10 Epic TV Moments Ruined By Awful Execution

And yet, nothing on this list proves quite as embarrassing as this infamous scene from Aaron Sorkin's political drama series The Newsroom.

Near the end of the show's first season, Sorkin wrote an episode dealing with the 2011 assassination of Osama Bin Laden, and given Sorkin's penchant for fearless, incisive storytelling, it should have been a probing expose of how newsrooms the world over dealt with such shocking news.

Instead, it boiled down to a toe-curlingly awful scene on a plane, where executive producer Don Keefer (Thomas Sadoski) tries to calm down a cabin full of increasingly exasperated passengers aware that President Obama is imminently due to make a huge announcement.

After a mild fracas, Keefer is confronted by the plane's captain, at which point Keefer informs him that the American armed forces killed Bin Laden "for him."

Cue the unbearably corny music swelling as the cabin crew celebrates the terrorist's demise, and Keefer then smugly quips, "We reported the news."

What could have been an interesting historical document and potentially even a cathartic moment for audiences was instead turned into a stunningly tone-deaf, cheesy, jingoistic misfire. That this wasn't satire on the part of Sorkin is just stunning.