‘Good Place’: Stereotypes endure
Eleanor finds it difficult to remain under the radar on the third episode of “The Good Place” (8:30 p.m., NBC, TV-PG). This tale of a less-than-stellar mortal (Kristen Bell) given a slot in an afterlife for special good-deed-doers has received generally positive reviews, and a healthy audience has sampled the series on air, DVR and streaming. I still haven’t laughed once. As I’ve written before, “The Good Place” is more like a laborious riff on “Groundhog Day” than an original comedy. It also uses the rather shopworn narrative tradition that director Spike Lee once dubbed the “Magical Negro.” Lee was referring to Hollywood’s use of black characters as mystical figures whose sole purpose in the story was to help humanize and enlighten white characters. They had no lives or stories of their own and merely appeared as fairy godmothers and selfless “change agents.”
In “The Good Place,” the character Chidi (William Jackson Harper) is a Nigerian man who was an ethics professor during his short, good life. But due to a quirk in the celestial clockwork, he is compelled to spend his heavenly “reward” as the mentor to a white woman (Bell) whose selfish life is frequently revealed in flashbacks. Even in “heaven,” Chidi has no (after)life of his own. He is defined entirely by his service to another.
There are surprises yet to come in “The Good Place.” So whether they are continuing the “Magical Negro” concept or satirizing it remains to be seen. Is this funny or, at best, too clever by half?
WEIRD WARRIORS
Can a 15-second feature launched through an app become a new cartoon series? Why not? “Mighty Magiswords” (6:30 p.m., Cartoon Network) expands on the comedy adventure “story” from Cartoon Network’s original app, featuring Prohyas and Vambre, a sibling team of “warriors for hire” who take on a weird universe of adversaries with their not-always-functional weapons.