On Monday, after the Supreme Court's ruling striking down a Texas law that would have restricted the number of abortion clinics that were able to operate in the state, the official account for The Daily Show sent out a widely derided tweet. "Celebrate the #SCOTUS ruling!" the missive declared jovially. "Go knock someone up in Texas!"

The joke was a weird, tonally off throwback to host Trevor Noah's fratty Twitter jokes, which led many Daily Show partisans to feel sceptical that he'd ever be able to occupy the chair Jon Stewart was vacating. And for me, they were a reminder of a truth that increasingly seems lost in today's television environment: Sometimes the best thing that can happen to a show is for it to end.

I understand the business and political imperatives that militated keeping The Daily Show alive. The series was a critical element of Comedy Central's brand and a beacon for progressives during a Republican presidential administration.

But I can't help but wonder if Noah might have been better off developing a new show under his own imprimatur, rather than trying to fill the precise emotional void Stewart left behind, much as it was better for Stephen Colbert to go off and create something odd and amazing and entirely his own as he did with The Colbert Report. And though it's true Stewart inherited The Daily Show from Craig Kilborn, he consolidated the series' identity; his departure might have been a natural end point.