Final season starts with eight new episodes this summer and ends with eight more next summer.
By Kara Warner

Bryan Cranston in "Breaking Bad"
Photo: AMC

AMC announced its summer programming lineup Monday (May 21), and the highlight is undoubtedly the news that we'll be seeing Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) sooner rather than later. The expectedly explosive fifth and final season of "Breaking Bad" will premiere Sunday, July 15, at 10 p.m., starting with eight all-new episodes and ending with eight more next summer.

The highly anticipated news has been met with ecstatic reactions among the show's obsessive fanbase, particularly via a few dedicated celebrity fans like "Parks and Recreation" star and general funnyman Aziz Ansari.

"BREAKING BAD IS BACK JULY 15TH! F--- YES," he tweeted, an enthusiastic reaction that fellow fan John Legend shared and then expressed with a retweet of Ansari's excited sentiments.

Aside from the news about the premiere date, we don't know a whole lot about the final season of the Emmy-winning drama. We know it will be 16 episodes long, split into eight-episode runs with the second half airing in summer 2013, and we know that Walter White went darker than ever before at the end of season four. In addition, we got a nice video teaser of what to expect from the plot via the stars themselves recently, which included some thoughtful and crafty hints from Aaron Paul. All signals point to the fact that the show will not disappoint with regard to the "dark" and "dangerous" factors, and we wouldn't expect anything less.

In addition to the "Breaking Bad" news, AMC also announced the debut of its newest unscripted series, "Small Town Security," on Sunday, July 15, at 11 p.m. ET and the season-two premiere of the epic western "Hell on Wheels" Sunday, August 12, at 9 p.m. ET.