It’s like listening to an English major talk about philosophy (and that’s probably what it is). It knows just enough to seem clever. But a little bit of cleverness that acts like a lot of cleverness is a dangerous and tiresome thing. It should really just stick to the funny business and not get into its premise that much. It shouldn’t look that hard at the world it’s built. Because it needs it to hold up if it applies that much scrutiny and it doesn’t. There have been plenty of silly shows like this before, but those shows usually didn’t get all meta and preachy and spend lots of time examining the plausibility of a dog actually working for the police solving crimes.

Maybe it annoys me because it deals with religion and ethics and and moral philosophy, and I actually have a real background in all those things. And seeing it made into a dumb show that pretends its smart is actually far worse than if it was just a dumb show just having fun with all that serious business. The presumptive idiocy that it might think its actually saying something profound and thoughtful, as well as the idea that this might be some people’s only substantial basis for actually addressing these issues, is horrifying.

It’s amazing how much philosophy and ethics is blindly smuggled in these days under the guise of amusing entertainment. Comedies with a bit of drama and self awareness and commentary. They’re not just silly shows, they’re making you better too. They’re educating you with their shallow stereotypes and goofy plots and exaggerated performances and trite lessons. And even stupider Americans don’t even really they’re being “improved.”

It’s all terribly inorganic and hacky. The comedy makes that easy. By relying on parody and jokes you can make it seem like you were actually being intellectually clever, throw in some smart talk to make yourself seem wise. And rhs audience hardly realize that their conclusions about a significant moral issue were established by cartoonishly simple portrayals of a position and didactic commentary from some snarky authorial stand-in.

Not that I’m some brilliant philosopher or writer. But truly good moral lessons of real sognificance should emerge organically from the substance of the story. But these shows are constantly yakking their heads off at you about their messages. None of it would actually pass muster in any real discussion, so why pretend that it is one rather than just focusing on the fun possibilities of plots characters in the world?

Maybe if it weren’t for the weird and heady premise, the schticks of the various characters would run thin. As far as I can tell, all of them are pretty much doing the same things and acting the same way and making the same sorts of jokes and hitting the same character beats as they were all the way back at the beginning of the show. Once the central mystery was solved, they kept chasing their premise and their characters’ schtiks round and round, seemingly hoping they’ll end up somewhere that will either mean something or let the show continue, or both. But it seems like a very unsustainable premise, and the more unsustainable (the harder to keep going what it had) the farther it goes into its own inner workings.

On some level, it’s like The Office. We want to keep seeing this person be weird and this person be self absorbed and this person be clueless and this person be plucky. And we want to see weird, silly stuff in a very odd, esoteric world. But both the world and the character arcs want to push toward some sort of conclusion, not toward continuing the status quo. It’s like the characters are literally constantly searching for a plot device to keep the show going.

The Good Place is a high-concept show with a very tried and true comedic substance that actually provides the meat and potatoes of watchability. But high concepts are difficult to maintain, so they keep trying to ride it out and keep it going. But the show’s substance isn’t quite clever enough for that, however much anything seems kind of profound and clever if you have Ted Danson in glasses talk about it in a flippant yet earnest manner. Characters talk casually about how many corkscrews they’ve shoved into eyeballs while having polite discussions about philosophy and the fine points of keeping the show’s premise running. It funny. But if we actually take any of it seriously and think about it much, it’s a problem.

I guess the main thing about it that offends me is that it’s a dumb comedy. And I like dumb, absurd comedies. And this is a particularly absurd and unrealistic one populated by exaggerated caricatures. And that can be really funny. But the show wastes so much time and effort acting like it isn’t just a dumb comedy. And it keeps trying to figure out how to keep going and act like it and the characters are going somewhere, and so far as I can tell it hasn’t, and it shouldn’t. The show would end itself if it did.

Really, the problem is that the show should have already ended. It should have had fun with the premise and the characters and when the premise had run its course and the characters figured it out and got somewhere, ended. But it keeps going, like some absurd version of Supernatural (another show that has possibly outrun its premise but survives on the strength of the formula). How many times will we have to watch The Good Place upend its status quo so it can reset the world and repeat its basic arcs while the typical antics go on?

Maybe I’m being too harsh. I suppose that’s what all shows do these days. I just wish they would avoid bringing real intellectual issues into their silly farce. Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey had fun with Heaven and Hell, but they never pretended they were actually trying to actually teach you anything and never made you listen to didactic lectures about the moral philosophy of the premise. And let’s be honest, what we really want is to watch Death lose at Battleship, not listen to him pontificate about shallow postmodern ethical quandaries.

Maybe I’m just a snob. Maybe I’m offended at the idea that because of this show someone might think they actually know something about these subjects. And maybe this really is the closest many people will actually come to learning about these subjects. And that depresses me terribly.