Avoiding Breaking Bad spoilers on Twitter this week has been more complicated than Walt's meth-brewing process. Even though the drama hasn't had a regular place on British TV since 5 USA frittered away the second season on a late-night timeslot, it is firmly ensconced as event TV, and it seems that everyone wants to talk about it. Box sets and streaming sites have turned it into a slow-burning hit that is starting to replace Mad Men in the holy trinity of cinematic television, alongside, inevitably, The Sopranos and The Wire. The final part of its fifth and last season made its debut on US TV this week, and on Netflix here.

I like Breaking Bad. I like it. It's a good, solid drama. I watched this new episode determined to fall in love; after five seasons of increasingly breathless adoration from viewers and critics, I had hoped it might all finally slot into place, that I would think about Jesse's descent into horrified blankness in the same way as Adriana's final scene in The Sopranos, still able to recall clearly that gutpunch of loss and sorrow. And I thought it was good, and solid. The last 10 minutes were a masterclass in terror and tension. The rest of it made it clear that my problem with the show is the same as it has always been: its women are underwritten characters who only exist as plot-enabling satellites to the men.

It's easy to argue that Breaking Bad is about a masculine world because high-level crystal meth dealers are likely to be men, and that, therefore, its female characters could only be secondary. That doesn't hold up. To return to that TV trinity – with its third slot up for grabs – The Sopranos was about organised criminals, almost all of whom were men, but it still managed to include some of the fullest female characters in the history of television. The slow unfurling of Carmela Soprano's conscience and complicity was a subtle, essential part of the story, rolled out over the entire run, daring to be morally complex, making her sympathetic and not, often in the same instance. Adriana, Dr Melfi, Meadow, Janice – they were all embedded in the show, because the storylines were driven by them, too. The Wire, that other novelistic, macho drama about crime, managed to weight itself favourably with women. Snoop, Beadie and Kima weren't women in a man's world; they were people in a terrible world, just like everyone else. Mad Men, which I would argue is richer, better written and less heavy-handed than Breaking Bad, maintains Betty, Joan and Peggy as, essentially, co-leads, and even Sally Draper became a surprising frontrunner in season six.

Breaking Bad's women exist on the outskirts, circling the men. They are an adornment to the fabric of the plot. Walt's wife Skyler is written as a nag and a bore. A recent article on the TV/film website AV Club, The Case Against Breaking Bad, pointed out that if she is supposed to act as the moral centre of the show, then that is a failure, because she is almost entirely unsympathetic. Hank's wife Marie is a skittish woman treated with weary contempt by her husband; her sole interesting trait is a shoplifting habit, and she is merely a distraction from the boys' business of crime-busting. The introduction of Lydia in season five – a woman operating in Walt's world, finally – showed potential, but she remains a cartoon baddie, lacking flesh or motivation. Still, there's hope here, at least. Her easy way with a hitlist and nervy ruthlessness may yet make her a match for Walt, though that's yet to be realised.

Given that movie directors are currently falling over themselves not only to praise the long-form potential of television, but to make it – the Coen brothers are the latest to turn to the small screen – then perhaps it is time to start applying the film-focused Bechdel test here, too. To pass, a show must have at least two women in it, who talk to each other, about something besides a man. Top of the Lake and Orange is the New Black, to name two current examples, make it look easy.

After this week's episode of Breaking Bad, so obviously well-crafted, I still don't feel as if it is one of "my" shows. Its proportions are wrong. As a female viewer, I feel like an afterthought. And I know that it's fantasy. I know it's escapism. It's a drama about a drug empire in New Mexico. I don't need television to be a mirror to the actual details of my life, though if anyone's interested in making a docusoap about a woman who watches an obscene amount of telly, do get in touch. But inevitably, on a broader scale, television is a mirror. In great drama we want to see some aspect of our humanity represented or questioned or unmasked or shaken. If Breaking Bad is going to move up to the big table, its women have to be more than a passing concern.