10 episodes of TV with IMDb ratings as high as Game of Thrones (and 1 higher)
More than 10 years after its finale, Breaking Bad continues to be one of the greatest television shows ever created. Thanks to excellent writing and Bryan Cranston’s towering performance, the series is often considered to not have produced a single bad episode during its five-season run. True to its brilliance, Breaking Bad also happens to be the only TV show with an episode that scores a perfect 10/10 on IMDb. The honor deservedly goes to Season 5 Episode 14, “Ozymandias.”
Written by Moira Walley-Beckett (Anne with an E) and directed by Rian Johnson (Knives Out), the episode contains a depiction of hubris, paralleling the 19th-century poem “Ozymandias” by Percy Shelley. The has tight-knit, dramatic storytelling right from the get-go, where in one of the most shocking moments of the show, both Steve Gomez and Hank Schrader are killed in front of Walter White.
Jesse Pinkman is taken prisoner to cook meth and Walt eventually gets back home after wandering around in the desert, only to be confronted by his wife, Skylar White (Anna Gunn), about Hank’s death. What ensues not only elevates the episode to a higher level of television greatness but also shows the caliber of actors that Cranston and Gunn are.
At the end of the Kubrickian horror sequence that finally pushes Walter Jr. to pick a side, Walt, now in his Heisenberg mode, flees after kidnapping his own daughter to gain an upper hand over his wife. As he demolishes the family SUV on his way out of the driveway and destroys any semblance of the family he set out to protect, the show somehow comes a heartbreakingly full circle.
Which one is your favorite episode from the list?
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