Michael Schur says anti-maskers aren't headed for The Good Place

The “celebrities should keep their opinions to themselves” crowd runs into a real problem with Michael Schur. After all, anybody who’s been in COVID lockdown for the past two years has gratefully binged something that Schur had a hand in, likely more than once. The Office, Brooklyn Nine Nine, Parks And Recreation, The Good Place, Rutherford Falls, Hacks—these are the sort of delicious yet nutritious TV comfort foods that we as a nation have been turning to en masse for warmly hilarious but still challenging immersive power-watching.

Schur, appearing on Tuesday’s Late Night, told Seth Meyers about his own, slightly more taxing go-to pandemic project, a book of philosophical and ethical queries worthy of The Good Place’s Chidi Anagonye himself. Entitled How To Be Perfec: The Correct Answer To Every Moral Question, the humorous collection of personal essays allows Schur to put all that The Good Place research into practice, as he confronts a world where such Eleanor Shellstrop-stumping concepts as The Trolley Problem and The Free Rider Problem are daily moral tests a whole lot of Americans very publicly and loudly flunk.

“It was awfully hard not to make the whole book about the pandemic,” Schur told Meyers, with the rueful demeanor of a guy who decided to embark upon a thoughtful examination of human behavior right when a pandemic exposed just how many of us are willing to strip off all semblance of the common good in favor of screeching at baristas about personal freedom. Explaining that How To Be Perfec (a title destined to piss off editors and autocorrect equally) amounted to “an exit interview” for himself after constructing an entire moral universe for The Good Place, Schur admitted that the average maskless Jamba Juice screamer is unlikely to be receptive to a calm and introspective give-and-take about the moral imperatives attendant with being part of human society.

Showing that Schur’s willing to put his money where his mouth is, however, Meyers produced a photo of Schur making some serious sacrifices. And by “put his money where his mouth is,” we mean, “put his unflattering The Office beard where his neck is,” as Schur explained how his offhand offer on behalf of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank during the pandemic saw him not only growing back the “badger” beard of his Office character Mose Schrute, but also donning the most galling article of clothing imaginable for a Red Sox fan—a Derek Jeter game jersey.

With pal Meyers’ donation helping to put Schur’s Good Place-worthy campaign over the top, Schur dutifully grew back the beard, put on the Yankees gear, ate a hot apple pie (apparently a real gross-out for Schur), and even proclaiming, on camera, that “Spygate was real.” Now, none of that can compare to, say, Eleanor, Chidi, Jason, Tahani, Michael, and Janet remaking the entire universe into a more just and fair place for all humanity, past, present, and future. But, for a Red Sox and Patriots fan as Schur famously is, that’s worth a whole lot of Good Place points, certainly.