Taken has likely ended as it began.

It was Bryan versus Mejia in a death struggle on Taken Season 1 Episode 10.

Some may see this as coming full circle. I see it as failing to evolve, whatsoever.

How does young, impulsive Bryan ever evolve into old, wily Bryan, the CIA veteran, in the Taken films? I doubt we'll ever find out, thanks to the ham-handed way this series has been handled.

Everyone who enjoyed the films wanted this series to succeed. That's a helluva lot of good will to squander. And yet squander it did. This felt like every B syndicated or cable action series from the '90s.

Nothing special, nothing memorable. Too bad. It was a good cast, many of whom I liked from other series or would like to see again. If only they'd been given something less predictable to do.

This probable series finale followed the pattern of damn near every episode of Taken Season 1.

Stop me if this sounds familiar.

The ODNI team got a mission and Bryan went off the reservation. He did things his way, procedural niceties be damned!

Oh sure, he got results, so Christina just gave him a stern talking-to.

After behaving that way on most of his previous missions, why would anybody think that he would follow directions when Asha's life was at risk?

Once again, Bryan's unerring sense of direction got him to the right place at the right time. He knew which drug dealer to lean on to find out about Mejia's ex-wife, who is now a nun smuggling children to a new life north of the border. Then she sends him to the warehouse where Asha is being held, just a little too late.

His team seems to have that same sense of direction since they were able to find him in the collapsed tunnel. But maybe they just listened for the sound of gunfire that seems to follow Bryan around.

Then there's poor Asha, the stereotypical damsel in distress. She kept picking up weapons without any concept of how to use them in the finale. That's after she spent the whole season learning how to become bait. 

She tried. At least she survived, thanks to Bryan.

Now explain this to me. After Mejia spent much of the season spilling the beans on those in his operation, he got a hero's welcome when he got back to Mexico. That made no sense to me.

Then he killed his lieutenant who kept things running smoothly in his absence. Huh?

Bryan's killing Mejia was inevitable. So why did the Mexican military shoot Bryan? And why were they allowed to toss him in jail rather than send him back to the U.S.?

Whose side were they on? Mejia's? America's? Their own? I thought they were there largely window dressing to legitimize the ODNI raid on foreign soil.

The infiltration of Mejia's compound was enjoyable. It had a nice A-Team feel to it, minus the peppy military music.

Still, the ODNI team had the Mexican Army, granted with questionable loyalties, to back it up. Where were Mejia's soldiers? After about four of them got shot, Mejia was running for his life.

It's these plot holes you could drive a truck through that have plagued the entirety of Taken's first season. If you wind up scratching your head afterward, something didn't work.

Even though the series has been circling the drain, the producers didn't have the decency to tie up plot-lines. Yeah, Mejia's dead and Asha's alive, but Bryan is rotting in a jail cell.

Would it have been that difficult to bring him back home somewhat intact, then start a new over-arching storyline if by some miracle it gets renewed? There's nothing worse for the few remaining fans than not having closure.

So is this it for Taken? Its ratings have been dropping since the beginning, so probably. But then, this is NBC, whose schedule is littered with misfires.

Let's see, what succeeded? This is Us, and ... what else? The Good Place, the latest Chicago spin-off (Chicago Sanitation?).

I'd vote for keeping Timeless over Taken. At least it over-reached instead of not reaching at all. Besides, NBC has killed off all its genre shows and has nothing left for Friday nights, the perfect genre evening.

Taken well describes what viewers have been for the past 10 weeks.

To judge for yourself, watch Taken online.

Dale McGarrigle is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on X.