CLEVELAND, Ohio -- With all the intense talk about how AMC's "Breaking Bad" will end at 9 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 29, you may have forgotten that another dark cable drama is calling it quits this month. Showtime's "Dexter" wraps up its eighth and final season at 9 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 22.

"Dexter" . . . oh, yeah, "Dexter." It has gotten lost a bit with all the incessant chatter about the new networks shows and all the anticipation of heavy-hitting cable dramas checking out and checking in.

The same night that "Breaking Bad" airs its final episode, Showtime begins the new season of "Homeland," at 9, and introduces what could be the next great cable drama, "Masters of Sex," at 10. FX's "Sons of Anarchy" and HBO's "Boardwalk Empire" already are rolling along with their new seasons.

FX's "American Horror Story: Coven" starts scaring up viewers at 10 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 9. AMC's "The Walking Dead" returns with it fourth season at 9 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 13

Poor "Dexter" is getting somewhat lost in the cable shuffle, wrapping things up with little of the fanfare surrounding the ballyhooed "Breaking Bad" goodbye. Some of this is simply because of the sheer amount of programming competing for out attention this time of year.

Some of it is just bad timing. The "Dexter" finale -- titled "Remember the Monsters? -- is airing opposite NBC's "Sunday Night Football" (last season's top-rated show), the penultimate episode of "Breaking Bad," a new episode of "Boardwalk Empire" and, for crying out loud, CBS coverage of the 65th annual prime-time Emmy awards.

And some of it is because, truth to tell, "Dexter" hung around too long. The Showtime series' fourth season was its best, by far. That was the riveting run of episodes that featured former Akronite John Lithgow as Arthur Mitchell, a super-scary serial killer known as Trinity.

It was a thrilling dance of death executed by Michael C. Hall's Dexter, a serial killer with a code, and tricky Trinity. Lithgow won a well-deserved Emmy in a role that was to die for (heh, heh, heh). And this near-perfect season ended with a shocking turn of events and an image that was every bit as haunting as it was chilling.

If "Dexter" had ended its Showtime run here, we'd still be talking about in the same breath as "The Sopranos," "Mad Men" and, yes, "Breaking Bad." The problem was that "Dexter" went on for another four seasons, and it never again was quite as good. It was only sporadically brilliant after that fourth season -- several cuts above most dramas on television, but not reaching the mile-high bar it set for itself.

Another dilemma was that more and more of the dramatic lode shifted to Dexter's sister, Debra, and Jennifer Carpenter has been struggling under that weight. It has made this eighth season frustratingly uneven as Dexter duels with yet another serial killer, the Brain Surgeon (a.k.a. Oliver Saxon, a.k.a. Daniel Vogel), played by Darri Ingolfsson.

That's not to say this eighth season has been found lacking in wonderfully compelling moments. Charlotte Rampling made the most of her time as Evelyn Vogel, and Ingolfsson has been mightily effective as the psychopathic Saxon.

Will Dexter and Hannah (Yvonne Strahovski) make it with Harrison to a peaceful retirement in Argentina? Will Dexter kill Saxon? Will Saxon kill Dexter? Or will the conclusion be shrouded in mystery and ambiguity, a la "The Sopranos"?

Behind all of this speculation is a bigger question. Should "Dexter" have ended after four seasons? Was that the perfect symbolic conclusion? It was dead solid perfect, and, after that, "Dexter" too often operated like a gleaming scalpel that had lost its edge.