It never stops changing and challenging its core concept and it manages the incredible feat of being traditional and completely fresh at the same time. Season three has the flavor of someone who now really knows what he's doing. Amazing.
Despite the drastic change in setting in its third season, I find myself experiencing some fatigue due to the repetition of dynamics in different contexts. Instead of moving things forward, the writers mostly rely on scraping off the current storyline and thinking about a completely new mission for the characters, effectively soft-rebooting the series every time. I believe this is primarily due to the writers' insistence on keeping the main cast and their love interests at the forefront, rather than exploring the potential of introducing new characters. The central relationship between the two leads is further emphasized here, yet I struggle to feel any chemistry between them. Ultimately, it's Eleanor, Janet, and Michael holding the whole show. The other three characters are likable but ran out of things to say quickly. Nevertheless, the writing remains solid, and the partial return to form hinted at in the finale still leaves me eager for more.
Michael takes the battle for his friend’s souls to Earth in Season 3 of The Good Place. Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason’s deaths are undone, and Michael attempts to put them on the path to the Good Place, but when the Bad Place realize what he’s doing they send in agents to intervene. Some interesting additions are made to the show’s mythology as new parts of the afterlife are explored and more is learned about the point system that determines ones fate. Also, with this new alternate reality, the writers are free to explore and develop the characters in fun new ways. And in-between the laughs, they make some astute observations about the absurdities of life. Still going strong in its third season, The Good Place is as fresh and funny as ever.
Season 3 picks up where season 2 left off, with Eleanor going to Australia and introducing herself to Chidi. This season is a lot of fun. The Brainy Bunch actually do a pretty good job, until Michael intervenes and explains Jeremy Bearimy to everyone. The dot over the i breaks Chidi and he cooks chili with Peeps (it makes sense in context) until the team decide to try to improve people's lives on Earth. We learn some really interesting things about the group in the next couple of episodes, such as the parentage of everyone's favorite himbo, Jason Mendoza. After this the group get into various shenanigans, get in trouble with the Judge (Maya Rudolph is seriously amazing in this role), and even hang out in Janet's void for a bit. Overall, season 3 is a delight, and moves the entire cast through several interesting situations until it finally sets everyone up with some really big stakes for the fourth and final season.
Average episode rating for this season: 7.416666…
I actually expected it would be higher. The show's tone got pretty good in the latter half of the season, once we returned to hopping around the different realms. Forced chemistry aside, I'm really looking forward to S4.
Eleanor crying and saying "it's not a joke, I'm a legit snack" is perhaps the biggest mood of television in 2018.
Season three of The Good Place has some ups and downs. Although it feels like the humor and joke structure hits a stride that it had been lacking in the previous seasons, the narrative itself kind of ambles in the first half. Never outright bad, but goes on lots of mini-tangents that never seem to be quite as good as the mainline fair (the Jason b-plot episode in particular, was the low point).
This show has always been the lesser of the Mike Schur sitcoms, but that doesn't ever stop it from being charming as hell.
Review by DeletedBlockedParent2019-01-29T15:03:14Z
After their down right incredible second season I was more than a little curious about how this season would turn out. The real joy of The Good Place is how every season is drastically different in content while still staying true to the shows sense of humour, core characters and themes of moral philosophy.
Season 3 opts to explore the usual ideas of morality while on Earth, giving more great moments of the core group of humans interacting and learning together without so much of the original gimmick.
The biggest positive of this show is how well written the interactions between the main cast are managing to be very funny while offering actual incite into the underlying philosophy of the show. By taking the characters out of the crazy afterlife setting for a large part of the season forces the writers to focus on this element and allows the actors to show of their comedic sensibilities. However I would be lying if I said that the later half of the season, where more of the absurd elements the show rose to prominence for came back into play more, wasn’t the more interesting part. I have to give props to the writers for trying something different though and I can’t wait to see where they take this concept next.
This season is where the cast got to show off more. The character of Jason became far more realised, fleshed out and funny when he had more mundane concepts to deal with. Kristen Bell and William Jackson Harper got to flex their dramatic mussels for larger sections and D’arcy Carden absolutely crushes it in every episode, especially in episode 9 “Janet(s)”.
With it’s emphasis on name-drooping actual philosophers and general upbeat and absurd tone, The Good Place continues to separate itself for most of it’s competition.