The Good Place is a show known for its incredibly dense joke saturation and plethora of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it visual gags. This week’s episode, “The Brainy Bunch,” was no exception, and saw our characters dining out on a veritable joke-feast at the aptly named Americana restaurant, Cowboy Skyscraper Buffet. There was so much going in in this tacky nightmare that there was no way all of it was going to make it on screen. Luckily, Kristen Bell shared a series of behind-the-scenes photos on Instagram, giving a well-deserved shout out to the show’s props and set decoration departments.
While some of these gags—including the “updated” Mount Rushmore and the Montana table displaying Dana Carvey—were featured in our weekly annotated roundup, others barely made it on-screen or were only shown in passing. Drink up the gigantic cocktails, which can be seen in the background of almost every scene in the restaurant, but reveal unexpected nuances in close-up. Then, there’s the wall installation of the greatest American pastime: Watching a monster truck launch itself into the Grand Canyon. But the real crowning achievement of the props department is the menu.
Highlights include the “Tuna Poke Lollipops,” “The Dessert Burger,” and “Ol’ Faithful,” which involves a waiter firing a blast of their world famous “beefy beef chili” into your mouth every ten minutes until you tell them to stop. Parks And Rec fans will recognize “The Paunch Burger,” a local delicacy from Pawnee, Indiana that’s recreated here, complete with brown sugar thousand island sauce and topped with a fried egg. The attention to detail is impressive, to say the least, and it’s part of what makes The Good Place such a fun show to watch (and re-watch).
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