Being Kind to Animals Can Get You Into ‘The Good Place’

Saying farewell to a phenomenal series that taught philosophy alongside making us laugh — and taught that how we treat animals matters, too

Randi Milgram
Published in
11 min readJan 31, 2020

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Photos: NBC

The Good Place, one of the best comedies in television history (if you disagree, please see me after class), manages to be hilarious and enjoyable while cleverly teaching its audience about philosophy. Over the past four seasons of the show, viewers learned the importance of always trying to become better people and better fellow citizens to each other — pretty remarkable stuff from a sitcom. The moral philosophy lessons on The Good Place are never dry, boring, or overly academic, and by sharing these ethical views through stellar comedy, we learn important and profound concepts without always realizing it. And there’s evidence that these crafty ethics lessons about how to be better people include being better to animals. With the show’s central thesis revolving around always trying to do what’s right and treating others with empathy, it seems obvious to me that that must include treating animals with respect.

I’ll be sharing hella spoilers from here on out, so if you haven’t watched this phenomenal show, please start binging it right now.

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Randi Milgram

Randi is a lawyer and animal rights activist living in London.