No matter where you fall on the ideological spectrum or how you feel about politics, I think we can all agree on one thing: this is certainly not “The Good Place.”
The government shutdown, now in its 30th day and counting, has affected Americans far and wide — from government workers being furloughed to the general public experiencing disruptions in federal programs and services. While many have evaded the brunt of the shutdown’s effects so far, a looming Nov. 1 deadline is about to cause millions more to feel the strain. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which more than 40 million people rely on for food assistance, is set to run out of funds this Saturday. Many federal employees are expected to feel the impact as they miss their first paychecks — and, if the 35-day government shutdown in 2019 was any indication, an increasing number of absences is likely to follow.
Nov. 1 is also the date that Americans who receive healthcare through the Affordable Care Act are expected to receive premium costs for their 2026 plans, which are projected to rise by an average of 26% due to the expiration of enhanced premium tax credits — the leading cause of the shutdown in the first place. But instead of focusing on policy and paving a way forward, Republicans and Democrats seem far more concerned about who is to blame. Watching the news lately has felt slightly akin to being trapped in a room with people whose sole purpose is to torture one other.
Which, in fact, was essentially the premise of the NBC sitcom “The Good Place,” which ran from 2016 to 2020 and followed the journey of four fundamentally flawed people navigating a significantly more flawed afterlife. The show explored ethics, religion, the meaning of life and what it means to be a good person — all neatly packaged into 20-minute episodes. It drew inspiration from Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1944 play “No Exit,” in which hell was reimagined from a fiery pit of doom to a single room where three people, perfectly designed to psychologically torture each other, reside for eternity — producing the famous line “Hell is other people.”
What “The Good Place” is less known for, however, is its subtle parody of modern American politics. When I first watched the show as it aired, this aspect went right over my head. It was only when rewatching earlier this year that I had a realization not unlike Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell)’s iconic “Oh, ‘this’ is the Bad Place” epiphany in Season 1: “Oh, ‘this’ is American politics.”
While the notion of “The Good Place” representing the Democratic Party and “The Bad Place” representing the GOP may sound reductive and trite, don’t let the names fool you — both sides are fundamentally flawed, each believing they have the moral high ground while acting as two sides of the same hell. The Bad Place values tradition and unity in resisting change, yet it’s riven by infighting and a determination to beat the other side at any cost. “I don’t care if everyone loses as long as you lose,” Bad Place representative Shawn says at one point.
Meanwhile, the Good Place is portrayed as a bumbling echo chamber that bends its will to the Bad Place in an effort to appease them and takes an agonizingly long time to make headway on any issue, no matter how pressing. “We’re the good guys,” they say. “We can’t just do stuff.”
It turns out that this parallel wasn’t coincidental. Show creator Michael Schur admitted that the Good Place Committee was meant to represent his “straight-up frustration” with Democrats in Congress continuously ceding to Republicans with the aim of achieving moral high ground. Schur argued that this tactic is useless in politics: “It does not achieve anything,” he said.
If this representation of Democrats in government was relevant when those episodes aired in the midst of President Donald Trump’s first term, it feels even more so now. Many Democrats have long believed their representatives have been insufficient in standing up to Republicans, who currently control all three branches of government and have almost unilaterally paved the way for nearly all legislation pushed forward by Trump. Only recently have there been signs of firm resistance from Democrats — from efforts to redraw district maps to counter aggressive gerrymandering by Republicans to refusing to compromise on healthcare costs in the lead-up to the shutdown.
As the Good Place and the Bad Place demonstrate, we need opposition and disagreement in our society. Beyond their necessity for a healthy democracy, where’s the fun without them? “Fighting you is the most fun I’ve ever had,” Shawn says to Good Place architect Michael, as they begin to collaborate on redesigning the afterlife. In this new system, people are no longer sorted into two opposing realms of punishment. Instead, the Good and Bad Place work together to hold the public — and one another — accountable for self-improvement. Both sides have a stake in the game and the ability to enact change. Isn’t that what government is supposed to be about?
“The Good Place” clearly illustrates why the afterlife system failed everyone who was placed into it: neither side communicated, writing off their opposition and those who belonged to it as evil. This same ugly tendency of ours has been on full display during the current government shutdown, when millions of Americans are about to experience the devastating consequences of our government’s inability to cooperate. Witnessing this shutdown and the discourse surrounding it has increasingly felt like being the audience of a frustrating, tragic play — watching our representatives speak over and past one another, endlessly. They are torturing each other, yes — but crucially, they are torturing us, the people they are meant to serve.
To move forward, I believe it is worth looking toward the lesson taught in “The Good Place” and learn to recognize both the necessity and the humanity of each side. There is nothing productive about pointing fingers, nor conceding completely to the other side. If the government truly understands the stakes of this shutdown, they’ll find a way to negotiate — and quickly. Draw the curtains. Bring the show to a close. It’s time to find a way to move forward.
