The MVP: Marc Evan Jackson Gave The Good Place a Devilishly Sardonic Villain

Editor’s Note: Welcome to The MVP, a column where we celebrate the best performances TV has to offer. Whether it be through heart-wrenching outbursts, powerful looks, or perfectly-timed comedy, TV’s most memorable moments are made by the medium’s greatest players—top-billed or otherwise. Join us as we dive deep on our favorite TV performances, past and present:

Few network sitcoms have ever been blessed with a richer crop of incredible, standout comedic performances than NBC’s The Good Place was during its four year run from 2016-2020. Let’s be real: I could have pitched an MVP column entry on practically any of the lead performers of this series. Kristen Bell as Eleanor Shellstrop, that’s a given. William Jackson Harper’s lovable turn as neurotic ethics nerd Chidi Anagonye. Ted Danson, in maybe the greatest role of an entire career of iconic sitcom roles. D’Arcy freakin’ Carden as Janet, literally in the role of a lifetime, resulting in Paste naming her as the best all-around TV performer of 2018. There were options, is what I’m saying. But a more under-appreciated name was the one that provided so many of The Good Place‘s biggest laughs over four seasons; I’m, of course, talking about Marc Evan Jackson.

You almost certainly know Marc Evan Jackson, even if the name doesn’t immediately bring his face swimming to mind. To Good Place fans he’s Shawn, the demonic middle manager and Michael’s petulant boss who effectively serves as the series’ primary antagonist, first doubting Michael’s plans for a new method of torturing humans, and then scheming to thwart the attempts of those humans to redesign an improved afterlife. But fans of Michael Schur sitcoms would doubtlessly have recognized Jackson already, likely for his regular guest appearances on Brooklyn Nine-Nine as Kevin Cozner, the intellectual husband of the late Andre Braugher’s Capt. Raymond Holt. And that’s really just the tip of the iceberg for the prolific Jackson’s filmography, which has spread across numerous films and especially TV series in the last two and a half decades, including everything from Workaholics, to Parks and Recreation, to DuckTales, or The Baby-Sitters Club. He’s both a chameleon and simultaneously hard to miss, thanks to a signature deadpan that gives so many of his characters a similarly wry, erudite energy. It might be accurate to call him typecast, but it’s a singular type that only he inhabits, a signature presence.

And in The Good Place, Jackson provides the perfect foil throughout, first primarily to Michael and then to the group as a whole. He’s every entitled, over-promoted boss you’ve ever had, as crystalized by his own shrewd observation: “I took the form of a 45 year-old white man for a reason; I can only fail up.” Regardless, Shawn is no archfiend. He’s not the creator of The Bad Place or a stand-in for the Judeo-Christian idea of the devil—The Good Place wisely skirts ever actually getting into whether there’s a supreme “good” or “evil” being at the top of the pecking order. Shawn feels like he’s somewhere in the middle of the infernal hierarchy, a personality whose greatest pleasure is simply abusing his authority over the team working beneath him as a small-time despot. As a result, the status quo is his best friend. He’s every boss you’ve ever had who resisted positive changes simply because they would take some small amount of effort in order to implement, even if they would improve his work experience as well. Shawn doesn’t even care about making things better for himself, if it means he can deny you from being more fulfilled. He’s pettiness incarnate.

Of course, none of this is immediately clear to the viewer when we first meet Shawn, thanks to The Good Place‘s now-iconic first season misdirection and eventual, tumultuous reveal. Shawn may be Michael’s demonic boss in The Bad Place, but our first introduction to him is instead in the guise of The Judge, an impartial arbiter being that decides disputes and answers unsolved questions in the afterlife. Ironically, the role itself turns out to be entirely real, as we eventually meet the real Judge (Maya Rudolph) in Season 2, perhaps demonstrating Shawn’s innate lack of creativity—he’s perpetually unable to think outside the box of how things have always been done. His rigidness is his greatest weakness, because he continuously underestimates human ingenuity as a result.

All of this is communicated via Marc Evan Jackson’s buttoned up and fastidious demeanor: the perfectly parted and slicked hair, the olive drab suit, the exactingly precise dialog and vocal delivery of his serious growl. So much of Shawn’s humor derives from the contrast between that demeanor and the then quite silly ways it will be applied, like having Shawn make a menacing speech that is then capped by something absurd like “eat butt, ya ding-dongs.” It’s a delightfully silly duality to the character that never gets old, no matter how many times it’s highlighted or applied. As Shawn famously puts it, and as I can only imagine has been subsequently yelled at Jackson by fans across many airport terminals over the following years: “I’m a naughty bitch.”

Over the course of its run, however, The Good Place gradually keys us in to a bit more of Shawn’s true character, in the same way it does with the psychological motivations of the likes of Chidi or Tahani. As much as he seemingly enjoys applying the Bad Place’s old reliable butthole spiders or penis flatteners to torture humans, there’s an undercurrent of dissatisfaction to him, “and not in the confusing Bad Place way where that’s actually good,” to snag a relevant quote. Is it ennui, perhaps? What if Shawn has been subtly won over on some level by the tenacious behavior of his self-appointed opponents? What if battling them has become more fun for him than his actual duties? I previously called the status quo Shawn’s best friend, but it also turns out to be his crutch—in the endless afterlife, he has relied on the normalcy of the system for so long that he’s become unwittingly dependent upon it. The overarching theme and final philosophical problem to be overcome in The Good Place is that even “perfection” can be dissatisfying when you have all of eternity to wallow in it. No one is immune; not even Shawn.

This is where Jackson is once again really able to shine, embodying the surprisingly fragile nature of Shawn’s self-image, and his seeming fear of letting the authoritarian guard down to admit that he’s not entirely satisfied with the system, either. We see this in the most fleeting instances, like Shawn demonstrating that he knows the correct pronunciation of “Zendaya,” before quickly buttoning back up, realizing instantly that he just demonstrated too much interest in humanity for a guy whose stated position is that we all belong in the Bad Place. Scheming and conspiring against Michael, Eleanor and co. is a lifeline for him in an existence that has become mushy pablum—he appreciates it because he thinks it’s simply reawakened a dormant zest for evil, but even Shawn is largely unaware of how much he’s also begun to appreciate having adversaries (which can be so close to friends) in his life. Collaborating with those humans is absolutely not in his nature, but sometimes nature can evolve.

This is, of course, a fundamental aspect of The Good Place at the end of the day: no one is an absolutely lost cause, and everyone retains at least the potential to do some good in this world. It might take hundreds or thousands of Jeremy Bearimies to get there, but even the human heart of Shawn—brought to us by the graceful performance of Marc Evan Jackson—can be nurtured. Granted, Shawn would absolutely hate to hear you say that, but it’s the truth.

Jim Vorel is a Paste staff writer and resident genre geek. You can follow him on Twitter for more film and TV writing.

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