The Good Place's Premise Is Eerily Similar To A Classic The Twilight Zone Episode

"This IS the Bad Place!"

Those five words from the Season 1 finale of "The Good Place" changed everything we thought we knew about the show forever and helped turn it into one of the best shows of the decade. The series was originally presented as a philosophical follow-up to creator Michael Schur's "Parks and Recreation," in which Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) wakes up to find herself inside the Good Place, a fantastical version of heaven where her every need is taken care of. Overseen by Good Place architect Michael (Ted Danson), Eleanor hides the secret that she does not deserve to be in the Good Place and tries desperately to become a better person so she can earn her spot before the truth is revealed.

Then, in a moment of pure agony, Eleanor discovers that she was not "accidentally" brought to the Good Place, but rather has been purposefully brought into a version of the Bad Place masquerading as the Good Place. This dramatic reveal caught everyone, including the cast, by surprise, but that doesn't mean it was totally without precedent. There's actually a classic episode of Rod Serling's seminal TV series "The Twilight Zone" that eerily presaged the twist in "The Good Place."

It happens in an episode called "A Nice Place to Visit" that follows bank robber Rocky Valentine (Larry Blyden), as he's gunned down in the middle of a burglary and welcomed with open arms by an angel named Pip (Sebastian Cabot) to a magical place where he's given everything he's ever wanted. While Rocky expects living a life of unimaginable luxury will make him eternally happy, he quickly becomes bored with the whole ordeal and demands to be taken to "the other place" where, sure, he'll be tortured for eternity, but at least he'll be able to feel something.

That is when the kindly Pip asks Rocky a simple question: "Whatever gave you the idea you were in heaven, Mr. Valentine? This is the other place." The dramatic twist caps the episode as Serling's narration lets us know Rocky is exactly where he belonged, because sometimes having your wish come true makes you realize it wasn't what you really wanted.

Despite airing over 50 years apart, these two episodes share a lot of striking similarities, although "The Good Place" creator Michael Schur says that he hadn't seen "The Twilight Zone" episode when he wrote the pilot. Instead, he calls Jean-Paul Sartre's play "No Exit," which follows three people trapped together in a single room for all of eternity, as a more direct influence.

This bit of parallel thinking decades removed is more common than most people realize, but the similarities between these two programs are not as illuminating as their differences. For one, the twist at the end of "A Nice Place to Visit" leaves his dastardly villain trapped in Hell forever. In this era of Hollywood, creating a film or TV show about a bad person meant the writer had to bend over backward to not just explain to the audience that they are bad, but also ensure their story ended with them being rightly punished for their misdeeds. This censorship was explicitly outlined in the Hays Code, and it's visible here at the end of "A Nice Place to Visit," in which Serling makes it clear that Rocky is damned to hell for his crimes, with the implication that you will as well if you follow in his footsteps.

"The Good Place" takes a radically more empathetic view of the so-called "bad people" in our society, and rather than use the twist as an ironic finale, it uses the reveal to turn the series into a knotty meditation on whether bad people can become good and why good people torture themselves over being less than perfect. Over the ensuing three seasons, these imperfect characters try to reform their behavior and become better people. And for us as an audience, rather than enjoy the schadenfreude of watching bad people "get what they deserve," we are instead invited to reflect on how difficult it is to actually be "good" in our modern age.

While "The Twilight Zone" is recognized as one of the best-written shows of all time, "The Good Place" holds the dubious distinction of being one of the best shows to never win an Emmy across its entire four-season run. Still, for those who took a trip to the Good and/or Bad Place, "The Good Place" has left a mark that will hopefully last, as "The Twilight Zone" did 50 years prior.