Eleanor: "Are you okay with leaving the fake Good Place behind?"
Michael: "As long as I'm with you guys, I'm always in the fake Good Place."
Eleanor: "That doesn't sound as nice as you think it does."
Michael: "The real Bad Place was the friends we made along the way."
Eleanor: "Nope. Still nonsense. One more try."
Michael: "In a way, the Good Place was inside the Bad Place all along?"
Eleanor: "You know what? That's technically true. I'm gonna give it to you."
Rephrasing a quote from “Thor: Raganrok” (“Asgard's not a place, it's a people.”) – it seems that what Michael is trying to say in this scene is: “The Good Place is not a place but friendship. Friendship that makes them better people.”
In “The Wizard of Oz” Dorothy and the gang already had what they wanted before they started their journey across the land of Oz - the shoes (as the way to get back home), the brains, the heart, the courage. But during their travel across the country they found friendship and learned how to use what they already possessed - the “brains”, the “heart”, the “courage”. That’s what the Good Place seems to be about. So, technically, they may already be in the Good Place.
There’s a popular (and quite plausible) theory going around in the fandom that The Good Bad Place is actually Michael’s personal hell, and that he’s being punished just like the main Four. And season two only seems to support this theory - especially, the latest episode ("Team Cockroach").
Yet, this theory raises more questions than answers.
Why is the demon being punished in Hell?
Is Michael even a demon?
What or who Michael actually is?
The thing is that the whole premise of the show is based on the “Unreliable Narrator” trope. The twist in season one worked so well because we, the viewers, believed Michael. We believed that the main Four were in Heaven (The Good Place). We believed that Michael was an angel. And that’s was our mistake because Michael was the unreliable narrator from the very start.
The question is: are the writers going to keep up with this plot device or will they drop it? If they are continuing it, if Michael actually is in his own personal hell, then it probably means that Michael isn’t the only unreliable narrator here.
If Michael is in his own little personal hell, does it mean that he’s a human, like the main Four? How much can we actually believe his own memories (of him working in the Hell!office and being a demon)? If he can reboot the memories of the main Four, that possibly means that someone else can reboot and change his own memories? If so, then does it mean that there’s another unreliable narrator out there among the main heroes? Someone, whom we’ll never suspect, maybe?
Another question is: are they really in Hell / The Bad Place? Like someone in the tags said, even with all of their psychological / mental sufferings, they do have a pretty decent [after]life there. They’re not being physically tortured, they’re not feeling cold or hunger, they don’t need to pay the rent...
What if this actually is the Good Place? Just not the “Better” Place. After all, the euphemism is “go to a better place”. Neither of the main Four is inherently a bad person – sure, they’re not saints, but not evil people, who deserve eternity in Hell, either. What if the Good Place is not Hell or Heaven, but Purgatory. Purgatory, where the main Four is stuck until they suffer enough to learn how to be better people, and actually deserve their ticket to the proverbial “Better” Place?
In one of these reboots, I probably strangled you and then went to the Even Worse Place, but you know what? I bet it was worth it. - Eleanor (2x03)
Can it be an indirect hint about the Better Place?
It might be a similar deception that the show pulled during season one with “Real” and “Fake” Eleanors. Eleanor was always the “real” Eleanor, but Michael – aka “the unreliable narrator”, made the audience, and Eleanor herself, doubt that. What if there’s another “unreliable narrator” that has been pulling Michael’s (and everyone else’s) strings all this time, without Michael (and others) even realizing it?
“It’s not enough to be able to lie with a straight face; anybody with enough gall to raise on a busted flush can do that. The first way to lie artistically is to tell the truth — but not all of it. The second way involves telling the truth, too, but is harder: Tell the exact truth and maybe all of it…but tell it so unconvincingly that your listener is sure you are lying.” - Robert A. Heinlein
If they’re in the Good Place and need to learn something before they move on to the “Better” Place then:
Eleanor needs to learn how to be a decent person, and how to genuinely love someone. And as the first season, and the first three episodes of the second, shown, she’s making huge progress in this direction.
Chidi needs to learn to be more confident and decisive. 2x03 flashback showed that Chidi was confident in his love for Eleanor, so he’s learning too.
Tahani needs to learn to be more humble and less arrogant, also needs to let go of her rivalry with her sister and parental issues. We haven’t yet seen Tahani make as much progress as Eleanor and Chidi, but it’s very likely that she’s not a hopeless case either.
Jason... and here I do have a problem, because I’m not yet sure what exactly does Jason need to learn from The Good Place. From what we have seen so far, it seems that the reason, why he got to Hell is because he’s “not smart” to put it lightly, on top of his immature infantile personality. But that’s not exactly something, that one can unlearn. That is his personality, and who he is at the end of the day, and he does seem perfectly comfortable with who he is. If he suddenly becomes intelligent, book-smart, mature and responsible adult, it will feel wrong (if not somewhat ableist)... after all, Jason wants to be himself...
And Michael. If he is in fact a human, what does he need to learn? Humility? Compassion? Friendship? And who is playing him and why? (If he is being played)
Who is the “ultimate” unreliable narrator in this game? Vicky? Shawn? Mindy St. Claire? The other demons? Or maybe Janet?
Personally, I don’t think that it is either of the main Four, but if I had to choose, Jason would’ve been the best candidate – simply because no one would ever put their money on Jason.
And yet, he was the one who first theorized about the “prank show”, he was the one who (indirectly) made Michael cooperate with the gang in "Team Cockroach", he was the one, aside from Eleanor, who guessed that it was the “Bad” Place (which added more to Michael’s pain)... ETA: In "Leap to Faith" he inadvertently made Eleanor realize that Michael was on their side; in “Best Self” he guessed the actual pattern of how the air baloon worked “green-green-green-red”; in "Rhonda, Diana, Jake, and Trent" his suggestion about the molotov cocktail actually became useful and was what saved them.
So, what if Jason saying “I give good advice. Guess that's why I'm in the Good Place” is similar to him theorizing about the “prank show”? Again, I don’t think that Jason is the ultimate “unreliable narrator” but he does seem to point out the truth without even realizing it. 'That, of course, is the great secret of the successful fool – that he is no fool at all.' Isaac Asimov, Guide to Shakespeare.(If, by any chance, he really is playing a deep con, it probably won’t be revealed until the very final episodes of the show).
ETA: Mike Schur’s recent Vulture interview about TGP being inspired by LOST, also the obvious parallels with The Wizard of Oz, makes me think that the “Good Place” is not only the fake reality that Michael created, but entire afterlife world we had seen so far – including the Bad Place, the Medium Place, that place where Judge Gen resides and “Somewhere Else”.
“Fake” Eleanor was always the “real” one, and so is the Good Place. Dorothy and the gang from TWoO didn’t need to travel across the Oz land to find what they wanted (the shoes, the brains, the heart, courage) – they always had it all along. But during their travel across the country they found friendship and themselves. So, that’s what the Good Place is about.
