…That I haven’t really seen people talk about (although they may well have and I’ve just missed it). A lot of people talk about the fact that the show is about people struggling to be good, and about the circumstances and relationships involved in that.
But what I really love about The Good Place is how it portrays evil.
The demons may be conventionally attractive people, but they’re not sexy, even if they may perform sexiness. They’re not evil in some interestingly baroque way. They don’t have manpain or hidden motivations; humans have those, and humans can learn to overcome their worst impulses and do better. The true agents of evil are just petty jerks who hurt people and increase the level of misery in the world because they think it’s fun. Team Cockroach’s failings are human and self-defeating and kinda endearing, but the demons are not only assholes pulling wings off flies and laughing about it, they have a really annoying laugh.
I don’t know when I’ve ever seen a portrayal of evil that so completely represented it as bad and undesirable, rather than interestingly forbidden and probably having more fun.
bongdanceking 