Dexter - official topic

[Adam]

1. The Trinity Killer Season - Easily, don't think anyone will disagree there, it was brilliant and the absolute pinnacle of the show. John Lithgow was outstanding, as was Keith Carradine. The whole thing was fantastic and the last episode especially was right up there among my favourite in all of television.

2. The Bay Harbor Butcher Season - So many pretty awesome twists and turns throughout this one, and Doakes was amazing. Wish he'd stuck around longer at least.

3. The Ice Truck Killer Season - As has been mentioned, it started the whole thing and it really got me hooked on the show. I actually didn't see the reveal of Rudy as ITK coming either so that was a great moment.

4. The Jordan Chase Season - I enjoyed this one a lot more than a lot of people seemed to, the developing dynamic between Dexter and Lumen was great and I loved how they handled the aftermath of Rita's death. I actually thought Chase was a good villain too.

5. The Doomsday Killer Season - Wasn't brilliant but Mos Def was a really good character and some episodes did stand out. The one Ronny Cox guest starred in was this season right? I did realise the reveal of Travis having imagined Gellar before it came though.

6. The Miguel Prado Season - A bit of a nothing series tbh and a real departure from the quality that preceded it. At least LaGuerta was likeable in this season.

7. The Isaak Sirko/Hannah McKay/Whatever It Was Season - Isaak was amazing but they killed him off in shit fashion and too early. The Hannah thing was really interesting up to a point but the show was really losing it's way by this point.

8. The Brain Surgeon Season - Just fuck this season. It's ruined the show really, far too much going on and none of it all that interesting. Massive clusterfuck and the writers clearly didn't know what the hell they were doing.

The main redeeming factor of the final two seasons for me was that I got to spend a lot of time looking at Yvonne Strahovski.

[Walker]

4, 1, 3, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8

I don't like 2 as much as other people seem to, but bearing in mind I loved season 5 and was loving 6 until it shit the bed 4 episodes in.

[Mongrel]

My problem with the last season or two was that this whole show was geared towards the eventual climax of everybody Dexter knew finding out what he really was. That's what I'm pretty sure everyone wanted to see - we got a glimpse of it with Deb (despite it being dealt with in a fucking stupid manner), and, at least for a bit, it was intriguing television. You know, for eight seasons they did their best to make us invest in characters like Masuka, Angel, Quinn and, to a lesser extent, Astor and Cody, and you'd at least hope there's some sort of pay off. How do these people, who have come to know and like Dexter, react when they find out he's a serial killer?

But at the end of the day, it was all for nothing - all these characters could easily have been replaced by other people without sideplots, and it wouldn't have detracted from the final arc which was a fucking love story.

It's such a shame, because for all its faults, the show was pretty good for the first four or so seasons. I think ultimately the writers robbed us of a satisfactory and actually interesting ending by deciding that Dexter ending up caught or executed was too obvious, so they had to go a different way. Sometimes the obvious ending is the best one, considering they laid the groundwork for it for about five years.

[MalaCloudy Black]

http://www.avclub.com/articles/showtime-told-dexter-writers-they-couldnt-kill-dex,103892/

“They won't let us kill him,” Goldwyn said of the network’s constructive note for the show that was once thought to be predicated on the suspense that its character might end up dead or in jail, until we all realized it was really about the suspense of whether he’d get to be in love or in the lumberyard. “Showtime was very clear about that. When we told them the arc for the last season, they just said, 'Just to be clear, he's going to live.'” With this creative suggestion in the form of a network mandate—which is definitely in keeping with Showtime’s insistence that Dexter is Batman, and its attendant hope he could similarly just go on forever—the producers were forced to find some other ending for what Goldwyn called its “very core loyal following,” one that provided the only logical conclusion to the story they'd been watching.

Woah so hey yeah fuck Showtime, yeah?

[Benji]

That doesn't excuse the piss poor rest of the season. In fact, that doesn't excuse anything. Dex didn't need to die in order to have a satisfying conclusion, that was just the most logical one.

[MalaCloudy Black]

Oh, for sure, but still a restriction like that can severely hinder things. The most logical ending was for Dexter to die or otherwise go to prison, and I feel like that's the ending a majority of people wanted to see, and instead Showtime goes "Hey, nope, he can't die." and the writing team's left trying to find some other way to end the series (though, yeah, surely they could have thought of something better than what we got).

[Benji]

You totally missed off the best part of that article.

Fortunately, it found it in an ending where Dexter’s secret dies with the character whose body he unceremoniously dumps into the ocean—leaving every single other person who cared about her haunted by her disappearance forever, yet still believing that Dexter was super cool, despite his always being really weird and aloof (because donuts)—and Dexter is at last able to pawn off his son for good on some other poor woman, this time a fellow murderer. Meanwhile, he goes off to live in the woods, having officially learned nothing, but definitely a little sad. This satisfied Dexter’s very core loyal following of total masochists.

[C-MIL]

You totally missed off the best part of that article.

This satisfied Dexter’s very core loyal following of total masochists.

I know this was meant to be sort of sarcastic, but I've never been able to pin down who this show's actually for...

[Benji]

After some thinking about it for a couple of weeks, here's (in pure concept, no specific details) how I would've had people's stories finish...

Honestly, I think the most poetic ending without that awesomely described death row scene would've been life in jail without parole. Dex is a guy who believes he is doing good by doing what the justice system can't/won't do by killing people who "deserve" it. What's a more fitting punishment than being in the very system that was perceived as broken?

Deb should have wound up looking after Astor and Harrison alá Harry, Deb and Dex (with hints of Harrison being like Dex and Astor wanting to be a policewoman like her aunt). Cody dies in an accident of some kind (the same car crash that kills their grandparents and forces Astor to come back and live with Dex?).

Bautista should have figured Dexter out (and not come back to the force, he should have been an outside investigator so that he could go beyond the law where Quinn and others couldn't), and probably got killed by Dexter at some point towards the end (because we don't all get poetic happy endings, and Angel was the likeable one).

Quinn should have settled down with Jamie or whatever (I don't care). Masuka should have just done what he always did - put in creepy but amusing one liners and had zero character development, because that's not what anyone wanted from him. The Dark Passenger could have been revealed (or at least hinted at) as the audience itself - we were always cheering Dexter on, he was our deepest and darkest desires come to life.

[Walker]

I've said this to friends before and continue to run it through my head, but I would have completely loved to not only see Dexter arrested but also to see an entire episode of him in prison. He has spent the entire run of the show knowing he was a monster but he always held back by the code and those who needed him to a) not be caught and b) stay alive. Now on death row, he is destined to die and the world knows he is a monster. As he realises there is now nothing holding him back he becomes the monster Harry feared he would become, attacking his fellow death row inmates and the guards before eventually being shot down. He doesn't get the dignity of the electric chair, he has to be put down like a dog.

That was my vision anyway.

[arwrestling]

Honestly, I think the most poetic ending without that awesomely described death row scene would've been life in jail without . The Dark Passenger could have been revealed (or at least hinted at) as the audience itself - we were always cheering Dexter on, he was our deepest and darkest desires come to life.

Wow. Very great analogy dude. It makes a lot of sense... A lot! Im impressed.

[Summers]

I love Dexter. The show, the character. Both. Really. I've finally seen the end and I'm so so fucking disappointed. They've pretty much ended it with a meh. Dexter was totally unDexter like with his final actions. He had changed and grown as a person. Deb, Hannah and Harrison had all in their way helped him change then they decide to say fuck it and have him run away.

Leaving his fucking kid with Hannah. In fucking Argentina.

Serial killer bullshit asidr I always kind of related to the character in some ways (sounds weird I guess but whatever) and this has just really fucked me off.

Horrible, cowardly, lacklustre and pointless ending.

If Dexter is alive and free - he should be with Harrison and Hannah.

[Gazz]

Does this mean you're going to stop teaching Baby Summ to kill bad people?

[Summers]

I'm still seething about this. After all he's been through, he wouldn't leave Harrison.

Why end a show so goddamn badly!?

[Gazz]

Answer the question.

[Summers]

Of course not. I've put in far too much effort now.

[Anon Y. Mous]

Anyone else just feel that Season 8 was just a disappointment all around? I am kinda glad to see its over but, the ending changed all of that.

[Benji]

Just finished New Blood.

Spoiler

Glad the show got a decent ending. Not perfect, it never could be after all that crap, but as good as I hoped for. Bringing it round to Dexter finally genuinely loving something, and enough to sacrifice himself, was a good way of bringing it full circle.

 

On 16/09/2013 at 20:28, Benji said:

On 16/09/2013 at 20:04, Animal said:

So it's the second-to-last episode and I'm watching Dexter sell his boat to some guy, listing the features. What the hell?

The rumoured spin-off turns out to be about Dexter's boat. After a life of seeing violent murders, the boat becomes a member of Miami Metro Homicide as a crime solving boat. It's new name? Knightboat! Every week there's a crime to solve, and every week there's a canal, inlet, or fjord to help solve that crime!

I am bitter this spin-off never happened.