The Good Place as Meta-Television

The Good Place is worth critically examining as a piece of meta-television not only for its metacommentary on the television medium and industry, but also as a case study for demonstrating the functional potentials and limitations of meta-television. Through analyzing The Good Place, this paper seeks to broaden the definition of meta-television to one that is inclusive of its intertextual, self-reflexive, critical, and functional characteristics. Not all of these characteristics need to be present for a show to be considered meta-television. As much of the past scholarly focus has been on the former two characteristics, this paper also aims to encourage further exploration of the critical and functional potential of meta-television, especially as it relates to ethics.