Breaking Bad finale breaks series record

The series finale of Breaking Bad brought in a total of 10.3 million viewers for the Sunday finale shattering ratings records for the series and dominating all network show premieres on ABC, CBS, Fox, and Showtime. "Felina" is now the most watched episode of Breaking Bad and the third most watched finale on cable. It is right behind The Sopranos (11.9 million) and Sex and the City (10.6 million). Breaking Bad beat out the numbers of Monk (9.4 million) and The Closer (9.1 million). As far as the most watched finales on television, Breaking Bad didn't even get close. The top three most watched finales of all time are M*A*S*H (105.9 million), Cheers (80.4 million), and Seinfeld (76.3 million).

However, it still didn't break any AMC records. The Walking Dead still holds the #1 most watched episode on AMC with 12.4 million viewers for the season three finale. However, it did shatter numbers set by Mad Men nearly three times as the fifth season of Mad Men premiered to a meager 3.5 million.

These numbers are pretty phenomenal due to the fact that Breaking Bad is pretty lucky it even made it to five seasons. After the first season in 2008 it was barely hanging on with 1.2 million viewers. Until the second half of season five, Breaking Bad hardly averaged 2 million viewers per episode. Viewer numbers seemed to grow not only after the first half of the fifth season, but after the existing episodes made available for streaming on Netflix. After that, season "5B" gained at least 5 million viewers per episode. Another fun factoid in addition to these finale numbers is the fact that the follow-up show, Talking Bad, totaled 4.4 million viewers. That isn't bad at all.