10 TV Shows That Failed To Stick The Landing

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.