Dexter - Part 5

[Infinity9999x]

So, I've been reading some of the comments on here, and I was mostly thinking "well, people on message boards tend to be overly critical anyway." So I caught up on Dexter over the past two days.

And Holy. Friggin. Crud.

Why in god's name would the writers make these characters SO INCREDIBLY stupid? I mean, seriously, it's been a clusterfudge of idiotic decisions. From Vogel suddenly wanting to try and help her son, to Hannah bringing Harrison into the urgent care without even trying to friggin disguise herself (let alone call...oh I don't know, maybe Deb or her friend who friggin lives in Miami and practically worships her) to Dexter being a class one idiot and LEAVING HIS FRIGGIN KNIVES RIGHT NEXT TO THE HOMICIDAL KILLER.

And then lets get started on the random character personality changes. Deb all of sudden never lost her feelings for Quinn, despite that never being hinted at once, Hannah never liked killing, despite it being shown last season that she was the one who killed people in an overly aggressive way and then blamed all the killing on her boyfriend who did time for it, let's introduce a subplot of the PI having feelings for Deb...only for it to go absolutely nowhere, and while we're at it, let's introduce a slew of plots that go nowhere, like Dex having an apprentice or the Matsuka daughter thing.

I mean, SERIOUSLY! The only reason I'm this ticked off is because this show was so goddamn brilliant at one point. I hold S1 and S4 up there as some of the best seasons of television ever. It's incredibly disheartening to see this show go out on such a low, and poorly written note.

 

[Teelie]

So, I've been reading some of the comments on here, and I was mostly thinking "well, people on message boards tend to be overly critical anyway." So I caught up on Dexter over the past two days.

We've actually been holding back as you can see.

 

[Infinity9999x]

It just makes me sad. Watching the closing of Breaking Bad with this makes me wish the writers of BB could have talked to the guys on Dexter.

But to be honest, the problems haven't been all this season, it's been happening since partway through Season 5 and definitely through season 6 and 7. Dropping plot threads, development of characters that's randomly discarded, and things like that have really hurt the show in the long run.

 

[BatLobster]

I still don't think BB and Dexter are anywhere in the same realm or that they should be compared at all. Dexter is kind of like light entertainment when you compare it to a Shakespearean tragedy (or "the great American novel" as it's being called now), Breaking Bad.

Dexter is more just like a CSI show that just so happens to feature a character study about a complex serial killer that we're ultimately meant to root for regardless of his actions because who he is was shaped at such a young age. Unlike Walter White, who made a series of very conscious decisions that sealed the fate of him and his family.

The only reason they're compared is because they both feature criminal protagonists who have law enforcement as family and are hiding in plain sight. That's literally all they have in common IMO.

If Dexter was going to turn a corner and become a more operatic tragedy, the time would've been around Rita's death. But that's not the route they went, the show just kept trucking. I just learned to go into Dexter with a different set of expectations long ago. That's why I'm not like completely gutted about the final season, it's more or less on par with what I've come to expect from the show.

 

[Deserana]

No one is comparing the plot points of the shows. They are comparing the way they are tackling the final seasons. Which is perfectly fine IMO

 

[BatLobster]

Yeah, some people are. It's perfectly fine to be disappointed with Dexter's final season, but to compare it unfavorably to Breaking Bad is kind of missing the point IMO. All the excitement of Breaking Bad's final season stems from the fact that it's everything finally crashing down around Walt. It was never going to happen to Dexter to the same degree. Breaking Bad can do the things that Dexter can only tease at because it turned (most) of the audience against the main character and it's more of a morality play. Dexter (the character) is kind of beyond our own normal parameters of morality.

In other words, Breaking Bad can go balls to the wall in a way that probably wouldn't be appropriate for Dexter. I don't see it so much as a choice in the way the ending is being tackled, I see it as each show following itself through to a logical conclusion but in the process Breaking Bad is revealing that it's a much deeper, more interesting show overall.

 

[Infinity9999x]

Yeah, some people are. It's perfectly fine to be disappointed with Dexter's final season, but to compare it unfavorably to Breaking Bad is kind of missing the point IMO. All the excitement of Breaking Bad's final season stems from the fact that it's everything finally crashing down around Walt. It was never going to happen to Dexter to the same degree. Breaking Bad can do the things that Dexter can only tease at because it turned (most) of the audience against the main character and it's more of a morality play. Dexter (the character) is kind of beyond our own normal parameters of morality.

In other words, Breaking Bad can go balls to the wall in a way that probably wouldn't be appropriate for Dexter. I don't see it so much as a choice in the way the ending is being tackled, I see it as each show following itself through to a logical conclusion but in the process Breaking Bad is revealing that it's a much deeper, more interesting show overall.

I wasn't missing the point at all. My comparison was about the writers, and pointing out how the writers of BB have handled their show much better than the writers of Dexter have. Which is a valid comment to make.

I'm not talking about comparing themes, or even the format of the shows, I'm talking about basic writing: Not randomly having characters switch motivations for no reason, poor plotting, randomly discarding character developments to make a particular story work in a new season, and needless plot threads that only take up time and serve (or served) no purpose to the overall arc of the show.

That's what I'm talking about, and I'll keep saying that, because it's a fair comparison. Breaking Bad has shown people how to naturally progress a story without compromising good story telling techniques. Dexter has, and it has nothing to do with the shows being different styles, formats, or setups. It has to do with the fact that the writers on Dexter have gotten lazy.

 

[BatLobster]

I wasn't missing the point at all. My comparison was about the writers, and pointing out how the writers of BB have handled their show much better than the writers of Dexter have. Which is a valid comment to make.

I'm not talking about comparing themes, or even the format of the shows, I'm talking about basic writing: Not randomly having characters switch motivations for no reason, poor plotting, randomly discarding character developments to make a particular story work in a new season, and needless plot threads that only take up time and serve (or served) no purpose to the overall arc of the show.

That's what I'm talking about, and I'll keep saying that, because it's a fair comparison. Breaking Bad has shown people how to naturally progress a story without compromising good story telling techniques. Dexter has, and it has nothing to do with the shows being different styles, formats, or setups. It has to do with the fact that the writers on Dexter have gotten lazy.

That's fair enough.

My post was more addressing the people who've come down on this season for basically not being "Dexter's reckoning" and centering around him being outed by MM, and calling this season boring and uneventful, etc. There's a difference there.

And your complaint is a fair one to level against Dexter in it's latter half overall like you said. My issue is with those who are singling out this season in particular as SO much comparatively worse to previous season of Dexter, as if Dexter was ever the pinnacle of TV writing, and THEN comparing it to Breaking Bad...a show it was never, EVER on the same level as quality and consistency-wise.

On top of that, just because Breaking Bad ties up nearly every loose end, doesn't mean it's the only way to write TV. The Sopranos left tons of loose ends and it's my favorite show of all time (and IMO still the greatest). Obviously Dexter does this in a more clumsy, less artful, "slice of life" (pun not intended) way, thus annoying its audience.

Basically, there are plenty of grounds to criticize Dexter on without even bringing Breaking Bad into the discussion. It's become a huge pet peeve of mine because it implies the shows were ever on comparable levels of quality in the first place, which IMO gives Dexter too much credit overall. And that's coming from someone who has supported the show for a long time. It just feels like someone randomly deciding to start criticizing Captain America: The First Avenger for not being as good as The Dark Knight.

 

[Infinity9999x]

That's fair enough.

My post was more addressing the people who've come down on this season for basically not being "Dexter's reckoning" and centering around him being outed by MM, and calling this season boring and uneventful, etc. There's a difference there.

And your complaint is a fair one to level against Dexter in it's latter half overall like you said. My issue is with those who are singling out this season in particular as SO much comparatively worse to previous season of Dexter, as if Dexter was ever the pinnacle of TV writing, and THEN comparing it to Breaking Bad...a show it was never, EVER on the same level as quality and consistency-wise.

On top of that, just because Breaking Bad ties up nearly every loose end, doesn't mean it's the only way to write TV. The Sopranos left tons of loose ends and it's my favorite show of all time (and IMO still the greatest). Obviously Dexter does this in a more clumsy, less artful, "slice of life" (pun not intended) way, thus annoying its audience.

Basically, there are plenty of grounds to criticize Dexter on without even bringing Breaking Bad into the discussion. It's become a huge pet peeve of mine because it implies the shows were ever on comparable levels of quality in the first place, which IMO gives Dexter too much credit overall. And that's coming from someone who has supported the show for a long time. It just feels like someone randomly deciding to start criticizing Captain America: The First Avenger for not being as good as The Dark Knight.

I can see your point there. But I'm not comparing Dexter in terms of format or the kind of show it was to BB. They're two different animals.

However, I think you're underselling Dexter a bit. Dexter's early season were great. S1 and S4 specifically are two of the best seasons of TV I've seen. Yes, Dexter is set up as a kind of procedural, but the character development and themes that were explored in those seasons were great. Unfortunately, the writing became much more unfocused after S4.

And loose threads and things like that are all right, if they're handled in the right way. Dexter doesn't have loose threads so much as completely about faces, with writers completely ignoring character development that had been developed over a season or seasons with characters, or changing characters actions to fit their story, instead of a building a story naturally from the progression of the show.

That's just basic storytelling. And it has been, unfortunately, something they've been struggling with for the past few seasons. And that is frustrating to me, because had Dexter stayed with the same quality level it had in S1 and S4 (and I'd say S2 even, though it wasn't on the same level as 1 or 4) then I think Dexter would be going down as being regarded on the same quality level of a Breaking Bad or Sopranos.

 

[BatLobster]

I guess that's where I'll just have to disagree. Season 2 is actually my favorite of Dexter, but 1, 2 and 4 are all up there for me. Maybe I am underselling it a bit, I don't know because it has been a while since I've watched the earlier seasons, but I still don't think those seasons hold up to "greatest TV of all time" time discussions. I think they were definitely the most taught, suspenseful, intense, creepy and well-made, but I still feel even at its best Dexter didn't operate on all the levels that the truly "great" TV of our time has. It always felt a bit network-y to me (and in fact it as pitched as a network show originally), and the violence, language and overall subject is mainly what made it a cable drama.

I've always seen it as a show caught somewhere between TV's past and TV's future. But overall I've still enjoyed the ride.

 

[Upset Spideyfan]

Since we're on this topic:

http://www.grantland.com/blog/holly...season-and-how-breaking-bad-ruined-the-series

 

[Infinity9999x]

That's a great article. And BatLobsterRises, we'll have to agree to disagree about quality, but that article has one thing right. After S2 of Dexter, Dexter was the next IT show. Everyone was talking about it. That floundered in S3, but S4 brought it back in a big way. And then it completely squandered it.

And I would also say that the reason so many people expected a "Dexter's reckoning" ending is because the producers were leading that way. I remember an article where they were talking to one of the Showrunners and asked him if the show would have a happy ending and he said something to the effect of "it's a serial killer story, they don't typically have happy endings."

So that kind of closure has really been expected, with reason I believe.

 

[BatLobster]

That's a great article. And BatLobsterRises, we'll have to agree to disagree about quality, but that article has one thing right. After S2 of Dexter, Dexter was the next IT show. Everyone was talking about it. That floundered in S3, but S4 brought it back in a big way. And then it completely squandered it.

And I would also say that the reason so many people expected a "Dexter's reckoning" ending is because the producers were leading that way. I remember an article where they were talking to one of the Showrunners and asked him if the show would have a happy ending and he said something to the effect of "it's a serial killer story, they don't typically have happy endings."

So that kind of closure has really been expected, with reason I believe.

I can agree with most of that. Though I personally always suspected that the writers would gravitate more towards a happy-ish ending and I always thought they were doing the Pinocchio "real boy" angle.

So, while that article is great and says a lot of things I agree with, I once again have to object to the idea that this was a full-on morality play that was ever going to truly put Dexter on trial for his actions. Things like the loss of Rita were more about pushing him to experience loss and become more human than they were a "reap what you sow" kind of thing. The superhero thing always seemed apt to me. They even had an episode explicitly deal with that ("The Dark Defender").

But yeah, Dexter was the IT show for a while. But IMO that all changed once Breaking Bad came on the scene, regardless of the direction Dexter took.

Breaking Bad is just the ultimate trump card.

 

[Teelie]

That article was so on the mark about so many things. I haven't started Breaking Bad yet but I agree with almost everything it said of Dexter. It started solid but got uneven in later seasons though this season was a chance to right itself and come to a true cliffhanger finale.

Instead it just went lazily along with whatever the hell this is into a finale that I'm not enthusastic or energized for.

Relieved might be a good word. Like the end of some kind of horrible experience at the dentist's office. It's painful and you can't stand it but once it's over you'll feel better.

 

[Infinity9999x]

I can agree with all of that. Though I personally always suspected that the writers would gravitate more towards a happy-ish ending and I always thought they were doing the Pinocchio "real boy" angle.

So, while that article is great and says a lot of things I agree with, I once again have to object to the idea that this was ever a serious morality play that was ever going to truly put Dexter on trial for his actions. The superhero thing always seemed apt to me. They even had an episode explicitly deal with that ("The Dark Defender").

Yes, though the thing that S1 and S2 made very clear were that even though he kills bad people, Dexter was NOT doing this because he had some sort of hidden sense of right and wrong or inflated notion of justice. He did it because he needed to. The Dark Defender episode highlighted that.

So I would say that S1 and S2 dealt very heavily with serious morality issues. It was the latter seasons that floated away from it.

 

[BatLobster]

Yes, though the thing that S1 and S2 made very clear were that even though he kills bad people, Dexter was NOT doing this because he had some sort of hidden sense of right and wrong or inflated notion of justice. He did it because he needed to. The Dark Defender episode highlighted that.

So I would say that S1 and S2 dealt very heavily with serious morality issues. It was the latter seasons that floated away from it.

Yeah, but the show kind of made him exempt from moral judgment in a way because he was depicted as something other than human. I think the central question has always been, "Is this all that he is or can be cured of his need to kill?" That's how I've seen it anyway, I guess some would disagree.

If anything I feel like Dexter is more about a "nature vs. nurture" thing than a full-on good vs. evil thing.

Although I will admit, they had an opportunity with the Deb storyline to truly make this a morality play and they flirted with it, but then swept it under the rug. So, that's kinda disappointing.

 

[Infinity9999x]

Yeah, but the show kind of made him exempt from moral judgment in a way because he was depicted as something other than human. I think the central question has always been, "Is this all that he is or can be cured of his need to kill?" That's how I've seen it anyway, I guess some would disagree.

If anything I feel like Dexter is more about a "nature vs. nurture" thing than a full-on good vs. evil thing.

Although I will admit, they had an opportunity with the Deb storyline to truly make this a morality play and they flirted with it, but then swept it under the rug. So, that's kinda disappointing.

I would agree it's nature vs. nurture too. I never saw it as good vs. evil. But the interesting aspect is once you get into the nature vs. nurture, you eventually come to the question of "how much choice do we have?" And that in and of itself is a big morality question. Which is something the writers have played with a bit, but I think could have made much more interesting and more focal in the seasons until this point.

My big issues with the past few seasons of Dexter is that almost all of them have presented a set up that could have made for a great morality play. In Season 6, they way they were setting Travis and Gellar up, it seemed clear to me that they were split personalities, but I thought they were going to pose the question of what Dexter would do with a person who was truly a split personality, because he would essentially have one "innocent" and one "guilty" person in one body. How does the code help him there?

But again, the writers swept the hard questions under the rug, as they did with Deb in this season. It is unfortunate, because the show was set up to have so much more potential. They just haven't really utilized it besides S1, S2, and 4.

 

[Lord]

For those that have read the novels how do they compare to the tv show? I know they only adapted the first book in the first season and that they then did their oun thing, so do the books go through a more interesting and complex direction?

I think the reason so many compare Dexter and Breaking Bad right now is because Dexter could be as good right now.

 

[Infinity9999x]

For those that have read the novels how do they compare to the tv show? I know they only adapted the first book in the first season and that they then did their oun thing, so do the books go through a more interesting and complex direction?

I think the reason so many compare Dexter and Breaking Bad right now is because Dexter could be as good right now.

From what I've heard the first few books are quite good, but then in one of them (I can't remember which, the third maybe?) they randomly decide to get into weird Demon stuff.

Yeah...demons. Dexter's "dark passenger" is actually a demon, and it ends up getting scared away by a bigger demon or something....

I don't know. I haven't actually read it, just a synopsis. But I will say that I'd take this last season over that idea in the books.

 

[O'Haire]

For those that have read the novels how do they compare to the tv show?

I've only read the first 4. The first is decent, but that's about it. The other ones I read were terrible. Great characters and interesting stories, but Jeff Lindsay is a pretty bad writer and they are a chore to get through. Maybe they get better, but I can't bring myself to find out.

 

[Reek]

From what I've heard the first few books are quite good, but then in one of them (I can't remember which, the third maybe?) they randomly decide to get into weird Demon stuff.

Yeah...demons. Dexter's "dark passenger" is actually a demon, and it ends up getting scared away by a bigger demon or something....

I don't know. I haven't actually read it, just a synopsis. But I will say that I'd take this last season over that idea in the books.

yea thats the 3rd book and its terrible... Jeff Lindsey basically pretends that book never happened.

Double Dexter was a good read until the incredibly random wtf ending

 

[Angelus_Darko]

So, after watching the last episode... have the spoilers that appeared a couple of weeks ago been confirmed? (I only read part of them)

 

[Reek]

So, after watching the last episode... have the spoilers that appeared a couple of weeks ago been confirmed? (I only read part of them)

Looking like it.

 

[Angelus_Darko]

Well... damn.

 

[georgec]

Well... damn.

LOL yea...pretty much.

Bad Dexter writers! Bad!!