The Good Place: 5 Times Eleanor Was An Overrated Character (& 5 She Was Underrated)

It’s a simple statement of fact that Kristen Bell is one of the most charming and charismatic actresses of her generation. There’s just something infectiously joyful about her that lights up any show or film in which she happens to appear. Anyone who has seen The Good Place knows that she is the beating heart of the show, the person who brings the whole affair together.

However, that doesn’t mean that she’s without her flaws, and there were quite a few times during the show’s run when she showed that she could be both an overrated and an underrated character.

10 Overrated: She Was Almost Too Bad Sometimes

From the first episode onward, Eleanor made it abundantly clear that she was, to put it bluntly, a truly terrible person. She seemed to have no regard for the well-being of others while she was alive, and she seemed to go out of her way to be horrid to others. While this was, of course, part of the humor in the show, there were quite a few times when her awfulness began to blur into the ridiculous or the grotesque, to the ultimate detriment of her character.

9 Underrated: She’s Just So Darn Charming, Even When She’s Awful

At the same time, no matter how awful Eleanor might be, there’s no escaping the fact that she’s played by Kristen Bell. As a result, no matter what she does and who she manages to hurt, it’s very difficult to actually hate her. That, really, is the brilliance of Bell as an actress, that she can take a morally reprehensible character like Eleanor and make her into someone that the audience can cheer for (and sometimes identify with) even in her darkest moments.

8 Overrated: She Leans Too Heavily On The Fact That Her Parents Were Dirtbags

To the surprise of exactly no one, it’s revealed during the course of the series that Eleanor’s parents weren’t exactly models of good behavior for her, either when she was a child or as she grew up. While this does go some way toward explaining why Eleanor turned out the way she did and why she seems so determined to be awful, she does tend to use it too much to excuse her terrible behavior rather than taking responsibility.

7 Underrated: She Figured Out It Was The Bad Place Repeatedly

At the end of the first season, Eleanor is the one who finally realizes that they are not, as they’ve been told, in the Good Place but are, instead, trapped in the Bad Place. This was extraordinary enough, but in subsequent episodes she figured it out repeatedly. For a woman who has made a habit of being lazy, this is quite the accomplishment, and it always seems like she never really got the recognition that she deserved for this accomplishment.

6 Overrated: She Just Kind Of Went With Being A Bad Person

Time and again, the audience sees the ways that Eleanor lived her life while she was on earth. While there were a few times where she could be truly bad in terms of her behavior toward others, more often than that it was a function of her absolute laziness and unwillingness to bestir herself to not be bad.

Sometimes, the audience was left wondering why, exactly, she couldn’t have at least made a minimum effort at being a good person.

5 Underrated: She Was The Last One To Go Through The Doorway

When, in the final season, all humans are given a choice of when to walk through a door and become one with the cosmos, it’s rather sad to see both Chidi and Jason go through it. Eleanor, perhaps fittingly, is the last one to do so. It’s a very heartwarming moment, an instant in which she can at last find the sort of peace that has eluded her for most of her life. It’s also rather nice that a bit of her essence reunites with Michael.

4 Overrated: She Was Easily The Worst Of The Four Humans In The Beginning

As the first season unfolds, the viewer learns something about each of the characters: Tahani was violently jealous of her sister, Chidi was pathologically unable to make choices about anything, and Jason sort of blundered his way through life. Eleanor, however, was shown time and again to be the worst of the four of them, careless about the effects that her actions have on others, even those who should be important to her.

3 Underrated: She Helped Her Mom Be A Better Person

During the course of the third season, Eleanor reunites with her negligent mother. It’s one of those moments that is very important for Eleanor’s development as a person, as she has to contend with the fact that her mother seems to have found happiness with a new family. At the same time, it also provides Eleanor with the chance to help nudge her mother along this path to happiness and to being a better person than she was when she “raised” Eleanor.

2 Overrated: She Really Should Have Let Chidi Go Earlier

In the final season, it’s actually rather surprising that Jason was the first one to decide to go through the doorway. Ultimately, of course, Chidi also decides that it’s time for him to go but, unfortunately, Eleanor schemes with Janet to find ways to make him stay.

While she does eventually let him go, one can’t help thinking that, since she clearly loved Chidi so much, she really should have put her own desires aside sooner than she did.

1 Underrated: She’s The One That Wrangled Almost Everything Into The Path It Took And Kept It There

Given all of the crazy stuff that happens in the course of its four seasons, it’s sometimes easy to forget that Eleanor was the one who was responsible for all of the good things that happened. In fact, without her as the motivating factor the final plan that saved most of humanity from an eternity of being punished, it’s almost certain that a disproportionate number of souls would have continued being undeservedly sent to the Bad Place.

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