Wow, last night's episode had to be one of the crappiest episodes of Dexter ever. There have been flawed episodes before, sure, but I think this is the first time where I was willing for the episode to finish, because I was tired of having my intelligence insulted.
After wasting three quarters of the season on the totally telegraphed and obvious "Gellar is Travis' imaginary friend" twist, the showrunners then immediately disregard the one interesting element of this dynamic. Namely, as I said before, the one truly intriguing aspect of this storyline would be Dexter's moral dilemma, having to kill someone who is an innocent, who has no knowledge of the horrors they're committing and thinks they're being perpetrated by someone else. But nah, let's get rid of that inside five minutes.
What has made Colin Hanks' character arc so interesting over this season - in spite of the ropey writing in places - has been this idea that he himself is a good person. He's weak, he's been led astray by a monster (even though the monster is in his head), and so the realisation that he has committed all these atrocities himself (including killing his sister) would be devastating. This character was built up so that we could feel sympathy for him, even knowing he's done all these terrible things. And questioning whether he should kill Travis or forgive him could be a great moral predicament for Dexter.
Of course, they had to undo that. One annoying thing about this show has always been the need to make killing very easy for Dexter, and always giving him an out so he's never in danger of looking too much like a bad guy, despite, you know, BEING A SERIAL KILLER. So, rather than having to face this difficult decision, they take the decision out of Dexter's hands and abruptly change Travis from a tragic figure to another generic crazy bad guy. "Oh, now out of the blue Travis has decided to do a character 180 and take the lead, willingly killing people on his own without Gellar making him do it." "Oh, and by the way, though we didn't tell you this before, he's actually been an evil, murderous sociopath his whole life, which totally goes against everything we've learned about the character this season, but it means Dexter won't have to feel any remorse about killing him - SCORE!"
It's another iteration of Lila killing Doakes so Dexter doesn't have to make that choice, or us conveniently finding out Prado was always bad rather than letting us think Dexter had pushed a decent man over the edge into becoming a murderer, or the innocent man Dexter killed in Season 4 probably being a rapist so it's not so bad he was wrongfully murdered, etc etc. Dexter too often gets an easy out to stop us from thinking he's anything less than a badass superhero. It's a lot like the problem 24 had of Jack's crazy going-rogue decisions always being vindicated and CTU always being wrong, when Jack actually making a mistake could have given us richer character development.
This was my biggest problem with the episode, but it was far from the only flaw it had. The subplots continue to lumber along aimlessly, which has always been a problem with Dexter, but it wasn't as noticeable in previous seasons when the main plot was good enough to keep you gripped. The only story that interests me is Louis' creepy stalker-love for Dexter, which I think could lead to a reveal that he knows Dexter's secret.
I also think Dexter's characterisation was all over the place. Dexter originally killed the serial killers that evaded police capture, and told himself he was about balancing the scales of justice. But now he likes to deliberately sabotage investigations so he can get the big prizes himself. You'd think he learned his lesson about this in Season 4, when his quest for the White Whale resulted in THE DEATH OF HIS WIFE. But apparently not. And I feel bad for Debra. One of the cruellest things Dexter has ever done is deny Deb the vindication of catching Lundy's killer and giving her the closure she obviously needed, especially when she did the work and would have caught Trinity if not for Dexter's interference. And now, in a season where Deb is openly going to Dexter and telling him that her low rate of solved crimes is hurting her career, Dexter hides bodies and strives to create new never-closed serial killer cases for Miami PD to struggle with. But his decision to call the police at the end of the episode may be an acknowledgement of this fault. We'll see.
Also, it's a small thing, but it's a tad disappointing to see the rather balanced approach to faith the season has taken so far veer into "F**K RELIGION!", and suddenly every believer depicted is a slack-jawed, droopy-eyed zealot or a nutjob.
Overall, a poor, poor episode. I've never felt less excited about the "2 MORE EPISODES!" trailer at this point in a Dexter season.
