The Mix
34 | Rolling Stone | September 2019
Porporm,
quist lant
and caption
heretkPHOTOGRAPH BY Kelia AnneTHE GOOD PLACE
Season Four premieres September 26th
at 9 p.m. on NBC
TV’s Most Divine Comedy
I
T’S HOT as hell on the set of The
Good Place.
The wickedly smart NBC com-
edy about a group of misfits
struggling to make their way through
the afterlife largely takes place in its
own version of Satan’s domain. The
show’s central neighborhood looks
like a pastel paradise filled with shops
that have punny names like The Pes-
to’s Yet to Come and Lasagna Come
Out Tomorrow. But it’s built on the
Universal backlot in the San Fer nando
Valley, which can feel like the sun’s
anvil as production hits the summer
months. Between takes while shooting
the series’ upcoming fourth and final
season, leading lady Kristen Bell tries
to explain the concepts of “swamp
ass” and “monkey butt” — “It’s just a
general stickiness” — to legendary co-
star Ted Danson, and each time a crew
member orders the cast to step out of
the sun, Bell and D’Arcy Carden har-
monize on a lyric from Dear Evan Han-
sen about doing exactly that.
“It would be an accurate tem-
perature in hell,” Bell acknowledges
later from the comfort of her trailer.
“Maybe this is part of [Good Place cre-
ator] Mike Schur’s big plan. I wouldn’t
put it past him.”
Through its first three seasons, The
Good Place has pushed the limits of
where a sitcom can go — physically,
metaphysically, stylistically, and phil-
osophically. It began in what appeared
to be an exclusive version of heaven,
where four newly arrived human dum-dums — selfish con artist Eleanor (Bell),
indecisive philosopher Chidi (William
Jackson Harper), narcissistic philan-
thropist Tahani ( Jameela Jamil), and
“Florida Man” Jason (Manny Jacinto)
— didn’t seem to quite fit, despite en-
couragement from gregarious celestial
architect Michael (Danson) and chip-
perly omniscient artificial intelligence
Janet (Carden). In a twist that was kept
secret from all the actors save Dan-
son and Bell — and that transformed
The Good Place from clever sitcom
to something addictive — they would
learn that Michael was actually a Bad
Place demon testing out a new way
to torture souls. The flummoxed four-
some would spend the ensuing sea-
sons trying to save themselves from
eternal damnation and figure out why
the universe seems utterly broken. (A
recent episode revealed that no one
has qualified for the Good Place in cen-
turies.) Silly as it can be, the series asks
big questions about the best way to
live, how to treat the world and peo-ple around us, and how to cope in a
life that seems more profoundly unfair
by the year. This surreal show filled
with impossibilities such as lava mon-
sters, genies, and giant flying shrimp
has turned out to be an essential guide
for staying sane in the age of Trump.
“This and The Handmaid’s Tale are
two documentaries about the time
we’re living in,” says frequent guest
star Marc Evan Jackson (he plays the
snippy demon Shawn, the bureau-
crat honcho of the Bad Place), only
half-kidding.
“It’s about what it means to lead a
decent life and that there are conse-
quences to our actions,” says Danson.
“So it’s a really wonderful, ethical con-
versation. And there’s a lot of nine-
year-old fart humor interspersed to
make that go down. And there’s lots
of visual magic to make it all sparkly.”
The existence of The Good Place on
TV at all, much less on a traditional
broadcast network, feels as unlikely
as an atheist would feel about the af-Goodbye to ‘The Good
Place,’ which taught us
ethics and was hilarious
at the same time
By ALAN SEPINWALL
Harper,
Jacinto,
Danson,
Carden, Bell,
and JamilBEHIND THE SCENES (from left)