The year's most anticipated TV show finale arrives Sunday, when AMC wraps up its dark "Breaking Bad."
Over five seasons, "Breaking Bad" has become one of the country's favorite morality plays, or anti-morality plays. Its ratings have steadily risen and last Sunday night at the Emmys, it was named TV's best drama.
So as we count down to the final hour, or actually the final 75 minutes (9-10:15 p.m.), here's a quick scorecard and starting lineup:
WALTER WHITE (Bryan Cranston): The show's antihero and tentpole, a chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin.
Millions of viewers sort of root for this murderous meth dealer because he's doing it all in the name of his family.
Still, this hasn't been Walt's best year.
His attempt to disengage from the meth game failed. He lost his family and most of his money. Everybody who knew him is under siege from feds or bad guys. And he's dying of cancer.
But after curling up to die in a remote New Hampshire cabin, he happened to catch a random segment about himself on the Charlie Rose Show and it inspired him to head back for New Mexico and try to write his own ending.
That, friends, is the power of television.
JESSE PINKMAN (Aaron Paul): Jesse is a one-time student of Walt's who Paul says "would have been happy just dealing nickel bags." But he got sucked into Walt's world and became his partner in lethal chaos. A whole lot of viewers see Jesse as a good-hearted kid who deserves to survive this mess.
At this point, that's like rooting for the bull in a bullfight. Jesse is the prisoner of a gang led by psycho Todd and his sociopathic Uncle Jack. The deal is he cooks meth for them or dies.
After Jesse tried to escape last week, the gang lured his ex-girlfriend Andrea to see him and then shot her in front of him.
SKYLER WHITE (Anna Gunn): Walt's wife only gradually learned how he was making his money, and she wavered between trying to stop him and eventually protecting his secret in hopes she could contain the potential damage and protect her family.
"She made pretty much the wrong choice at every turn," says Gunn, who also won an Emmy last Sunday.
Since Walt disappeared and all his assets were seized, Skyler has been working part-time as a taxi dispatcher.
She's being pressed by the feds to give up Walt - and on the other side by the gang of psychos, who broke into her house to warn that if she ratted anyone out, they would kill her kids.
MARIE SCHRADER (Betsy Brandt): Skyler's sister was married to Hank (Dean Norris), a DEA agent who finally figured out that Walt was the big-time drug dealer he'd been trying to find.
Hank shared this with Marie. Not long after Hank encountered the gang of psychos and the meeting had, for Hank, a bad outcome.
Marie enters the final episode as a wreck. Unfortunately, because she knows things, Marie can't just go somewhere and quietly fall apart.
WALTER "FLYNN" WHITE JR. (R.J. Mitte): Walt's son spent most of the series mercifully innocent, busying himself with ordinary teenage matters like learning to drive.
Then he found out the truth and developed anger issues. Last week, when Walt called to say he wanted to sneak the family some money, R.J. yelled into the phone, "Why are you still alive? Why don't you just die?"
What R.J. still does not know is that he could still become a pawn in the psychos' game.
LYDIA RODARTE-QUAYLE (Laura Fraser): Lydia is a feminist pioneer of sorts, a woman who cracked the macho game of meth-dealing. She has thrived there, Fraser says, "because she's crazier than they are."
Last week Lydia told the gang of psychos, who began supplying her with meth after Walt's exit, that she would be taking a timeout from them. She feared they may be vulnerable to security breaches from people who knew Walt's secrets.
But now that Jesse is cooking for the gang again, the purity of the meth is back up to 92%. That's a number a girl finds it hard to resist, so Lydia now seems inclined to remain partners.
TODD ALQUIST (Jesse Plemons): The only way Walt and Jesse look like even marginal good guys is if viewers keep seeing guys who are worse. That would be Todd, Uncle Jack and their gang, who look on murder as no more of a moral issue than mowing the lawn.
Todd and his pals seem to be riding high and living large as we enter the last episode.
Just two little potential glitches, really. First, the other gang members are teasing Todd about having a crush on Lydia. Second, Walt is headed back to Dodge.
SAUL GOODMAN (Bob Odenkirk): Walt's smart, 100% corrupt attorney went into his own kind of witness protection program last week, buying a new identity and relocating to Nebraska.
"Best case," Saul said, "three months from now I'm managing a Cinnabon in Omaha."
We have no idea whether we'll see Saul on Sunday. We will soon see him in his younger days, because he will star in a just-announced "Breaking Bad" spinoff tentatively titled "Better Call Saul."
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