Claims that the series was cancelled for any reason connected to Melissa McCarthy's career (mostly involving her real-life weight loss and rise to being a bankable movie star) are inaccurate. McCarthy and Billy Gardell wanted to continue doing the series and told CBS they would be interested in doing 13-episode seasons for the foreseeable future. However, the network was looking to move on from several shows that had already been sold into syndication including Mike & Molly; they went from having a 22-episode order for Season 6 to a 13-episode order to telling the cast and crew that there would not be a 7th season, though CBS did give enough advance notice that the show was able to have a storyline that worked for the end of the series.
Under the influence of sleeping pills, Vince, played by Louis Mustillo, says, "I'll cut the grass." Louis Mustillo played Sal Vitro the gardener in "The Sopranos."
The cast and crew wanted to continue making the show beyond the 6th season, including Melissa McCarthy (who had become a major film star during the 2010's), but CBS wasn't interested in doing that. The network actually shortened the Season 6 episode order, and delayed that last season's debut to the point where it ended up airing the final 6 episodes on 3 nights with two new shows being back-to-back on each one. As a final insult, when the show's production asked for a hour-long series finale, CBS said that they would only allow a regular half-hour show to be the last episode of the series.
The final episode featured exterior shots of a medical complex said to be a Chicago hospital. However, it was Mercy Medical Center in downtown Des Moines - specifically, the emergency room entrance at the northwest corner of the complex, facing University Avenue. It was used by mistake in a previous episode and Des Moines native and producer All Higgens opted to use it again.
CBS slashed the order for the 6th season from 22 to 13 episodes, informed the main cast and crew that they would not discuss any future seasons until production was well underway on S6, and aired multiple new episodes on several Monday nights in the spring of 2016 to rush the show off the air. The only concession that the network made was telling Chuck Lorre that the show would be cancelled when they had several S6 episodes left to film, which allowed enough time for the show to put together a genuine series finale.