The Last Man On Earth Season 4

[Bad Ambassador]

The Mick.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

B99 was a Universal production.

Usually, with every season of a show, costs mechanically increase, as the cast and the staff get raises. When a show is close to reaching syndication numbers, the network will try to keep it alive if it's produced within the same group, as it can be a financial jackpot for the studio. If it's an outside production, they will renegotiate the fee with the studio, as the studio would be the only one getting the syndication money (in addition to foreign sales, or home video).
My guess is that Universal was willing to lighten the bill for each episode of the fifth season, so they could be well over 100 episodes for syndication. But there wasn't the same impetus for a sixth season.

The very same thing happened with House M.D. When US ratings started to decrease, Universal tried some cost-cuttings measures to appease Fox, like renegotiating the fees of the supporting cast, which resulted in Lisa Edelstein suddenly leaving. The show was still hugely popular in continental Europe, at least France (I have no idea of how well it was doing in the UK), but it turned up to be the final season, because Fox wasn't willing to bankroll a show that would ultimately make a profit for everybody but them.

Also, I suscribe to Joe Lo Truglio on Twitter. For a couple of months, he had posted pictures of the entire crew. It was supposed to be a celebration of the 100th episode, but there was a definite sense of finality, as if everybody had already come to terms with cancellation. It may be a shock for some of us, but definitely not for them.

The Last Man on Earth and especially The Mick are indeed much more puzzling decisions. They are produced at Fox Television Studios (which are actually supposed to be sold). LMOE may be a tough sell for syndication, given the amount of serialization, but it could have got a shortened final season to promote as some kind of event. The Mick got decent ratings, in a very competitive time slot, and good reviews.

[kidsick5000]

B99 was a Universal production.

Usually, with every season of a show, costs mechanically increase, as the cast and the staff get raises. When a show is close to reaching syndication numbers, the network will try to keep it alive if it's produced within the same group, as it can be a financial jackpot for the studio. If it's an outside production, they will renegotiate the fee with the studio, as the studio would be the only one getting the syndication money (in addition to foreign sales, or home video).
My guess is that Universal was willing to lighten the bill for each episode of the fifth season, so they could be well over 100 episodes for syndication. But there wasn't the same impetus for a sixth season.

The very same thing happened with House M.D. When US ratings started to decrease, Universal tried some cost-cuttings measures to appease Fox, like renegotiating the fees of the supporting cast, which resulted in Lisa Edelstein suddenly leaving. The show was still hugely popular in continental Europe, at least France (I have no idea of how well it was doing in the UK), but it turned up to be the final season, because Fox wasn't willing to bankroll a show that would ultimately make a profit for everybody but them.

Also, I suscribe to Joe Lo Truglio on Twitter. For a couple of months, he had posted pictures of the entire crew. It was supposed to be a celebration of the 100th episode, but there was a definite sense of finality, as if everybody had already come to terms with cancellation. It may be a shock for some of us, but definitely not for them.

Aha. Thanks for that. Sheds some light on the 'evil arbitrary decision to hack down a beloved show in its prime'.
Not that I'm not sad about it. I love the show. I've yet to watch S5 but thanks to season1-4 being on Netflix I still drop in to it far more often than needed.
But I guess that's the thing. When it comes to syndication - seeing as they've hit the magic 100 - can multiple sources show it concurrently or is it like a timeshare?

[phantom_power]

Fox are notoriously cunts at this sort of thing aren't they?

[olliebean]

I guess the most annoying thing about B99's cancellation is that it's going to end with a damn wedding episode.

[Bad Ambassador]

With Fox losing four of its sitcoms (New Girl is also ending), they must think they have some great stuff coming up the pipe.

[phantom_power]

Narrator: They didn't

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

When it comes to syndication - seeing as they've hit the magic 100 - can multiple sources show it concurrently or is it like a timeshare?

TBS has bought the syndication rights (which must be exclusive as far as networks are concerned), Hulu has a separate deal to stream the episodes. I guess the TBS deal must be like the thing with Netflix outside of the US, with a clause that prevents them to show episodes from the current season until x months after it's over.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

Fox are notoriously cunts at this sort of thing aren't they?

Fringe had very low ratings, yet Fox decided to give them a shortened fifth season to wrap everything up. They also wanted to appease sci-fi fans, who were still incensed about the abrupt cancellation of Firefly or Dollhouse.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Will Forte has given an interview where he talked about what would have happened if the show hadn't been cancelled: http://www.vulture.com/2018/07/who-were-the-people-at-the-end-of-the-last-man-on-earth.html

V: I've read you say the idea was brought up years before, in some capacity. What was the idea that was brought up, and why after four seasons was it time to do it?
WF: The people coming out was always [an idea we had]. We never knew exactly what it was going to be. When it was pitched earlier it would be, "Oh was it the government that Pat had brought up. Was that it?" At a certain point, you just felt like — to avoid stagnancy, to avoid all the characters — [you had to introduce the people]. 'Cause it seemed like Gail and Erica were in a good place. Everyone was in a good place. It felt like, Oh let's fuck it up, and figure it out as we go. I was really reluctant to bring in the people, and then somebody had an idea that I loved that made me okay with it. This would have been the beginning of season five, if we had it.

In an interview right after the episode you said you didn't want to say who they were because you didn't want to spoil season five. So now, the show has been canceled ...
The show was canceled, it's fine.

What was the idea for them?
Oh, I'm happy to say it. Because we can still do it if ... Nobody's going to want to do it. We don't know how we're going to end the show. Like, we would've tackled that in the same way that we do everything: had it, put it together in the room, and we would have figured that out. And there's so many smart people in that room, we would have found something that would have been fitting for the audience. But the way that we would have handled these people — basically they had been in this bunker and they went down when the virus had first started. They had some kind of medical expert or scientist who knew, "At this certain point, the virus will be dormant. You'll be safe to get back out." Then they see a bunch of stragglers — us. And we represent a real threat to them, because they'd thought everything was dead, so they quarantine us.

And we eventually communicate with them a little bit. They get comfortable with us. They're very nice people. They look scary but they end up being nice people. They're probably a couple famous people in there hopefully, or at least one. Somebody, I don't know. Somebody's acting. Somebody's the main person. And eventually we'd all get comfortable with each other, and they would kind of let one person out. They wouldn't be scared anymore.

But then we are immune to the virus but we're carriers. And so we would infect them and they'd die like wildfire. And then we're back to just us. And maybe one famous person we could talk into staying around. So that would have been it. That arc would have lasted four or five episodes. At the very end we were hearing, "Oh they're going to bring you back for ten episodes so you can finish up." Because to be honest, I told you about the schedule being just so insane and I was thinking, Oh, ten episodes sounds great. It sounds like a doable amount that I won't go crazy with. So we would have tried to figure out how we would have rushed to the ending.

You have had some time since the show ended. In retrospect, did the show achieve what it set out to do, and what did it set out to do? Did it express how you were feeling about loneliness, death, and society?
I am very proud of the show and I love it with all my heart. Certainly there are things where you are striving to do something and make this deeper message that sometimes you don't hit the way that you want to. But I do feel like we created a cast of characters that loved each other as people off camera, and I think that came across on camera. I am just really proud of the show. The thing I am really proud of is the fact that we were just able to bounce through so many different tones. That moment where Mary Steenburgen reveals to Kristen Schaal that she used to have a kid and the kid died is an incredible acting moment. To be able to have the show go to places like that, I am really proud that our writers were able to create a show where you can mess around so much and then at the same time do millions of fart jokes.

And do you like the final word being farts?
I don't know if I like it, but it does seem appropriate.