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| The Season 5 Dexter finale wasn't one of the show's best (Showtime) |
It may be that expectations of Dexter are so high, but I just felt like Season 5 didn't hold a candle to Season 4. John Lithgow was fantastic (and got Emmy recognition for being fantastic) and so it was going to be hard to match The Trinity Killer. But it wasn't Julia Stiles fault Season 5 didn't match the aura of last season--actually I found her quite good in the role and wished she had stuck around*. And it wasn't Jonny Lee Miller (previously of Hackers and Eli Stone fame) who was convincing as the ultimate bad guy. My issues were the plot holes so large you could drive a surveillance van through them and the way the show just dropped plotlines like they were body parts into the ocean.
*Side Note: The last time that Stiles made a non-Bourne movie that got a "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes? 2001 with The Business of Strangers. She also starred in O that year which got a "fresh" rating. That's it for her non-Bourne career. Although I liked 10 Things I Hate About You, her career has been choc full of movies like The Omen, The Princess and Me, A Guy Thing, and Down to You (four movies I've never seen and it seems with good reason). Why do I mention this? Because Stiles should have begged the people behind the scene at Dexter to keep her on board. Jimmy Smits resurrected his career and he was less-than-great on the show. Lumen and Dexter for another season would have been awesome.
The early seasons of Dexter were like the character himself: always grasping with whether Dexter is a good person while making sure that everything is cleaned up neatly by the end. As fans, we were given the real dilemma as to whether we could truly root for a character who is a serial killer. We debated with ourselves as Dexter debated with himself how much proof he truly needed before he could kill someone bad and whether he was really doing a service for society or feeding some monster inside of him. Now? It all seems black-and-white. Dexter can kill whoever he wants and we're not supposed to feel conflicted. What, really, did Liddy do to deserve to die by Dexter's hand according to Harry's code? Nothing. Is it OK that he killed him? Sure. But what happened to Dexter grappling with that?
Speaking of Liddy's death, it seems the writers really got lazy with the conclusion here. Quinn was cleared because the blood that LaGuerta's ridiculous vision caught on his shoe didn't come out to be a match to Liddy's? Nevermind the phone calls, the voicemail, the equipment and the fact that any search of Quinn's home would have turned up surveillance pictures taken by Liddy. The fact that Quinn would have still been their number one suspect--and would have had to answer for the fact that he had signed out police equipment for personal use--was totally lost. Instead, he's free to go and everyone reunites at the end as a happy family...including Dexter and Quinn.
And that may have been the most ridiculous part of all of this: Quinn realizes that Dexter is a serial killer, has been obsessed with busting him, realizes that he killed Liddy, has to realize that Dexter a real threat to kill him...and he thanks Dexter for clearing up the blood work? I hope that this issue isn't dropped and picks up again with Quinn hunting Dexter. Or are the characters on the show expected to have such a short memory? And how about the fact Dexter's blood is probably all over that car he stole and flipped over at The Jordan River Camp (great twist by the way in the name game)? Did Dexter get a tow-truck and get rid of that? Did he find a way to get rid of the evidence in the room he killed Jordan but didn't drape like his usual killings? Didn't anyone think it was strange that Deb solved "The Barrel Girls" case but didn't have one person to bring in for the murders (since all are floating at the bottom of the ocean)? Or maybe someone would wonder why a bullet from her gun was found at the crime scene?
And one last big gripe: Deb not pulling the curtain aside to see Lumen and Dexter standing there. I know on some level it's supposed to be symbolic that Deb has always kept blinders on about Dexter's vilagante ways and I know that Deb is supposed to be seen as growing up and not believing that the law is black and white...but, really, I agree with HitFix's Alan Sepinwall who says "long-term, short-term or whatever, the plastic sheeting was just silly". Pull the plastic aside and see your brother and Lumen. I think if Deb was supposed to be at the place where she can accept things as not so black-and-white, why couldn't she just see her brother for what he really was?
I think that's where this show is going, however. Deb has always been the clean, do-by-the-book cop that wouldn't have understood a person like Dexter who kills bad people. But now she seems to feel for Dexter and Lumen...without ever realizing who they are. How will her emotions change when she realizes who her brother truly is? What if she finds out the truth about Rudy or Harry or even Kyle Butler*? I think that's where Season 6 is heading and hopefully that cheesy opaque curtain separating Deb from the truth is pulled off.
*Side Note: Speaking of Kyle Butler, how the hell did they just drop this whole plotline? Dexter, a police officer, had his wife killer by a serial killer--who also killed an FBI agent as well as a ton of other people. And yet no one at Miami Homicide has any time to search for the guy or this witness named Kyle Butler? Really?
There were parts I certainly liked of this season. Jordan Chase and his band of gang-raping friends made for an intriguing and different "bad guy" (though Season 5 once again ended with a bad guy dying by the hands of Dexter while strapped to a table). I liked Dexter free of Rita and the kids and hope the summer they spend together is not part of next season. I liked Dexter's ending thoughts where you weren't really sure whether he was going to try to get rid of his dark passenger or whether he had resigned that he was never going to quite be as human as he would like*. I like the fact that Dexter was okay for once not being in control and that we finally saw him truly connect with another human being.
*Side Note: The Atlantic said it best: "Dexter's quiet acceptance of his own isolation (surrounded, it must be pointed out, by family and coworkers at his son's birthday party) is a damning reminder that he, on an internal level, still feels cut off from the world. Like a grotesque Pinocchio story, where wooden Pinocchio ached to be a real boy, the psychologically shut-off Dexter had experienced 'the briefest chance to be human' with Lumen."
So I wasn't so happy with the show quickly taking away Lumen in such an odd way (really, she's just going to get up and walk out of his life after all he's done for her?). I thought at the end, when Masuka asked about bring a date to a first birthday party, we were going to pan out to Lumen and her actually staying to deal with Dexter's dark passenger--together. Instead, we got a happy Deb and Quinn (barf) and Batista and Laguerta (double barf). We got the nanny (one of the odder sideplots) and the kids and the grandparents and a lot of fluffy happy people. We never got the background to Jordan and his band of gangbangers and I thought the trip back to the camp would have been the PERFECT time to have a little history lesson of how Jordan transformed into who he became.
But we also got Dexter finally grieving for the loss of Rita and realizing how alone he truly is in this world. Throughout his relationship with Rita and having the kids and his co-workers around, he tried to "fit in". Now I think he realizes that he needs someone who knows his secret to help him truly be himself. And that person would almost have to be Deb. After just missing out on the truth for so many seasons, it's time for Deb to finally lift the curtain and see her brother. Some of the former 24 folks have taken over Dexter now and you hope that Season 6's theme matches an old 24 title: redemption. Because like fellow Showtime stars Nancy Botwin on Weeds or Hank Moody on Californication, Dexter Morgan needs to redeem himself. I'm not ready to accept that Dexter has become a "safe, predictable" show; at that point, Dexter should kill it himself.
Some other reading (besides the excellent Atlantic and HitFix articles refrenced above):
- Los Angeles Times with the executive producer
- The Boston Globe on the good and the bad
- E!'s Watch With Kristin
- And The New York Times debating between being annoyed or hating the finale
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