Walter White has stopped cooking meth, but he's not shocked when a frantic "former business associate" shows up at the family car wash.
"Sixty-eight percent and falling," she hisses at him as he takes her ticket. "I knew there would be a drop in quality, but 68 percent? This is not what I agreed to."
"Breaking Bad" fans don't have to worry about the purity of the show's final installments. The episode "Blood Money," which airs tonight at 8, is a bag of the blue rock candy that hooked us in the first place. But when there are no more Sundays with Walter, fans of thought-provoking TV will have to settle for weaker product.
AMC is trotting out "Low Winter Sun" tonight after "Breaking Bad," calling it the network's "next great drama." It's about 68 percent as good as it should be.
"I left a viable operation," is what Walt tells Francesca, sedately counting change. "The rest was up to you."
Show creator Vince Gilligan could say the same, reiterating the point made 14 years ago with "The Sopranos": Bad men with big secrets are welcome in America's living rooms if they bring a great story.
But the crudely drawn corrupt cops on "Low Winter Sun" just make it more evident that compelling anti-heroes are fading into the mundane. The finale of "Breaking Bad" will mark more than an end to Bryan Cranston's revelatory unmasking of one man's inner darkness.
When Walter White fades to black, so will the first wave of truly great bad guys who redefined pop-culture storytelling. The incoming class of respectable men with bloody knuckles hasn't retained the ability to shock and entrance us.
"I can kill a man, dismember his body, and be home in time for Letterman. But knowing what to say when my girl-friend's feeling insecure ... I'm totally lost." - Michael C. Hall as Dexter Morgan, "Dexter"
It's been a fun ride since 1999, when writers with singular visions began to break free of network constraints. Dexter Morgan, Don Draper, Vic Mackey, Al Swearengen, Jimmy McNulty, Nucky Thompson and Jack Bauer owe their lives to Tony Soprano.
HBO's creative Davids - Chase, Milch and Simon - gave us "The Sopranos," "Deadwood" and "The Wire," respectively, opening the door for "The Shield," "Sons of Anarchy" and then "Justified" on FX. AMC asserted itself with "Mad Men," then shambled its way to ratings monster "The Walking Dead."
Sometime around 2002, the networks' game became Go Fish to cable's No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em. The money-saving walk-and-talks of "The West Wing" looked less witty and more lazy next to the POV shots on "Six Feet Under." Suddenly, anyone shelling out for the good cable started talking about foreshadowing and cryptic "cold opens."
The movement even brought a few ladies along for the ride. Glenn Close dominated "Damages" as Patty Hewes, and Mary-Louise Parker was our murdering manic pixie widow on "Weeds." Edie Falco, who won two Golden Globes and three Emmys for being Carmela Soprano, went on to run her own crew as an addicted adulterer in "Nurse Jackie."
But with those few exceptions, television's post-millennial anti-hero is a straight white guy between 30 and 55. Getting to know him, we're treated to some boo-hoo flashbacks and present-day stressors, which he'll drown in booze, broads and/or bone-breaking.
The job will require some heinous act, then it's home to the wife and kids, who have varying levels of complicity. These families might have to lie, cheat, steal and kill, but they'll never go hungry again.
"I don't even know where the anger comes from. I don't know how to make it stop. Now that I've done all this - I watched myself do it - I can't even stand it. You start to tell the story, you think you're the hero, and you get done talking and ..." - Dominic West as Jimmy McNulty, "The Wire"
Because the shows built around them usually win over critics, large audiences or both, sympathetic sinners are approaching maximum saturation. Even for repeat visitors to pop culture's darkest corners, somewhere between the pervasive misogyny on "House of Cards" and the Southie rage-aholics on "Ray Donovan," enough sociopaths in silk shirts already.
"Back in my day," my inner Clint Eastwood rants, "Andy Sipowicz on 'NYPD Blue' had a conscience to keep him in check. J.R. Ewing had Bobby." After three seasons of Claire Danes' sexy limbo with a terrorist traitor on "Homeland," how low can we go?
One theory holds that amoral protagonists enable a sense of superiority in whoever's holding the remote, but the darker reality of their appeal became apparent when James Gandolfini died in June.
It wasn't the thoughtful, accomplished actor we mourned most, but the memory of Tony, lovably insisting he wasn't some kind of "Hannibal Lecture," then strangling, shooting and dismembering his way to that last order of onion rings.
Every mom or dad in the cul-de-sac isn't an unrealized drug kingpin or serial killer. Most of us would silently seethe at the profane jerk screaming into his Bluetooth in the bank line. Walter White would set his car engine on fire and stroll away. He has less to lose.
"The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man ... and give some back." - Ian McShane as Al Swearengen, "Deadwood"
"Breaking Bad" raised grown-up peer pressure to levels not seen since the days of Radiohead, David Foster Wallace and "Reservoir Dogs." Before the Emmys started rolling in, it was a hard sell: "So this guy, he's a high school chemistry teacher who finds out he has terminal cancer and his wife is pregnant ... you with me so far?"
Many succumbed, eventually reappearing to babble about exploding tortoises, money laundering and that poor kid on the bike. As the seasons went on, binge-watching remedial students emerged paler, wide-eyed and itching for bar trivia.
In the first of this summer's final eight episodes, "Breaking Bad" gives up another fleeting glance at Walt in the indeterminate future, armed with a machine gun and a garish toupee. It's not clear whether he's in remission, witness protection or a final push to tie up loose ends.
The odds are against him making it to another birthday to spell out "53" on his breakfast plate with bacon. He's on a course spelled out on the New Hampshire plates on his beaten-up Volvo: Live free or die.