something i loved about the finale of the good place, spoiler-free i think, is that it remained true to the patterns of emotionally and not necessarily morally logical Goodness the show established throughout its run, like:
an element that originally seemed like a structural flaw to me, its half-hour comedy format, meant that the show necessarily had to Wrap Up Neat on its conflicts, so that various farces and escapades always concluded with a satisfying and emotionally clean bow: eleanor reaches out genuinely to tahani, and the tree grows. eleanor helps chidi into a boat with some french poetry. jason and janet are understanding of each other’s five thousand and a half shortcomings and then a little too understanding. eleanor puts herself in a compromising position to save her friends. so taken in aggregate, these moments of connection and uplift are the only form of “goodness” the show doesn’t expose as inherently questionable, the way it literally interrogates and gently discards so many other templates for moral logic (consequentalism, utilitarianism, formalism, contractualism, in the greatest gift to philosophy 101 TAs ever put to screen)
the finale moves from asking eleanor to replicate the substance of these moments (making a moment of empathetic human connection) to asking her to identify the organizing principle behind them and apply it to her surroundings: eleanor has to use empathy to form not only an understanding of what her friends want in a given moment, but what they want more existentially. and through that, to do something every viewer can identify as Truly Good: to understand and accept who they are. it’s a twist, but it’s not a reversal, it’s sort of a metaphysical deepening, exactly as it should be and as every character wanted, in some way, from the start--chidi to find what was “true” so he felt safe in making a decision, tahani to be validated in her skills, jason to be successful at something, and eleanor to find and formally name the rules of a “medium place.” it’s true to both what she has been learning and what she already knew, and it is perfection in a frozen yogurt cup
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