Here are the acts that will get you into The Good Place, according to The Good Place
If you caught part one of tonight’s premiere of The Good Place—the new NBC comedy in which Kristen Bell plays a woman mistakenly granted a heavenly afterlife—you also saw the segment that outlines the scoring system by which the show judges humanity’s follies and foibles.
As explained by well-meaning celestial bureaucrat Michael (Ted Danson), people’s actions during their time on Earth are assigned positive or negative point values, which are then added up at the time of their death. The people with the highest numerical assignations go to the titular Good Place, and everyone else gets to waste away in its dreadful counterpart, The Bad Place. As Michael describes the system, examples of various actions flash on the screen, accompanied by their respective point values.
Ending slavery is a big bonus—Abraham Lincoln is the only U.S. president in The Good Place—but the small things add up, too, like maintaining composure at a water park in Houston or letting someone merge in traffic. In fact, that latter deed is what Schur says inspired the show. It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it visual gag, but The A.V. Club has taken the time to capture some of the jokes that you might’ve missed while blinking. Here’s a selection of our favorites:
Positive points
- “Ignored text message during in-person conversation”
- “Ate vegan”
- “Never discussed veganism unprompted”
- “Began to compose social media post about David Bowie dying and then thought, ‘The world doesn’t need to hear my thoughts on David Bowie.’”
- “Helped a hermit crab find a new shell”
- “Fix broken tricycle for child who loves tricycles”
- “Fix broken tricycle for child who is indifferent to tricycles”
Negative points
- “Be commissioner of professional football league (American)”
- “Tell a woman to ‘smile’”
- “Overstate personal connection to tragedy that has nothing to do with you”
- “Fail to disclose camel illness when selling camel”
- “Use the term ‘bro-code’”
- “Use ‘Facebook’ as a verb”
- “Blow nose by pressing one nostril down and exhaling”
- “Root for New York Yankees”
Take a look at the full spectrum of good and bad below: