jq: command-line tool for parsing JSON.

Passing it through jq's parser, with the most basic option, will make it look nicer (with colors):

user@host:~$ curl -s https://status.github.com/api/status.json |\
  jq '.'
{
  "status": "good",
  "last_updated": "2015-01-21T16:59:01Z"
}

Do some basic selection:

user@host:~$ curl -s https://status.github.com/api/status.json |\
  jq '.status'
"good"