Eleanor Shellstrop began The Good Place as television’s most unapologetically selfish character. A new video essay argues she ended it as one of the best written characters a sitcom has ever produced.
The analysis, running just over 30 minutes, comes from YouTuber PosiTVty, whose channel is built around close, loving reads of favourite shows rather than hot takes or pile-ons. That approach pays off here, where the runtime is used to build a careful argument rather than rack up outrage clicks.
For anyone who missed it the first time: The Good Place ran for four seasons from 2016 to 2020, following Eleanor’s death and arrival in a seemingly perfect afterlife alongside ethics professor Chidi Anagonye, socialite Tahani Al-Jamil and loveable himbo Jason Mendoza, a place she was very clearly sent to by mistake.
The video opens by cataloguing exactly how selfish Eleanor is in the show’s early flashbacks: dodging designated driver duty, faking a raffle to avoid blame, shrugging off the ethics of everything she buys.
The essay’s strongest stretch links that selfishness to an emotionally neglectful childhood, drawing on research into empathy development in children who grow up without secure caregiving. “It isn’t just a matter of selfishness,” PosiTVty says. “People aren’t that simple.”
It also digs into Eleanor’s prickly early dynamic with Tahani, arguing her instant dislike of the seemingly perfect socialite says more about Eleanor’s own insecurities than anything Tahani actually did.
From there, the essay tracks Eleanor’s slow, stumbling growth across all four seasons, from faking her way through the afterlife to willingly sending herself to the Bad Place to protect her friends. One of the sharpest lines in the whole video calls her “Eleanor forking Shellstrop”: an ordinary “girl from Arizona” who turns out to be the one person holding the entire human race together.
It closes on Eleanor’s own words to her soulmate Chidi in the series finale: “I was alone my whole life, and I told myself I like it that way, but I don’t. I like being with you.”
It is as good a thesis as any for why people are still talking about Eleanor Shellstrop nearly seven years after The Good Place ended: a messy, selfish, deeply human character who proves that change is always possible.
PosiTVty’s full essay, How The Good Place Created the Perfect Main Character, is on YouTube now.
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