This week’s episode of The Good Place, titled “Mondays, Am I Right?” feels a bit like all the messages this show has tried to send for four seasons are coming to a head, and it’s both amazing and incredibly sad to be here, at the end of all things, with these people, and with all of you.
[bctt tweet=”We have been, in many ways, preparing to say goodbye to The Good Place since season 2. It never felt like this idea had many seasons to go, and that always made the show feel more real, more immediate.” username=”fangirlish”]
Whatever was happening you knew it wasn’t about the show trying to make the storylines last longer, about milking the magic they’d created. Instead, it was always about trying to send one coherent message.
And that message has always been: humans are trash sometimes, but we don’t have to stay trash. We can become better people, we can change. Nothing in life is static, and neither are we.
This is a particularly refreshing message when you turn on the news and feel like the entire world is a trash can and you can’t even breathe. It’s hard to get up day after day after day when you don’t have any hope, after all. And hope is what this
Lately, and particularly in last week’s episode, titled “You’ve Changed, Man,” the message has even expanded a bit to become: and, in the process of changing ourselves, we can change the systems that are deeply ingrained in our society. We can make the world around us a better place. Change doesn’t just have to be internal.
We can make a difference.
Especially when it comes to breaking down systems that uphold oppression, misogyny, racism and homophobia. Systems that cling desperately to the status quo, because that’s the only way they can survive, if nothing changes.
If people don’t push back, if people don’t question.
But if we change, then how can the world stay the same? This episode we have the old status quo, the demons of The Bad Place, fighting against change, for no good reason whatsoever, other than they don’t want to learn something new – even if that something new might end up being better for everyone, including them. They already have a system, they say, and it works. Why change it?
Except the system only works for them, just like the society we live in only works for a precious few – the privileged. And sometimes, you don’t have to stop the wheel, you have to literally come up with a different mode of transportation.
If The Good Place is to be believed, we can. Now we just have to – like they did – find our own way forward.
Things I think I think:
- “Nothing in there can ever change how I feel about you.”
- The B Plot of Eleanor and Chidi was fantastic. They’ve known each other throughout this whole crazy afterlife journey, but they didn’t know each other on Earth, so it’s understandable that there’s still this doubt, for both of them. But, if you think about it, they have known each other MUCH LONGER than they were alive, anyway.
- Like, thousands of years.
- Singing Janet is the best Janet.
- “I’m not good enough for you.”
- This sentiment is silly, and yet so common. But love isn’t something you have to deserve.
- This is such a good ending. I’m scared. What’s gonna go wrong?
Agree? Disagree? What did you think of “Mondays, Am I Right?” Share with us in the comments below!
The Good Place airs Thursdays at 9/8c on NBC.
