Showtime Monday said it will end its Emmy-nominated comedy series Episodes after its upcoming fifth season.

The series, starring Matt LeBlanc playing a fictional version of himself, will launch a seven-episode fifth season premiering in 2017, said network officials. The series, created by David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik, has received 10 Primetime Emmy nominations over its first four seasons. Production begins in London next week; Klarik will direct the final seven episodes, Showtime said.

“Episodes’ scathing portrait of network executives has kept me on my best behavior these last several years, for which I am grudgingly grateful to Jeffrey and David,” said Gary Levine, president of programming, Showtime Networks Inc. “I love this show and can’t wait to see what comic heights Matt and company will scale during the fifth and final season of our inspired series.”

Episodes also stars Stephen Mangan, Tamsin Greig, Mircea Monroe, Kathleen Rose Perkins and John Pankow. Here's the final season description: "Everyone is in the midst of their own personal hell -- if hell can have great weather, palm trees and more than one personal assistant. Matt LeBlanc is the host of The Box, a wildly successful game show. Unfortunately, the world seems to have forgotten he was ever an actor. Meanwhile, Sean (Mangan) and Beverly (Greig) are forced to work for Sean’s former partner Tim (Bruce Mackinnon), perhaps the worst show runner in the history of television. Carol (Perkins) is out of a job, out of money and possibly out of show business. And Merc (Pankow), a producer on The Box, never resists the opportunity to ruin Matt’s life."

In HBO’s season-two trailer for Silicon Valley, a hulking, Birkenstock-wearing computer programmer grabs an enormous bong and fires it up to the relentless strains of Danny Brown’s “Smokin’ & Drinkin.’”

The series, which returned April 12, is but one of many premium, basic-cable and broadcast shows in which weed plays into the story line in one form or another. In Comedy Central’s Broad City and Workaholics; Showtime’s Episodes; IFC’s Maron; and even A&E’s Bates Motel, where the local town is run by a weed cartel, getting high is just something people do. On a fairly regular basis. And the act is not just implied or covered by a jump-cut to the after-effects; characters are casually toking away on screen.

Download the 4/20 timeline.

With 23 states and Washington, D.C., having legalized marijuana in one form or another, TV programming has gone to pot as well. Since the earliest references to weed in scripted TV shows to today, pot-related story lines have evolved from “Protagonist smokes weed — with disastrous results” to “with nostalgic results” to “with comic results” to, essentially, just “Protagonist smokes pot.” It’s tangential to the results.

Is TV merely reflecting the nation’s changing attitudes about pot or are we a nation under TV’s influence? In an effort to answer this 4:20-inspired question — that being the legendary time of day stoners would gather after school to get high, making the date April 20 a totem on the stoner calendar — Multichannel News presents this “4/20 Timeline” looking at the concurrent evolution of pot and plot.

Showtime is set to run a Free Preview Weekend from Jan. 9-Jan. 11, which will give over 70 million homes access to the first episodes of the new seasons of Shameless, House of Lies and Episodes. 

Viewers can enjoy the comedy series, as well as sports programming and over 60 feature films, including Philomena and Las Vegas, through Showtime, Showtime On Demand, Showtime Anytime and select distributors' TV Everywhere portals.

Non-subscribers will also be able to sample the network's series Homeland, The Affair, Ray Donovan, Masters of Sex and Nurse Jackie.

The preview will be available on standard- and high-definition feeds to digital subscribers of participating providers, while select providers will offer the Free Preview through Showtime On Demand and Showtime Anytime. It will be available through AT&T, U-verse, Bright House Networks, Cable One, CenturyLink Prism, Comcast, DirecTV, Dish, Mediacom, RCN and Verizon FiOS.