Opinion | ‘The Good Place’ Asks, Are You the Worst Thing You’ve Ever Done?

The idea that one can be treated as no more than the worst thing one has ever done is a recipe for cruelty, one that infests much of the prison system in this country. As someone who teaches regularly in a maximum-security prison, I am well aware of this. It is likely that many of the people I teach have done terrible things; but it is just as true that they are not only that, and our time together is an exercise in that recognition.

Near the end of the episode Shawn agrees to the proposal he rejected earlier to give humans a chance for redemption. He has discovered that cruelty, at least the same cruelty practiced over and over, can be boring. He confesses to Michael, “You corkscrew your first eyeball and you’re like ‘Man, I can’t believe they’re paying me to do this.’ By the trillionth it’s like … I should have just been a teacher.” There is another lesson here, one that I can only gesture at, but that brings its own worries: cruelty, in becoming boring, can also become normalized. That is a reflection for another time.

In this episode, and across the trajectory of its four seasons, “The Good Place” has, with the sort of wit and humor often absent from philosophy, offered a picture of humans as deeply flawed but ultimately redeemable, given the right circumstances. It is a picture of hope, one whose rejection produces the kinds of consequences with which history is littered. We would do well to heed that lesson without sacrificing the laughter that should accompany it. As Michael’s assistant Janet (D’Arcy Carden) says to the Judge (Maya Rudolph) during the episode, “Getting rebooted over and over made me a better not-a-person than I’ve ever been. Humans should get that same opportunity. ”

Todd May is the author of several books, including, most recently, “A Decent Life: Morality for the Rest of Us,” and a philosophical adviser to “The Good Place.”

Now in print: “Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments,” and “The Stone Reader: Modern Philosophy in 133 Arguments,” with essays from the series, edited by Peter Catapano and Simon Critchley, published by Liveright Books.

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