What in the hell is going on with The Good Place?

We need to talk about this dizzying, wonderful show

Thursday night's thrilling episode of The Good Place —"Rhonda, Diana, Jake, and Trent" — finally took us to The Bad Place. By the end, the audience was left wondering whether Michael, the world's friendliest demon, is doomed. Or worse: "retired."

It's worth relishing the absurdity of that even as we panic on Michael's behalf: How did this show about the afterlife manage to scramble its stakes and premises to the point where we're gasping at the noble self-sacrifice of a character (played by Ted Danson, who was born to play this part) who — last we see of him — is grinning at his boss in a grey office environment with a scary whirling portal behind him, having sent four humans through? It's hard to imagine a more ambiguous scenario. Did he save them? Did he damn them? Is he doomed? Is he saved? Has anything been lost? Will anything be lost?

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Lili Loofbourow

Lili Loofbourow is the culture critic at TheWeek.com. She's also a special correspondent for the Los Angeles Review of Books and an editor for Beyond Criticism, a Bloomsbury Academic series dedicated to formally experimental criticism. Her writing has appeared in a variety of venues including The Guardian, Salon, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Slate.