Yet another announcement this week of a genre series coming to an end as NBC’s afterlife comedy The Good Place will wrap up with its fourth season. Creator/executive producer Michael Schur revealed the news during a panel at the Television Academy in North Hollywood, and he said that he felt like the upcoming season was the right time to end the show:
After The Good Place was picked up for season two, the writing staff and I began to map out, as best we could, the trajectory of the show. Given the ideas we wanted to explore, and the pace at which we wanted to present those ideas, I began to feel like four seasons – just over 50 episodes – was the right lifespan. At the end of the day, we don’t want to tread water just because the water is so warm and pleasant. As such, the upcoming fourth season will be our last.
Schur may have also been seeing the writing on the wall as the ratings for The Good Place have been on the low side of late, and with thirteen episodes seasons, it would need three more beyond its fourth to get to a syndication friendly count of episodes. With four seasons, this show will have 52 total episodes which is a binge-worthy run that will be attractive to the streaming services and is right around the episode threshold that cable shows shoot for these days. After the fourth season renewal, I was wondering how much longer this show would go since it is well short of the syndication stretch (and a moderate at best ratings performer), and the announcement that this will be its least season seems to be about right.
The Good Place follows a woman who dies and goes to the “good place” by mistake and who attempts to convince the others there that she belongs so that she does not get sent to the “bad place”. It stars Kristen Bell, William Jackson Harper, Jameela Jamil, D’Arcy Carden, and Ted Danson and will return for its fourth season in Fall 2019 (you can see the preliminary Fall schedule at this link).
The announcements keep rolling in as the networks are apparently cleaning up the accounting with their schedules. Be sure to stay tuned to this site for breaking news and updates. Also, head over to Twitter to join the #CancelledSciFiArmy and help bolster our ranks as we fight to save our sci fi and fantasy shows.
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A look back at guilty pleasures and old favorites that may not have stood the test of time with Retro Sci Fi TV.
