Dexter

See, I find part of what you're saying compelling, but I don't have the slightest problem with that question, specifically--with her mental state. She's been through more trauma in, like, four years, than most people would go through in 40 lifetimes. She's been in love with multiple serial killers, almost been killed a few times, fell in love (not just love...she's in love, right now, which makes a lot of crazy stuff instantly plausible) with her brother, found out he was a killer that same day, found out her father (who she worshipped) was keeping a secret from her, came around to her brother-killer's philosophy, finally asked him to kill someone, and instead he fell in love with that other person instead of her. Like, wow. She's got an entire airport's worth of emotional baggage.

They've laid tons of groundwork for this. The entire season has been Dex slowly persuading her that things like this are okay. This is the exact ends-justify-the-means kind of thing he does all the time. She literally just finished helping him plant evidence before it happened. The entire narrative arc this year has been Deb slowly becoming comfortable with more and more deceptive, extra-legal dealings if the end result is getting rid of a killer.

I struggle a little with whether or not she'd actually crash her car (though again, the idea there is that she simply misjudges the severity, not that she almost killed herself on purpose), but I don't struggle at all with the idea that this is a plausible mental state for her to be in.

I have NO problem with the emotional baggage or her trying to frame Hannah. THAT makes PERFECT sense, given what they've shown us. But any cop has seen a lot of gore and violence surrounding car accidents, and they're awful, just awful to look at.

They have simply NOT shown us that she would crash her own car for this. THAT is my only point. ... They could have had her, as I mentioned earlier, poison herself and then, while holding the water bottle, just careen face-first onto her DESK at work or while at dinner with Dexter or something -- something not prone to DEATH like a car crash would be. She really DID drink that water. She really DID have that stuff in her system. We saw her drink it. We know she crashed.

Now, HERE is what I just thought of that MIGHT explain it: The plot twist shows us that she crashed the car somehow WHILE SHE WAS NOT IN IT ... rolled it, etc., but then somehow broke her own arm (because that's all that happened, strangely a MINOR occurrence that the junk yard guy found astounding), and got into the car (or near it, as if she were thrown from the car) to be found by EMTs later....

In other words, we did NOT see her CRASH the car. We just saw her DRINK the water while in it but then we learn later that she crashed.

Now THAT is an option I can get behind.

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That'd be a bit better, yeah. Though I'm kind of fond of the idea that she just messed up: she meant to be in some moderate crash, but simply underestimated the intoxication. Most fan theories don't ever incorporate people simply mistakes, or doing something but not doing it all that well, for whatever reason. Once we move into thinking of the plot like a puzzle, the muddy realities of schemes get tossed out and all the characters get treated like Vulcans.

Anyway, we'll probably know on Sunday, but maybe not even then. We can obviously get a positive, but we could get a false negative, too. It'd be much better to reveal this kind of twist now, but it's not unthinkable that it could happen during the final season itself, either.

Either way, I think the operative principle going forward is to expect increasingly crazier, increasingly sudden things.

Agree on that, and I hope Deb DID do it because, like many of your TV theories, yours is better than what they might end up with. LOL

As for mistakes: That's what I meant about her being a cop, though. They deal with things like car crashes all the time. She would KNOW how bad they are and how easily they GET bad. The kinds of realities most commonfolk never have to see or live with.

She'd have to be pretty seriously stupid to mess up THAT badly -- especially if she was still clever and thoughtful enough to plant a hair in her own bathroom, etc. etc.

It's not just a minor mistake. It's a huge mess-up. I picture her planning and plotting the evidence-planting, something she would be good at, being a cop and knowing what Dexter/cops would look for -- and then to tack on at the end of her plan crashing her own car randomly? A stretch.

I like adding my ending onto your beginning. LOL

Mother and son are fire-ring up. Season greetings...

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR the Dexter Season 7 finale...




Nasty Captain? She's right! She's completely justified in everything she's saying and doing. Not a great person, to be sure, but clearly a better one than she was. And whether we like her personally or not, her actions as they relate to Dexter are totally justified.

Let's not fall into the pattern of rooting for the main character just because he's the main character. Sometimes--especially lately, as television has matured as an artistic medium--shows are stories about bad people, too. With Dexter, it's been mixed; a bad guy who adheres to a code that stops him from doing particularly bad things. But that went out the window last night. He had decided to kill someone who didn't meet Harry's Code, and perhaps even worse, he put Deb in an impossible situation that turned her into a killer. Awful.

Season 8 is going to be ugly. Deb's gonna really lose it. Couldn't feel sorrier for her and the absurd position she was put in. She did the wrong thing, but you can see how she would feel she had to. Only question is if the last season is her descent into madness, or her slow transformation into Dexter's accomplice. She might just double down on this. They might even become a serial killing couple. Those are probably the major options on the table now. Hard to imagine it ending well.

It certainly shouldn't, now that Dexter's basically decided he'll kill for utility, and not just some rationalized justice. Estrada really nailed him: what's the difference between Dexter and some of the people he kills now? Lots of them kill because it's convenient, too. He's no better. And Hannah--who was also a killer, but also killed people just for being in her way--probably helped him start down that road.

Speaking of which (more spoilers below)...





...naturally, the only thing all of us agreed about on Hannah--that she didn't just straight-up poison Deb on her own--ends up being the thing that happened. Feels kinda silly to me. So...she does make mistakes? I know she didn't have to necessarily be telling the truth, but it does seem kind of tortured that she'd screw up doing something so risky, with a guy she knows spends his entire life sniffing out things like this. Not great writing there, IMO.

Oh, and man, did I forget how entertaining Doakes was. Pity he couldn't have been along for most of this ride, he'd have made some of those middling seasons a lot better. But then, the nature of the character meant something had to give early on. And the Doakes thing really did end brilliantly back in season 2.

So, what you're saying is, I was right about the Deb thing? It's all right. You can just admit it. I won't gloat. LOL (Hey, I'm still stinging over the Walter-White-Lily-of-the-Valley misstep in another thread here.)

The strange thing about last night's episode -- which was brilliantly acted by Jennifer Carpenter, BTW, in that scene in the cargo container -- was that we then see Dexter and Deb walking back into the party, wearing the same clothes they just killed people in. Dexter is wearing his kill shirt (that thing's gotta be pretty badly stained by now, doesn't it? he wears just a rubber apron that shows the sleeves of the shirt), and Deb is wearing the same dress she just clutched LaGuerta with. What, seriously? No blood?

Plus, you gotta think that, no matter how efficient Dexter can be about dismembering victims and setting them out to sea, with an unhinged Deb along, that had to have taken a few hours, right? And yet they walk back into the party as if they were just in the back getting something to drink?

Yes, it's a minor thing, I suppose, but that kill shirt in particular is SO distinctive by now that it was jarring to see him waltz in with it on. Surely he brings SPARE CLOTHES to change into after a kill....

But I digress.

That finale didn't go at all the way I thought it would. And of course part of that is those nasty previews, with Dexter in handcuffs. I did find the way the writers weaseled out of that one particularly interesting... and it worked well enough that I bought it. I had to keep reminding myself that everyone assumed the Bay Harbor Butcher had been Doakes, and so everyone really WOULD question LaGuerta's motives in accusing Dexter (or anyone) of something so strange.

Did they ever ever ever explain that blood slide she found at the Travis Marshall crime scene? Because that's fairly damning, if you ask me -- at least in asking why something so tied to a supposedly dead serial killer was showing up again at new crime scenes. Did the general public know about those blood slides?

But anyway, they've gotten rid of the "villains" of this season: the Russian and LaGuerta. I suppose that was part of the strangeness of this season: no BIG villain that Dexter went after. And so, as Yoda points out, we end up rooting (for a moment here and there, let's admit it) for Dexter to get rid of this colossal threat to his safety.

But yes, Dexter has now scrapped the Code completely ... and Deb has sided with him. They don't need to be on the run, either... except what's up with Hannah? She's the new threat and she won't take kindly to adding Deb to their little trio. Where would Dexter's loyalties lie now? I'm thinking still with Deb, and that's the basis of the final season's emotional punch: Will he/they get caught? Where do all sorts of lines of loyalty lie?

The one good thing about Dexter crossing the line with the Code is that it definitely sets up the right atmosphere for a final season. Once he's crossed that line, all bets are off and things get ugly and stay ugly. We'll quickly lose all hope for Dexter and we'll stop rooting for him. Time to end the series then.

Oh, I'd say it if you were, but you agreed that Hannah didn't do it; you thought it was Arlene. We all agreed that Hannah's "I don't make mistakes" stuff was legitimate, because, well, that made a lot of sense. One would think they'd at least explain how she screwed up, if she did, but they didn't even do that. Pretty sloppy. I should probably remind myself that the writers of these shows don't always feel things have to make as much sense as the dedicated viewers tend to think they should.

Anyway, at this point it's all about Deb; does she just go crazy, quit the force, etc? Or embrace this and become his partner? And if it's the latter, is that romantic in nature, too? Pretty crazy thought. She's broken enough to do anything now.

Not even sure what to root for. Pretty clear things should end badly for Dexter. Whether or not Deb can come back from it is a much more difficult question.

Wouldn't it be interesting to shift to Deb's POV, and give her her own Harry? And have him talk her into turning Dex in at the very end?

You had me RIGHT up until the end there. She wouldn't turn Dexter in! If she becomes like him, she would have to use the Code and KILL him, just as Dexter has been doing for seven seasons now.

And that would be quite an ending. We could be left wondering if Deb is the new Dexter once he is gone. THE END? LOL

Here's the post where I discuss this the most. Remember that I got onto the Arlene thing as an alternative to DEB poisoning Deb. Paragraphs 3 and 4 keep me pretty noncommittal on this one.

Yeah, I supposed you hedged a bit. But really, that's a pretty silly thread to leave hanging out. She's right: she doesn't make mistakes. Why did she here? I wouldn't care much if the show hadn't gone out of its way to point this out, but now that they have, it requires an explanation. Why would she screw it up? It's almost enough to make me wonder if more's going on, since Hannah's still out there. But I suppose the most likely explanation is that the writers wrote themselves a problem for absolutely no reason and aren't going to address it.


Well, that works, too. Might even be better. I like the irony of it, for the same reason I liked the Deb poisoning thing: because it flips Dexter's code on him, and means that all the time he spent trying to justify his existence to her is ultimately what does him in. Justice is bigger than any one person: live by the code, die by the code.

I'd still be fine with her turning him in, though, provided they built up to it properly (just as I'm fine with her shooting LaGuerta given how much time they spent breaking her down this year). But yeah, her killing him would be more elegant.

I think you're overthinking the "I don't make mistakes" thing. I rewatched that episode yesterday, and yes, she does say it, and rather emphatically. But, remember two things:

-- She's gotta be a good liar. In her position, making few mistakes would mean being a great liar. A LOT is at stake here for her with this lie, so she'd be putting on her best performance.

-- Everyone is fallible. Everyone makes mistakes. I tend to think Dexter is better at this than Hannah is (she kills for convenience but does not have a Dark Passenger), and we've seen him make mistakes a lot. So, even if her own perception of herself is that she doesn't make mistakes, she's bound to. There's a line from the show Moonshiners that the sheriff says regarding the outlaws and why he might catch them: "They have to be lucky all the time. I have to be lucky just once."

I agree I hedged every option that came out about who poisoned Deb. Mostly because they all seemed plausible but none seemed well covered by the writers.

Frankly, I still think the Deb angle would have been the most awesome -- had it been played out better. Granted, the Deb we saw at the end of the finale last night WOULD have poisoned herself, for sure. Now she's crossed so many lines that the writers can take her in any direction they want at the beginning of the final season.

Another thing that irks me about that "we're back at the party" bit at the end: Deb looks hardened, cold, like Dexter -- and I agree that this is where she's headed given what she just did. But remember, just after she shot LaGuerta she regretted it. She was griefstricken for so many reasons, and it was horrible to watch.

I wonder if someone who commits a momentary act of violence out of some sense of self-defense (or defense of a loved one) and then immediately wails about having done it would so SUDDENLY turn cold. I keep picturing what they didn't show us: Dexter and Deb taking both bodies out on the boat after dismembering them and then dumping them. Wouldn't that be more likely to make Deb even MORE emotional, at least at first? Is this trauma on the order of what Dexter faced as a child that made him so cold?

I guess, again, I keep remembering what you said, Yoda, about the writers perhaps condensing a lot of changes in a smaller time frame to wrap things up. This total turnaround from Deb being griefstricken at her shooting LaGuerta to being cold and going back to the party (to cover their tracks) seems rushed.

BUT, I get why they had to do it. They can't show us a progression like that. Not at this late in the game.

I'd also still be fine with Deb turning him in. Perhaps it would be a strange act of redemption for her, and Dexter would even take the rap for LaGuerta in order to keep Deb from going down with him. He kinda redeems himself then, and lets her redeem herself a bit (because we would know she wouldn't continue in his footsteps if she repented and turned him in), and then we have as close to a happy ending as we can get. Oh, and she'd get custody of Harrison, so Dexter could go to prison in peace.

Either way, I now see why the writers threw in Deb finding out she is in love with Dexter -- something that, by itself, felt like it was a curve ball at the time. It's obvious that they needed to add a whole other layer of "love" and feelings between them for this big twist of Deb killing for him to work.

Not sure which ending I actually prefer to see. I have liked Deb's stalwart cop nature throughout the series, and part of me would like to see her find a way to come to her senses and redeem herself. And that only happens if Dexter is out of the picture at this point.

The jump in time was sudden, but I think that's sort of a trick just because of the way it was cut. I don't mind her changing from one to the other in the course of the couple of hours we didn't see. As a general rule, I'm almost never bothered by "fill in the blank" issues. If I can easily think of some way to make it work without being shown, then I don't give it a lot of thought. It's only when I can't come up with any way of doing it that I feel they need to show us. In this case, I feel okay assuming she eventually stopped crying, realized the gravity of what she'd done, and got very quiet and somber.

I dunno if it's even possible to depict an unrealistic way to react to killing someone. Is any reaction actually off the table, let alone for someone as traumatized as her? I dunno.

Anyway, they need to make this matter. That's all I require, really: either she really does break down, because hey: terrible thing. Or she eventually redeems herself. Both would make a lot of sense. The only thing that doesn't make sense is Dexter living happily ever after. Not now. Even if he gets away, I think it has to be after having lost Deb (and/or maybe Harrison) and being generally despondent at being alone and stuck being himself. In other words, a Pyrrhic victory.

lol!

Yoda, true, none of us could really know how anyone would react to doing what Deb has done. And it's a good literary device to not show us everything. My point was that when we see them walk back into the party, it's obviously been very little time at all (relatively speaking) since she shot LaGuerta and was wailing like a banshee over having done it. She doesn't look nervous. She doesn't even look stunned or numb. She looked (to me) rather cold -- walking behind Dexter, both of them with that same look on their faces.

My thought was that we were supposed to think she is now his sidekick, whether she wants to be or not. He has made her like himself, when she would obviously rather have made him like herself.

I'm okay with where it's headed. I just think it was another minor writing slip-up to jam yet another quick-change-act on us. The whole season has been doing this, and you'd think I'd be used to it by now. Again, it's the "I'm in love with Dexter" thing that I think the writers are leaning on here to make us cut them some slack with the fast pacing of Deb-changes.

This is, by the way, preferable to things moving too slowly ... so I'm not complaining so much as NOTICING. Slight disapproval on methods, but approval on twists and turns and keeping my interest. I was a bit "meh" about this show mid-series but they've managed to ratchet up my interest to fever-pitch now. Another season of Dexter stalking a serial killer who's stalking other people would have felt like same-old-same-old.

So, they've succeeded in their task as writers, I'd say, all things considered.

Thought it was a pretty weak ending. The season was almost make to form, building steam for the show climax next season and then all the thread they were building have been cut again and a far too easy framed murder resets the show to square one except with some characterisation for Deb. They didn't really have the bottle conviction to go through with anything huge in the end. LaGuerta dying was the worse option with her, was all too evocative of Liddy and his forensics skills have become far too convenient to manipulate any crime to scene to his needs.

I hope next Season is Quinn and Angel teaming up to take Dexter down. But news is there maybe another season after, if so think will have lost my patience with the show.

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You don't think Deb killing an innocent person is huge? I have some complaints, to be sure (your reference to Dexter's sometimes superhuman ability to cover his tracks among them) but the import of what happened in that last season isn't among them.