Some series take time to a larger audience, and perhaps this current stew of meh dominating the fall menu will help sophomore successes like The Good Place taste all the sweeter.
The Good Place is very well written, full of good jokes about bees and clowns and clam chowder. But it's got another layer: it's also about power dynamics and morality systems -- how they shift and mutate depending on how people interact.
It's a slow burn (hell joke!), but rest assured eventually they do get there -- at least until the writers inevitably pull the rug out from under their characters again by the end of Season 2.
The Bad Place version of The Good Place proves it's still able to surprise, while staying rooted in ideas that make it more than the sum of its twists.
