TV style icons of 2020: Ted Danson as The Good Place's dapper demon
An article write by Morwenna Ferrier
for The Guardian
for The Guardian
The Good Place finished in January, just when viewers needed it most. Running almost parallel with the ascent of Donald Trump, NBC’s morality sitcom, which followed a group of dead Earthlings navigating a secular afterlife, felt removed from 2020 yet somehow served as a corrective to it.
Flawed characters were likable; diversity was normalised not signposted.
It was a physical transformation achieved simply by replacing his tweeds with an 80s grandad get-up of plaid shirt, jeans and New Balance trainers.
Or, to put it more simply, a man trying to pass for the Platonic ideal of a 60-year-old when he is actually, really, a 6,000ft-tall fire squid.
When things are good, they appear resplendent in plaid or paisley or peacock print.
‘A show that holds a mirror up to our stupid selves’ ... Ted Danson as Michael and Kristen Bell as Eleanor in The Good Place. Photograph: NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
Compounded by the very essence of the show – that by existing we owe each other something – a moral code based on TM Scanlon’s What We Owe to Each Other, his transformation not only reminded us of the brilliance of Danson, it also held up a mirror to our stupid neoliberal selves.
cr images : theguardian.com
An article write by Morwenna Ferrier
for
for