10 Great TV Shows With Only One Bad Episode
1. Remember The Monsters - Dexter & Sins Of The Father - Dexter: New Blood
Although a TV show should recover from one lousy episode, it's different when the singular dud happens to be the series finale. And few dramas prove this point better than Dexter.
The crime drama centres around Dexter Morgan, a blood-spatter analyst who hunts and murders serial killers to quell his own bloodlust.
Even though the series had a marvellous run, Dexter came crashing down in its very last episode, where, after an insultingly brief confrontation with the season's big bad, our title character discovers that his sister, Debra, has suffered a stroke, leaving her in a vegetative state. Not wanting her to suffer, Dexter puts his sis out of her misery before driving his boat into a hurricane, hoping to end his life. However, Dexter survives, leading him to start life anew as a lumberjack in a distant town.
Instead of being meaningful, Debra's demise felt like it was there solely for shock value, while Dexter's fate came across as jarring.
To add further salt to the wounds, Dexter fumbled the final hurdle twice, as years later, the showrunners devised a continuation called Dexter: New Blood, which follows Dexter succumbing to his primal urges once more. Against the odds, New Blood was actually a hit, offering well-written characters, compelling conflicts, and deep character growth.
So consistent was Dexter: New Blood, it felt like the wider Dexter IP had redeemed itself. Ironically, though, the New Blood finale somehow managed to be even worse than the original series' final outing.
Despite the Dexter character's established MO of only taking the lives of killers, he casts his moral code to the wind and slaughters an innocent police officer in New Blood's last episode. And rather than giving the main characters any closure, Dexter is shot by his son and left for dead at the end of New Blood.
While Dexter: Resurrection has been receiving plenty of praise since it premiered last year, fans are terrified that this will be another Dexter show that will eventually conclude in underwhelming fashion.