The NBC comedy “The Good Place” will end its run with the 2019-20 season, creator Michael Schur said Friday evening.
“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,” Schur said during a panel discussion at the Television Academy in North Hollywood devoted to the series. “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 times over the past few years we’ve been tempted to go beyond four seasons, but mostly because making this show is a rare, creatively fulfilling joy, and 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.”
“The Good Place” stars Kristen Bell as a salesperson from Arizona who is mistakenly sent to “The Good Place,” a highly selective Heaven-like utopia, whose designer (Ted Danson) is revealed in the first season finale to be a “Bad Place” demon who constructed a fake “Good Place” designed to trick its inhabitants into torturing each other.
Danson received a best actor in a comedy Emmy nomination for the role in 2018, losing to Bill Hader of the HBO comedy “Barry.”
The series — and its point system to get into “The Good Place” — were the product of Schur’s frustrations from what he described as a four-second-long left-turn light at Beverly Boulevard and Rossmore Avenue in Hancock Park.
“When it would go to a yellow light, cars would peel around me and go the other way,” Schur said in a 2016 interview with City News Service.
“I believe the social contract that we’ve all signed is that two cars are allowed to do that,” he said. “If there’s a third car, I would get annoyed because it’s a very short green light arrow I have, but I would give them the benefit of doubt.
“But if there’s a fourth car, I would lose my mind. That is when I think to myself, `That’s negative 60 points. You’ve broken the social contract. That is a crime against humanity.”’