10 TV Shows That Failed To Stick The Landing
Saying goodbye is the hardest part. Especially when the end sucks...
Much like a flight, it’s the beginning and the end of a TV show that pose the most problems. Once you’re in the flow, it’s a piece of cake. Build up an audience, figure out what they like, keep feeding them more of the same, and you’re laughing.
Starting up is tricky, of course - you’ve got to lure people in and convince them to spend their time with you. It either works or it doesn’t. You crack on, or you’re cancelled.
Endings, though? That’s a risky game. Your show can run for three, five, 10 years, it can win all the awards in the world, it can be the talk of every office water cooler. But if you mangle the dismount, that’ll be all anyone remembers. You’re only as good as your last episode in this game.
Some shows have a great run and blow it at the final hurdle; some make a slow descent into mediocrity and downright rubbish (others still remain good for the entirety of their run, but that’s for another list). Here are 10 shows that just couldn’t stick the landing.
(Warning: spoilers, naturally, follow.)
10. Breaking Bad
When you’re dealing with characters who are inherently villainous, the question is: what kind of ending do they deserve? Some shows choose to go the ambiguous route, like The Sopranos, and that can certainly be divisive. Breaking Bad instead chose to wrap everything up in the neatest possible package, leading to an exercise in wish fulfilment, a last episode in which everything went absolutely perfect for Walter White.
What was galling about this episode was that the final season of Breaking Bad went to great lengths to show just how morally bankrupt of a man Walter really was. In the early days he had been a scrappy underdog who you could root for - yes, he was producing methamphetamine at an alarming rate, but he had his reasons, and always clashed with worse people. By the end he was a full fledged bad guy - and yet the show still decided to give him a hero’s death. Walter’s complex plan is pulled off perfectly. He even builds a remote controlled machine gun, another skill he apparently had up his sleeve.
While the ending hardly spoils what was a great show, it’s a shame they decided to end on such a bombastic but ultimately meaningless note. The fact that Vince Gilligan et al keep returning to the Breaking Bad well with Better Call Saul and El Camino suggests they might not be particularly happy with the conclusion either. What’s more, the previous episode, in which Walter escapes New Mexico to hide out in rural solitude, could have been a great ending. They just couldn’t resist giving us one more wild moment.