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NBC's The Good Place was a breakout hit when it's first season debuted in 2016. The initial reveal that our main cast of The Good Place were actually in The Bad Place was a major twist most didn't see coming. Then throughout the following seasons, The Good Place had another major twist in mind, the redemption of it's main villain Michael. But how exactly did The Good Place transform a literal Demon into one of the greatest sitcom characters ever?
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I know for a fact that if you steal a loaf of bread, it's a negative 17 points
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20 if it's a baguette, because that makes you more French. This is Michael. He's a smelly, 6,000-foot-tall, flaming fire squid with a long neck
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tentacles, teeth everywhere, and, quote, lots of juice, wearing a human suit
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Dope. No. Not dope. But you could be forgiven for mistaking him for the real deal, because by the end of The Good Place
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This torture-crazed monstrosity transforms into one of the kindest, most human souls anyone could
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possibly imagine. It's one of the greatest arcs in television history, and all he had to do to
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make it happen was to solve an unsolvable problem. As a word of caution, this episode is going to be
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pretty spoiler-heavy, so just be warned. And with that, let's get into it. The Good Place was a
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sitcom that had an unusual preoccupation with teaching an audience moral philosophy. The show
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centered on Eleanor Shellstrop, Chidi Anagonye, Tahani Aljamil, and Jason Mendoza, four people
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trying to adjust to existence in an allegedly ideal afterlife called The Good Place. Helping
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them in their task was a friendly artificial intelligence named Janet, who contained all the
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knowledge in the universe and the so-called architect of The Good Place himself, Michael
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played by Ted Danson. The end of the first season revealed that The Good Place had really been an
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experimental hell-like bad place all along. This is the bad place. With Michael pulling the strings
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as a secret stealth villain, he had tricked the show's human protagonists and was only ever really
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trying to find a new way to torture people in the afterlife. At the beginning of season two
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Michael, against the orders of his superiors, reboots the experiment hundreds of times trying
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to make it work, but because the humans always help each other, they always find the truth
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I think we're in the bad place. Jason figured it out Jason This is a real low point Yeah this one hurts Desperate to hide his failure from his demon staff who never believed in the experiment to begin with Michael strikes an alliance with the humans
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My job was to squish you, and yet somehow my very survival now depends on you, the cockroaches, agreeing to help me
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Michael winds up in Chidi's class on moral philosophy. Ethics lessons would probably be wasted on pretty much any other demon
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and Michael's demonic nature does make it difficult for him to connect with the material
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Let me just get into the mindset of a human. Oh, I'm a human and my breathing tube is next to my eating tube
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Unique among his kind, Michael had always displayed a deep and genuine curiosity about
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human beings and what it means to be human. Though he doesn't know it yet, this unusual quality is what will eventually open the door
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to his redemption, the seeds of which are sown throughout the second season
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People good. People good. Why is that so hard to remember? People
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What is it? Good? Good. For example, a key moment in Michael's evolution comes in episode 5, Existential Crisis
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when Chidi realizes that Michael's immortal nature makes ethics inconsequential to him
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Chidi believes that mortality offers meaning to the events in our lives
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and morality helps navigate that meaning. Michael tells Chidi about the process of demon retirement
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in the event of which his essence would be scooped out of him with a flaming ladle
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before every molecule in his body would be placed on a different sun
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Chidi uses retirement similarity to human death to give Michael a sense of mortality
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Okay, now we're getting somewhere. This allows him to start truly engaging with ethics
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as seen in what is arguably The Good Place's most famous installment
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Season 2, Episode 6, The Trolley Problem. As Chidi explains in the episode
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the trolley problem is a thought experiment introduced by British philosopher Philippa Foote in 1967
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except a student is asked to imagine they're driving a trolley when the brakes fail
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If the driver does nothing the train will hit and kill five workers who are on the track The driver can switch to a second track but that track also has a worker on it albeit only one This situation then serves as a setup for various hypothetical moral dilemmas
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which explore the student's ideas about the circumstances under which it's okay
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to sacrifice one person to save a greater number of people. And according to Chidi
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it's not supposed to have a right answer. The dilemma is clear
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How do you kill all six people? Oh, I did the thing again, didn't I
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Claiming to need a more concrete demonstration of the principles involved in the titular thought
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experiment, Michael uses his powers to place Chidi inside a lifelike simulation of his own
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gruesome hypothetical. Caught in one of his trademark moments of indecision, Chidi allows
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the trolley to run over five people. And as Chidi stands there covered in blood and guts
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Michael asks, Okay, so, what did we learn? Michael makes Chidi replay the scenario over and over, and that then gives way to a variation on
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the problem where Chidi is a doctor who has to decide whether or not to kill Eleanor and use her
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organs to save five other people. Eleanor eventually figures out that Michael is purposefully torturing
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Chidi because Chidi's superior knowledge of human ethics made Michael feel insecure. So what's the
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truth? The truth is, like everything in The Good Place, it was all quietly setting up something much
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bigger and more important. That something would arrive at the end of season 2 episode 10 in an
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episode titled Rhonda, Diana, Jake, and Trent. In an attempt to save the humans from being trapped
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in the bad place forever, Michael leads them to a portal that will take them to the chamber of a
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judge to whom they can plead their case. Passing through the portal requires a special badge
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but after Michael sends Tahani, Jason, and Chidi through, he realizes he doesn't have one for
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Eleanor. As the forces of The Bad Place close in, Michael, knowing he faces almost certain
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retirement if he gets caught, does the ethical math. Everything Chidi tried to teach him clicks
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into place, and he uses morality to navigate the meaning in the events of his life. And it is here
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in one of The Good Place most poignant moments that Michael solves the problem that has no solution He realizes that the trick of the trolley problem is that it forces you to choose between two versions of letting other people die And the actual solution is very simple Sacrifice yourself No no wait
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wait. It's finally clear that Michael is no longer just helping them out of a sense of
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self-preservation. He's come to care about his friends, and while they were all still a long way
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from the end of their journey, from this point out, Michael would be with them every step
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helping them as they helped each other. By the end of this series, all six of our heroes make it to the real good place
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and thanks greatly to their own efforts, it becomes the perfect afterlife
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they all initially thought it would be. What they figure out is, even paradise needs a sense of morality
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for things to have meaning, so its inhabitants are given a chance
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to end their stay at a time of their choosing by redistributing their essence to the universe
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But Michael, being immortal, fears that he will be left alone after all of his friends decide to move on
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I guess I'll just stay here forever, you know, put her around doing mundane things like some sad old retiree
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With some help from the judge, Eleanor gets Michael the chance to go to Earth and live and die
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as a regular human named, of course, Michael Reelman. Goodbye, fire squid
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Hello, silver fox. It was a perfect ending to his character arc
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It was the thread on which the creators chose to end the whole series. And in a brief moment at the beginning of the series finale
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we learned that at Chidi's request, the trolley problem is being taught in the good place
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by the show's philosophical advisor, Pamela Hieronyme. Next week, Professor Hieronyme will be teaching the trolley problem
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Bring ponchos. It gets messy. The clear implication being that Chidi now endorses Michael's
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more hands-on version of the trolley problem, and, by extension, the lesson he drew from it
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The student had become the teacher. But even if it wasn't in the way Chidi had intended
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thinking about the trolley problem was ultimately responsible for Michael's successful moral transformation
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The classes worked. He truly became a better person. And if that smelly old fire squid can become a better person, so can anyone