If ‘The Good Place’ is renewed, will it have a similarly-short season?

While “The Good Place” on NBC is not necessarily displaying dominant ratings at the moment, it is a show that has generated a good bit of critical acclaim and also positive buzz from viewers. Unfortunately, the same time it also happens to be a show with only a few more episodes to go this season. When it was ordered, it was originally given only 13 episodes, and this was intentional for many reasons. Kristen Bell technically still had “House of Lies” and Ted Danson technically was on “CSI: Cyber,” and while those commitments are now over, there was a little bit of uncertainty at the time.

Ultimately, this ordered turned out to be the best. Speaking to TVLine, the show functions well when it can tell a little bit of a consistent, serialized story that doesn’t have a lot of diversions or half-hours where almost nothing happens from start to finish:

“It isn’t a ‘you can do as many of these as you want’ kind of a show. It has to be tightly plotted. And it’s much harder to do that over 22 or 24 episodes, versus 13 or so.”

Schur added that because of this, a second season of the show would likely also be around 13 episodes, give or take. The downside of this is that you run the risk over a gigantic hiatus that almost everyone forgets that your show is even on the air. However, on the flip side the good news here is that you can continue to keep the quality high and not get burned out. If the ratings remain where they need to be in order for the show to continue, we could see there being so many interesting directions that this tale of the afterlife could go.

While the finale of “The Good Place” will likely air in the coming months, remember that it may be spring before anything is confirmed in the way of the show’s future. (Photo: NBC.)