The Good Place Scene Analysis: “Who’s Worth Helping?”

The Good Place! A ridiculously high concept show which continually finds ways to ground itself in situations we can relate to and follow. Here’s a scene which wonderfully showcases how the writers accomplish this task.

Scene Comes From: The Good Place, Episode 102

Scene Context:

Eleanor has been put into “The Good Place” by mistake and wants Chidi to teach her how to be a ‘good person’.

Scene Conflicts:

• Eleanor wants Chidi to help her.
• Chidi needs Eleanor to prove she’s worth helping.

Scene Outline:

1. Eleanor comes up to Chidi, says it’s time to make her a good person. Asks what he’s reading.
2. Chidi shows her his book, explains how it’s a guide to morality. Eleanor takes this as him saying he will help her.
3. Chidi stops her, says there’s still pros and cons to helping her, questions if she’s taking someone else’s spot.
4. Eleanor explains that she’s not taking someone else’s spot. Presses onto Chidi that she’s worth teaching.
5. Chidi asks her where he’s from. She can’t remember, so he tells her. He realizes she hasn’t bothered to remember anything about him.
6. Eleanor tries to defend herself by claiming that Chidi can’t remember things about her. Chidi refutes this by repeating various trivial details about Eleanor’s life.
7. Chidi explains that he knows so much about Eleanor because she’s so self-obsessed. Says he doesn’t think he can help her because of this flaw.
8. She tries to argue that she cares about others, but continues to fail to remember where Chidi was raised. Chidi leaves after telling her how she’s too concerned with her own happiness.

Why It Works:

Sympathetic Hero: Eleanor is someone who normally would make for an unlikable protagonist. She literally has no redeeming qualities (at least for the first couple episodes). But what makes her someone we can root for is this sense of sympathy for her. She’s a mediocre person surrounded by people who are seemingly perfect. Though we might not condone her behavior, we can relate to her through that feeling of inferiority which she’s faced with by everyone she meets. And in scenes like this, when she wants an easy solution to this impossible problem, we don’t blame her. This is just someone who wants a sense of belonging, like so many of us.

Proof Based Motivation: Chidi won’t help Eleanor until there’s proof that she can be a good person. For this scene, he’s searching for this proof, and Eleanor isn’t making it easy for him. She can’t remember a single thing about him, is only looking out for herself, and doesn’t seem necessarily willing to change. This creates a context which makes it more than acceptable for Chidi to call her out on these toxic behaviors and ultimately believe that she’s not worth helping.

Balance of Tone: This, like most scenes from The Good Place, is driven with narrative first, comedy second. This isn’t to say it’s not funny, but rather that the jokes aren’t the sole purpose of the scene. When you read the above outline, it doesn’t come off as funny. Rather, it appears entirely non-comedic; it’s just two people debating whether one is capable of change. But what the writer (Alan Yang) does so well through the scene is keep the tone even by throwing in offhand humor throughout. It’s not built into the scene, but rather sprinkled in these little moments, like Eleanor referring to Kendall Jenner’s Instagram account as a “book.” When writing comedy, you don’t necessarily need to make comedic scenes one after the other. Rather, you just need a cogent narrative framework that allows jokes a space to breathe without becoming overbearing.

Grounded in Reality: This is a fantastical show taking place in a fantastical place, and yet the conflicts which occur are largely based in things we can relate to. Even though later scenes indulge themselves in the more extraordinary elements of the world, the focus never drifts away from our key characters. Scenes like this, which narrow the conflict down to something human and relatable, are what keep us emotionally involved.

Summary:

This scene is just another example of me trying to find how to tell stories that can be both funny yet heartfelt. By blending together sympathy for both characters’ respective predicaments and balancing their argument with offhand humor, we get a scene that drives the narrative forward without sacrificing lightness.