Ancient Egyptians thought that life went on after death, as long as you knew the right passwords, their bodies were nicely salted and their hearts were sufficiently weighty. Vikings believed that Valhalla awaited the mightiest among them, where they could fight all day and drink all night. And some Christians figure that St. Peter will be waiting for the dearly departed in front of heaven’s pearly gate, pen in hand.
But no afterlife is quite like what we see in The Good Place—a place that even the living can visit tonight on NBC.
It’s not exactly heaven—or, at least, not the heaven that we Christians imagine. “Every religion guessed about five percent right,” says the Good Place’s ageless community designer, Michael (Ted Danson).
It doesn’t have any streets paved in gold or angel xings. It looks mostly like a really, really nice suburb—clean and quaint and filled with frozen yogurt shops. (“People love frozen yogurt, what can I tell you,” Michael explains.) And everyone who gains entry to the Good Place gets a home designed specifically for them.
But the Good Place is the most exclusive of gated communities: Only the best of the best get to go there. The rest are sent … elsewhere. And while we don’t know exactly what the Bad Place looks like, it sounds pretty awful.
Also unlike heaven: The applications process isn’t exactly perfect. Take the case of Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell), for instance; Michael and his unseen (as of the pilot episode) selection committee believe that Eleanor is a tireless, good-hearted attorney who fought for death-row inmates and had a special love of clowns. Eleanor hates clowns and can’t tell her de integros from da Internet. She admits to her supposed true soulmate (another perk of the Place) that she thinks someone made a mistake, but while she may not belong here, does she really deserve to go to the Bad Place?
“I was a medium person!” she says. “I should spend the afterlife in a medium place! Like Cincinnati!”
I really liked The Good Place. What with the sharp writing and the seriously goofy setup and the gigantic shrimp rampaging across the sky, the show’s a heavenly hoot—a creative coup set in the Happy Hunting Grounds.
But I also think that, as it goes on, the show may have some interesting things to say about life and death, good and evil too. In fact, its theological musings have already begun.
Most of us probably think we deserve a Cincinnati-like afterlife. We know we’re not great people, as in Mother Teresa-type great. But we hardly think that we’re deserving of eternal punishment, either.
But historically, in most of the world’s religions, their version of the Good Place was pretty exclusive. I think that for much of their history, those ancient Egyptians believed that the afterlife was reserved for the pharaoh and maybe a handful of others that could afford it. In Greece, most mortals were destined for a very gloomy afterlife in Hades. Only a very, very few might gain entry to Olympus or have himself splashed across the heavens (in the form of starry constellations).
And even in my faith tradition, Christianity, heaven is incredibly hard to get into based on how good you are. In fact, it’s way harder than even the Good Place. In NBC’s vision of heaven, you can work your way to a great afterlife if you’re an incredibly awesome person. In my version, I’m not so lucky. Even if I spent the rest of my days caring for destitute orphans, there’s no way that I would make the cut. Even the best of us, we’re told in Isaiah, have “become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” In Christianity, heaven isn’t just good, it’s perfect. And none of us are good enough to get in.
But like in The Good Place, there’s a loophole. But it’s not a faulty selection process, but a really, really generous landlord. We can’t work our way in. But even the Eleanor Shellstrops of the world can get in with a little help from Jesus. We just have to knock on the door.
