I am sometimes late to the party. I saw The Good Place getting rave reviews pretty much as soon as it started, but it wasn't until it was more than halfway through season two that I began watching season one. I should have realized that because it was created by Michael Shur, who co-created two of my favorite shows (Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine), I would adore it. And I do. By the time I got to the amazing plot twist of the season finale (which I will not spoil for you, because I don't want to go to the Bad Place), I was desperate to watch season two--which had just finished airing. Like I said, my timing is not always great. But season two is now available for marathoning, so there are no excuses now.
What is the Good Place? It's where you go after you die, assuming you racked up more good points than bad while you were alive. The trick is, it's much harder to get good points than bad points, so the Good Place is kind of an exclusive afterlife club where only the very best people go to live in their dream house, eat as much pizza and frozen yogurt as they want, and get paired up with their eternal soulmate. Unless you're Eleanor Shellstrop (played by Kristen Bell) who seems to have been sent to the Good Place by mistake. Eleanor was, to put it mildly, not a good person in life, and yet Michael, architect of this neighborhood in the Good Place (played by Ted Danson), enthusiastically welcomes her in, praising her for living a good life that Eleanor doesn't remember living. Eleanor tries desperately to keep the mistake from being discovered, conspiring with the anxious Chidi, an African philosophy student (played by William Jackson Harper) who is Eleanor's alleged soulmate, and high jinks ensue.
But not the high jinks I was expecting. The show constantly goes in unexpected directions, all while being wildly funny and imaginative. It's one of the freshest, smartest, funniest comedies I've seen in a while. And it's bingeable like potato chips. It's (sorry not sorry) heavenly.