The Good Place: 10 Things That Make No Sense About The Show

The Good Place follows Eleanor Shelstrop as she navigates the afterlife. Given the show’s nature, creators were able to completely ignore all boundaries of reality. The rules changed constantly, typically with very little explanation of how things work other than “it just does.”

There are a few plot points that make less sense than others, however. While it is acceptable to think that an all-knowing A.I. could marry a deceased Florida criminal, other details in the show gradually disproved themselves as the plot developed and the storyline shifted, leaving audiences scratching their heads.

The Medium Place

Mindy St. Claire is a lawyer who spent her life as a solidly bad person. However, just before her death, she did one massive good act that completely neutralized all of her “bad points,” so the afterlife judges agreed to send her to The Medium Place, which is a completely neutral zone.

Later, it is revealed that no one has had enough good points to make it to the real Good Place in hundreds of years. With people like Harriet Tubman and Mother Teresa suffering in The Bad Place, it makes very little sense that Mindy would be the only one in history to end up in The Medium Place.

Chidi Speaking French

When Eleanor and Chidi meet for the first time,  he explains that he is always speaking French and that The Good Place automatically translates speech so that everyone can understand things in their own language.

Later, however, when the gang is sent back to Earth to try their lives over again and become better people, Chidi is still speaking perfect English. While it is still often discussed that he grew up in France and speaks French fluently, the fact that he only spoke French while in the fake Good Place doesn’t hold up.

Jason Living With Tahani

In the fake Good Place, everyone is given their own home that is supposed to be perfectly designed for them. Eleanor, who is supposedly taking the place of another woman called Eleanor Shelstrop, lives in a small house covered in clowns, while Tahani, the reputation obsesses socialite, lives in a gorgeous mansion. In the first draft of The Good Place, however, Jason does not seem to have his own home.

Jason is automatically placed in Tahani’s home since she is supposed to be his soul mate. However, no one else seems to live with their soul-mate, such as Chidi and Eleanor. Jason and Tahani living together serves the plot well, as Jason, who is the least intelligent character on The Good Place, is forced to constantly fight to cover up the fact that he isn’t who everyone thinks he is. But, given that no one else shares a house, it just makes no sense.

Death In The Afterlife

At the end of the series, the four humans finally make it to the real Good Place. However, they are disappointed to discover that the residents that have been there for centuries are far from happy.

The humans and Michael decide that they need to fix this problem and they decide that someone can only be happy if they know that everything will end someday. They establish a doorway in The Good Place that will take someone to whatever is after heaven. They are not exactly sure where it takes them, but the general idea is that it is death within death. This solution created a heartbreaking ending for the The Good Place, but it never really made a whole lot of sense on its own.

Chidi’s Indecisiveness

Chidi tries as hard as he can in every moment to be the best possible person. As the show goes on and it is revealed that all of the humans in the fake Good Place had been destined for The Bad Place, audiences learn that Chidi’s fear of making the wrong choice hurt the people he cared about in life.

In subsequent seasons, Chidi’s indecisiveness, especially in flashbacks of his life, is shown to be crippling to the point that no one would even want to be around him. However, this quality in Chidi really seemed to be added later for the sake of the story. In season 1, Chidi is never that indecisive and is instead one of the most likable characters on The Good Place.

Michael’s Redemption

The moral alignment of Michael changes pretty frequently throughout the first few seasons. At first, audiences believe that he is an angel of The Good Place. Later, he is revealed to be a despicable demon who is determined to do nothing but torture the four humans. Then, after some classes from Chidi, he is turned to the side of good.

The different versions of Michael really don’t seem to mesh together well, however. The later version of Michael is quite a bit like his personality when he was pretending to be an angel, leading many viewers to believe that he was once again faking it. Given the fact that he was so purely evil, his redemption really felt more forced for the sake of the storyline than genuine.

Eleanor Realizing They Are In The Bad Place

The first time around in the fake Good Place, it takes Eleanor some time to realize that they are actually in The Bad Place, which is one of the best cliffhangers in The Good Place. However, with each of Michael’s resets, she gets better and better at finding out the truth. To Michael’s increased frustration, his entire plan falls through over and over, putting him closer and closer to losing everything.

However, given what Eleanor has been told about The Bad Place and the gruesome torture that people suffer there, there seems to be no good reason that she would ever assume that the mediocre world she had been living in was The Bad Place. It seems more logical to assume that it was a Medium Place, but discovering it was the equivalent of hell seemed to be a stretch that only served the plot.

Jeremy Bearimy

Eleanor and the gang spend several hundred years in Michael’s version of the Good Place, but when the question of the afterlife timeline comes up, the answer is far from clear-cut. Michael explains that time is not linear, but instead follows the swoops and lines of the words Jeremy Bearimy.

Jeremy Bearimy may not have been meant to be understood but is instead another quick answer the show gives for the sake of comedy. However, for any members of the audience who tried to figure out how it might ever work, especially considering the dot of the “i,” there was never any sense to be found here.

Shawn And Michael’s Relationship

Shawn is first introduced as the all-deciding Judge. However, the humans don’t know that he is actually the head of The Bad Place, and is Michael’s boss. The audience does not learn this until after Eleanor discovers the truth, so a few conversations that Michael and Shawn have in private later end up making no sense.

The two continue their charade even when the humans are not around, acting like they are on the side of good when it benefits no one but the audience. Later, when it is discovered that Shawn was always against Michael’s idea of a new Bad Place, it makes their relationship before anyone knows the truth very confusing.

Doug Forcett’s Good Points

Doug Forcett is discussed in the very first episode to be the only human to ever completely guess the way that the afterlife works. He, therefore, does everything in his power to gain only good points in order to guarantee his place in The Good Place. He is later shown to have gathered a great number of good points, only to still not qualify.

However, what makes very little sense about Doug is that he was doing good things only for the sake of going to The Good Place, meaning that the actions were self-serving. The show has established that these selfish actions actually gain bad points, so Doug should not have even had as many good points as he did.

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