This whole thing assumes you’re caught up to date on all the episodes of The Good Place. If you’re not, maybe don’t scroll down too much because there may be spoilers.
Rejoice, motherforkers, because season three of The Good Place is finally here. And folks, I’m happy to tell you all that the first two episodes are a goddamn delight.
Without diving too deep into the details, the new season picks right up from where last season left off and involves Eleanor tracking Chidi down at a fancy university in Australia and convincing him to teach her how to be a better person. Well-written shenanigans unfold and soon Jason and Tahani find themselves Down Under thanks to some “subtle” machinations by Michael.
Everything is just as hilarious and wholesome as we all remember it, but if I were to reaaaally nitpick on something that new episodes of The Good Place didn’t do quite so well, it would be the awful Australian accents.
A couple of delightful new Australian characters are introduced in The Good Place‘s new season, such as Chidi’s new colleague Henry and his thesis supervisior (and obvious actual soulmate) Simone. But whereas the acting is perfectly fine, the attempts at an Aussie accent are just bad.
Like, being tortured in The Bad Place kind of bad.
Maybe the actors (some of whom aren’t Australian) didn’t have enough time to brush up on their linguistics skills, but their attempts at our accent honestly sound like a poor imitation of Crocodile Dundee, except that they gave up halfway and said “that’ll do”. Tacking on “mate” at the end of every sentence does not result in an Australian accent, mate.
The Bad Place is American actors doing Australian accents.
— Netflix ANZ (@NetflixANZ) September 29, 2018
That being said, Ted Danson’s horrible attempt at an Australian accent is an exception because watching him playing Michael playing an Aussie is just pure comedy, and Janet’s critique of his “performance” is just a brilliant example of comedic timing.
Not even the best show in TV can be perfect on everything and honestly, the rest of the episode was so good I forgot about the whole accent thing.
Now let’s not allow these forking awful Aussie accents turn us off The Good Place because it is honestly a tiny nitpicking needle in a haystack of quality TV, and there honestly isn’t anything quite like it right now. Let’s just enjoy the show until we’re finally sent to the Good (or Bad) Place where we can be subjected to accents far worse than the ones on The Good Place.
