The Good Place Season 2 Episode 10 Recap: Go to Hell

In one of the best episodes of the season, the gang goes to the Bad Place and become their best selves.
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NBC

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In nearly two full seasons of television, The Good Place has never even given us a glimpse of the Good Place. In fact, we’ve only seen the Bad Place, with occasional detours to visit the Medium Place and its sole occupant. And that means we’ve always gotten a lopsided glimpse of the true nature of The Good Place’s ethical philosophy.

Until now. Because this episode’s trip directly into the heart of the Bad Place ends up giving our heroes the chance to prove their innate goodness—and as the episode ends, the show’s stance on what it means to be good has never been clearer.

The Good Place has given us occasional hints about what the normal Bad Place is like—a place of eternal, screaming torture populated by sadistic douchebags and Bad Janets. Michael’s fake Good Place was designed to make its human occupants torture each other forever, but it still seems preferable to having your brain removed and batted around like a beach ball for eternity.

So it’s no surprise that the humans, on the train to the normal Bad Place for the first time, start to freak out a little bit. "This plan is starting to feel slightly, completely insane," frets Chidi as the trains chugs along, bringing them closer and closer to the place that every living being would do anything to avoid.

And what would you expect, given Chidi’s extensive background in exactly this subject? The concept of eternal punishment for earthly sins exists, in one form or another, in most religions—but there’s an ongoing debate about what form that punishment will take. Popular culture has ensured that most people imagine hell (or whatever you want to call it) as a demonic realm full of fire and brimstone. But over the course of human history, leaders and theologians across a wide variety of religions have conceived of many hells: a place of intolerable coldness, or a rainy city full of ghosts, or Dante’s 34-part tour through nine separate circles, or the mere absence of God.

The Good Place has its own version of hell. It’s a realm of largely petty annoyances. Axe Body Spray is blasted freely, party platters are stocked with vending-machine egg salad and Hawaiian pizza, and Pirates of the Caribbean 6: The Haunted Crow’s Next or Something, Who Gives a Crap playing in every movie theater forever. There is, apparently, a much darker side to the Bad Place—presumably the area where people are actually getting brutally tortured—but Michael shelters the group from it, warning them against looking at things that will haunt them for eternity. Instead, he hides them in a wing of the Museum of Human Misery, in a wing devoted to Low-Grade Crappiness.

Here, the humans are forced to do their best demon impressions to maintain cover while Michael figures out how to smuggle them out of the Bad Place. Tahani is surprisingly adept at making small talk about gross torture, and Jason relishes the opportunity to exchange (good-natured?) slaps to the balls with the other demons. The problem, inevitably, is Chidi—a Kantian moral absolutist who holds that any kind of lying is wrong. "Principles aren’t principles when you pick and choose when you’re going to follow them!" he sputters.

How can Eleanor save Chidi without violating his principles? Via the only salvation that makes sense to him: the work of a different great moral philosopher. Citing the work of Jonathan Dancy, Eleanor preaches the virtues of moral particularism—the belief that there are no absolute principles, because the specifics of each individual situation dictate the proper moral response.

It’s a code of ethics that’s uniquely suited to Eleanor’s way of life—but it’s also uniquely suited to surviving the Bad Place, which requires a moral flexibility that Chidi needs to be prodded into. It’s enough to keep them alive just long enough to rendezvous with Michael. And as the humans rush for the portal to plead their case—with Shawn and the rest of the demons on their heels—Michael demonstrates his own newfound and independent ethical code by citing the Trolley Problem, as taught by Chidi, before selflessly pushing Eleanor through the portal at the cost of his own freedom.

So now that we’ve seen this show’s version of hell, what system of ethics is The Good Place ultimately playing with, anyway? In keeping with The Good Place’s strict non-denominationalism, I’d posit that the show’s ultimate moral truth hews closest to the Parable of the Long Spoons, which exists in some form in virtually every major religion: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

The Parable of the Long Spoons describes a massive table covered with food. In hell, the people sit around the table, staring at the food longingly while they starve. If they could eat the food, they would—but their only utensils are long, unwieldy spoons that are impossible to lift up to their own mouths. Heaven is built around a similar feast—it even has the same exact spoons—but the people at the table feed each other.

The trick, of course, is that it’s the same table. Heaven and hell aren’t two different places; they’re the same place. The only difference is whether or not you’re willing to help each other.