in episode 2, A Girl From Arizona, how could anyone condemn her for that? Inspiringly, the fearless leader comes back because that is whom Eleanor has now become: simply put, a courageous person who will work and suffer — and indeed she suffers — to do the right thing. A person who has come to use all their experience as a bad person for the good of the cause.
