Where is the good place? I’m guessing when you’re agent says that Ted Danson is going to be a part of your new sitcom, you’re in a good place. Ted Danson had a massive hit on Cheers playing playboy bartender Sam Malone. After success in movies, Ted came back to TV and turned Becker into a long running series with him playing a cranky doctor. Ted can play a lot. So why can’t he play the person in charge of a community in the afterlife? The series gets even more good when Kirsten Bell (Frozen and Veronica Mars) joins Ted. The Good Life: The Complete First Season.
Eleanor Shellstrop (Bell) opens her eyes to find herself in an office without a clue how she got there. Michael (Danson) welcomes her to “The Good Place.” She’s dead from a supermarket parking lot accident. He explains how she’s in an afterlife which is better than the bad place. Turns out that everything you do has a good or bad rating and when you die, everything gets added up and if you score a positive total, you go to the good place. Eleanor made the good place because of all her amazing charity work and being a lawyer that freed innocent people from death row. She gets a dream house covered in clown art. It’s so good and makes Eleanor scared since that person wasn’t her. She lives in fear that Michael is going to find out she’s a mistake and send her to the bad place. Nobody wants to go to the bad place even though it supposedly has ever great artist. So Eleanor tries her best to be a great person, but keeps coming short in her tasks. And there are weird things that happen in the good place that makes people ponder if this is really heaven.
The fact that The Good Place is being made as a 13 episodes per season like an cable series helps maintain its charm. The last two episodes give the big twist for the second season so it’s not like they just ended the season early The show was created by Michael Schur who worked on The Office and co-created Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. The show doesn’t really duplicate any of his former series of course it helps to have the sitcom genius of Ted Danson to keep things fun. The Good Place is an enjoyable place.
The video is 1.78:1 anamorphic. The image looks crisp and heavenly. The audio is 5.1 Dolby Digital. The levels are fine for the after life. The episodes are Closed Captioned.
Audio Commentary on the pilot and final episode include Mike Shur and the director of the episode. They are shocked that DVD still exists. The two talk about how the show was developed.
“Mindy St. Claire” Live Table Read (28:45) has them gather around the huge table on the set to read away before they start shooting the episode.
Gag Reel (10:05) has them actually cuss instead of get altered like in the Good Place.
A Look at Visual Effects (1:17) breaks down the attack of the ladybugs.
Shout! Factory presents The Good Place: The Complete First Season. Starring: Kristen Bell, William Jackson Harper, Jameela Jamil, D’Arcy Carden, Manny Jacinto & Ted Danson. Boxset Contents: 13 episodes on 2 DVDs. Released: October 10, 2017.
