Pop Culturing: 'The Good Place' Says Goodbye with a Lackluster Season 4

[Editor's note: Major spoilers from Seasons 1-3 of "The Good Place" follow.]

Over its four-season run, "The Good Place" proved that the network comedy is not dead and that you can still do a lot within the boundaries of the medium. In fact, the show proved to be one of the most innovative series in recent memory. Created by Michael Schur, who most people will know for his writing on "The Office" and "Parks and Recreation," "The Good Place" has more in common with "Lost" or "The Leftovers" than it does "The Big Bang Theory" or "How I Met Your Mother."

For its first two exceptional seasons, "The Good Place" pulled off some of the most incredible twists in TV history, revealing that its core four – Eleanor (Kristen Bell), Chidi (William Jackson Harper), Tahani (Jameela Jamil) and Jason (Manny Jacinto) – were never really in The Good Place but torturing each other in an experimental Bad Place, created by demon Michael (Ted Danson) and his all-knowing humanoid Siri, Janet (D'Arcy Carden). A lot has happened since that massive twist and, after the fallout of a not great Season 3, the crew have to save mankind by proving that there's something wrong with the system that judges humans and sends them to The Good Place or The Bad Place.

After convincing a cosmic judge – Judge Gen (an out-of-this-world Maya Rudolph) – that humans are capable of becoming better beings, the six are allowed to recreate Michael's experiment with four new folks chosen by the rulers of The Bad Place. Among the new test humans is Chidi's ex-girlfriend Simone (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), which is an issue for philosophy scholar Chidi. It's decided that he get his memory completely erased, forgetting that he and Eleanor had fallen in love, and that he becomes one of the new test subjects; oblivious to his past and his relationship with Eleanor, who now is playing Michael's role as "architect" of the fake Good Place neighborhood.

There's no coincidence that the begging of "The Good Place" Season 4, which debuts on NBC Thursday, mirrors the start of Season 1, except this time both its characters and the audience are the ones behind the curtain. That choice feels like Schur and his team are recalibrating the comedy, setting up something major for down the line. But much like a not-great-Season 3, the final installment of the popular series doesn't move the needle much over the first four episodes. Instead, it's a lot of back-and-forth with the crew working out the kinks in their new experiment and avoiding the trappings set by the folks from The Bad Place as they hope their new test subjects have the innate ability to become decent and good people. Things get particularly exhausting in the fourth episode in which a Bad Place demon offers some questionable information about Michael, sending Eleanor, Tahani and Jason into a tailspin we've seen before.

At its best, "The Good Place" has been a brilliant balance of high and low brow humor. It's asking its audience to think about existential questions while making poop jokes; it has some of the best and snappiest writing of any current comedy. At its worst, the show can get caught up in itself, like Chidi in the stellar Season 2 episode "The Trolley Problem," in which he's faced with the famous ethical dilemma and goes in circles trying to figure out what he should do. Between the love triangles, the countless reboots of Michael's Good Place experiment, and now Season 4's repeat of that same experiment (but with different variations, of course) "The Good Place" feels inert. But Schur has built up enough credit and faith that it's very likely the next 10 episodes of the final season will make up for any misgivings, moving far beyond whether the crew succeeds or fail at their experiment.

Still, people are likely returning to "The Good Place" because it's often genuinely funny and has solid performances from its leads (a shout out goes to Carden, however). It's also exciting; with a wild premise, there's no telling what can happen week-to-week. And Schur is incredibly wise to end "The Good Place" with four seasons and 53 episodes – a rare feat for a network show, which tends to be built to last for hundreds of episodes over several seasons. Instead, he takes a note from prestige cable dramas, bringing the story of four misfits and their interdimensional friends trapped in the afterlife to a hopefully satisfying close.

This story is part of our special report: "Pop Culturing". Want to read more? Here's the full list.