The Good Place ended its run earlier this year, with the touching finale bringing the beloved, morally conscious sitcom to a rich and satisfying — and emotional — ending. Now, NBC has released video of the finale table read revealing that it even the cast of the sitcom was moved by the series’ very fitting end.
The video — which runs for just over an hour — intersperses the table read along with footage from the broadcast of the episode as well offering a unique look at how the table read eventually became what fans saw on screen. It’s an interesting and moving feature which you can watch in its entirety here.
Videos by ComicBook.com
The finale followed the series’ core group of characters in their attempts to finally get into the actual afterlife. When they finally found the door that would allow them to pass on, Michael (Ted Danson), the omnipotent demon that had conducted the initial experiment that was the basis for the earlier part of the series, tried it out only for it not to work. The door, Janet (Darcy Carden) explained wasn’t meant for him. Ultimately, though Michael gets his chance. Eleanor (Kristen Bell) suggests Janet turn Michael into an actual human so that he can live the life he’s always wanted. He accepts and steps into his human form — Michael Realman — thus playing off Michael’s year-long quest to understand humanity and, in a sense, bringing the series full circle.
“You know, there’s a lot of great things about having an extremely ethical showrunner like Mike Schur, and then there’s a couple… downfalls,” Bell told ComicBook.com of the series ending last year. “One of them is that he… He waited for the story to tell him when it ended. He didn’t want to get in a situation where it was like ‘oh, they’re still trying to — insert-plot-line-here,’ you know?”
“He didn’t want anyone to get fatigued about this journey, because the statements he’s making in this show come from his soul, about what it means to be a good person,” Bell continued. “‘Why is philosophy important?’ ‘How are we supposed to share earth?’ They were important enough to him that he felt like this journey deserved to have a little bit of an end, and he wrote something that I think is so beautiful and powerful, I think. Though people may be sad that it’s ending, I think it will be worth it.”
The Good Place: The Complete Series is available on Blu-ray.
