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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

It depends on the show of course, but there is a middle ground. For example, both The Good Place and Glow were canceled but their last season finales work well enough as series finales. I have no trouble recommending either of those. Of course, it's harder with some shows.

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Unless Michael Schur was sugar coating it, The Good Place wasn't cancelled. They had reached the end of the story they wanted to tell and ended it.

Here's an article about it: https://netflixlife.com/2020/09/28/why-did-the-good-place-en.... I know some other sites report that it was cancelled, but even on the The Good Place Podcast, no one really talked like it was being cancelled versus reaching the end of the story (and not jumping the shark).

The Good Place wasn't cancelled to my knowledge, but it wasn't a Netflix produced show anyway, so I'm not sure it's relevant.

> The Good Place wasn't cancelled to my knowledge

Yes, it was.

> but it wasn't a Netflix produced show anyway

Which is orthogonal to the point of raising it as an example of how a cancelled show can end in a satisfying way.

If by cancelled you mean "ended", then it was cancelled. But the reporting at the time by the network and the creatives was that they decided in advance of writing and filming the fourth season that it would be the final season (and that the approximate length and arc of the entire show was worked out years prior to be around 50 episodes), and so the ending was written deliberately as a series finale, thus making it not an example of what the upthread people are talking about.

As the other commenter pointed out, The Good Place, like Schitt's Creek, had planned arcs that naturally concluded.

Many broadcast shows that are constantly on the bubble write their season finales to double as series finales in case they don't get renewed, see for example within just the past 2 seasons: Brooklyn 99 (cancelled but renewed by different network), Fresh off the Boat, Lucifer, Single Parents, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Lethal Weapon, Star, The Orville (cancelled by Fox, picked up by Hulu, cancelled by Hulu but given final season pickup).

Makes sense. I had read that The Good Place was canceled which actually surprised me a bit as the finale seemed like a pretty natural ending. Of course, that's not to say that the showrunner would have turned down a longer run but the whole show is one of the better things I've watched of late and felt just about the right length.

The Good Place completely wraps up its story at the end of the 4th season. There's nowhere else to go there. It's very satisfying.

It's not an incomplete show like, the Santa Clarita Diet, for example (which I'm still mad at Netflix for cancelling, it was just getting really good and ended on a cliffhanger).

If The Good Place was 'cancelled' (which I'm pretty sure it wasn't), they were at least told in advance of the 4th season and were given the full season to finish its story.

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