10 TV Shows That Almost Had Much Better Endings
7. Walter White Breaks Jesse Out Of Jail - Breaking Bad
The Ending: A wanted criminal, Walter White returns to his home turf and rescue his former partner, Jesse Pinkman, from the clutches of a gang who have taken him prisoner. Walter is fatally shot in the process (by his own rigged machine gun, no less) and dies in a meth lab. In his saving of Jesse, he's somewhat redeemed.
The Alternative Ending: Whilst the ending that the show opted for was dramatic in its own way, it wasn't very shocking. Nor did it follow through on the show's original premise, which was to turn Walter White into an unrelenting villain of the Tony Montana kind. Giving Walt an aspect of redemption seemed to betray his arc and felt like the writers were too scared to render him as a full on bad guy.
Talking about one of Breaking Bad's alternative endings, Vince Gilligan - the show's creator - said:
"We had an idea for the longest time that Walt was going to break into the downtown jail in Albuquerque and just shoot the sh*t out of the jail with this M60 machine gun and rescue Jesse. We kept asking ourselves, ‘Well, how bad is Walt going to be at the end here? Is he going to kill a bunch of upstanding, law-abiding jail guards?'"
It would have been a very different ending, of course, but one that would have at least followed through on its promise of Walt as a true baddie - the much discussed "Mr. Chips to Scarface" transformation in full.