Dexter

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The Adventure Starts Here!
Just got done watching the series finale. (We watched Breaking Bad and Talking Bad instead and DVRed Dexter.)

Sheesh. All I can say about that last episode was... SHEESH.

Absolutely pathetic ending on ALL levels. ALL. They made so many amateur plot moves, so many cheesy decisions, so much ridiculous shark-jumping.

I'm shaking my head over this entire last season, but that finale was just horrible.



The Adventure Starts Here!
Beyond the cheesiness and unbelievability of most of that last episode, I think what irks me the most is that there seems to be NO closure on ANY front. No loose ends tied up. Nothing satisfying happened to anyone.

I don't necessarily mind if a show leaves a few question marks at the end, on purpose, but this show didn't even try to wrap things up.

Except with Deb. And that was just stupid too.

Yeah, I'm irked. So there.



I need to sleep on the finale. I disliked the final season, for sure. I want to be okay with the finale, but its definitely a struggle.

Former Producer Clyde Philips revealed his idea for the finale

I would've been okay with this given the proper development. Although I would rather the witnesses be the Miami PD and not ghosts.

EDIT: I tried. I am not okay with the finale. Ugh.
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HUGE SPOILER WARNING.

This is what the showrunner said of the ending:

"He knows exactly what he's doing there; he's putting his boat in the path of the hurricane, which will then allow him to escape in this way."

Is he being serious?



Thought I'd pop in (I will be back, like next week) to say what an absolute pile of ******* ****, I am ******* fuming. Terrible, diabolical. Who writes this sh*t, wow. So many things have made me angry about it. What a terrible season and appropriate ending to match.
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28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
Again, Masuka's daughter is simply there to show that he has transformed from a sexist guy into a man who respects women, now that he has a daughter. Adds nothing to the overall story arc of the season and wasted time on a character no one really cared about.

Batista - what the hell was he up to this season? I want to promote Quinn, but I'm too scared to do it. End of storyline.

Zack - Useless, utterly useless. What a waste of screen time for something that should have advanced the story more. If someone can point out to me that point of this character, that would be great....



Vogul - Thanks for introducing something shattering to a character's past in the LAST season. Lost did the same thing, introduce something in the last season and claim that it has been a part of the mythology of the show from the beginning, we just didn't know about it. Lame and lazy writing. I hate to compare to Breaking Bad, but they don't introduce new elements, they go BACK to what they have already established and tie those elements together.

Deb - Carpenter is great, she delivers on the performance, but her character met a tragic end and in such a lame and disrespectful way.

Dexter - Father of the year award goes to.....

Seriously....a lumberjack? Who is he Wolverine? After reading the OG showrunners ideas for an ending, I would have preferred that over the mess we got.

Dexter use to be a tense and thrilling show, the last few seasons have been a joke and it's sad. Dexter deserved to die or get caught, not live in exile, just to leave the possibility of a return open for future projects. Grow some balls and throw everything you have and the kitchen sink at the script. Breaking Bad is doing this and doing it beautifully.

Thumbs down on this series finale for me.

.....Maybe Dexter needed to kill more people this season for me to like it.
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Suspect's Reviews



Finally got around to finishing this (the fact that I hadn't should say a lot about how I've reacted to most of this season). I'll post some thoughts tomorrow. Short version: I like the "bones" of the story a lot more than I like the actual execution.



I liked that Dexter's final death and body being thrown off his boat was his sisters...but man, did the writer's really drop the ball on this one.

So many ways this season could have played out and they give us this? What the hell ever happened to that box of evidence from LaGuerta on Batista's desk, which implements Dexter is a lot of the killings? He said he was gonna go through it....then nothing.

Clayton, I think his name was, the Marshall. Why even bother bringing that character into the show. That role should have been for Quinn or Batista. Hell, maybe even Elway.

Dexter, you use to be brilliant. What happened.



The Adventure Starts Here!
Totally agree with this, Mr. Sparkle. Honestly, Dexter as the Brawny paper towel guy? Seriously. So, what? He found love or something and made sacrifices to keep his son and Hannah safe and ... will probably kill again? Because why else would he separate himself from his son unless he felt he was a danger to them in some way?

Plus (and this is the real kicker for me)... he decides it's better to leave his son with his girlfriend ... WHO IS ALSO A KILLER?

Yeah, great move, Dex.



Things I don't mine, and even like:
1. Dexter getting an unhappy ending. So glad they at least had the guts to follow through on that.

2. Dex's last kill (as far as we know) being Deb, and being out of mercy rather than bloodlust.

3. Dex disposing of one more body, but for the sake of peace, not mere disposal.

4. Utilizing a hurricane. Great idea, given the setting.
Things I couldn't stand:
1. Everything about the Hannah storyline after they decided she was someone he actually loved and wanted to be with. Ridiculous. Especially trying to morph her into a mother figure.

2. The ridiculously sloppy execution of virtually everything this season. Hannah being a fugitive and not even taking cursory steps to hide who she is. Characters spending minutes at a time openly discussing their psychological motivations. Saxon deciding to kill Deb (why? The only reasons he could have are emotional, and he's a sociopath). Just sloppy, sloppy stuff all over the place.

3. Wasting our time not only with another Big Bad just like every other year, but with one that's gotten shoehorned into the last few episodes of the final season. We don't have time for this. We should be focusing exclusively on the choices the main characters are making and the consequences of those choices.

4. Having Deb essentially die off-screen, and as a result of Dex's mercy, not as a result of his bloodlust. Totally backwards. Maybe they were going for irony, but it felt ridiculous.

5. The entire Deb storyline. She hates Dex, tries to kill him, then talks to Vogel and does a complete 180? What the crap? Never understand that, never bought it.
Dumb, dumb, dumb. And worse, the show wasn't even fun this year. In the early seasons my wife and I likened it to "candy," because it was always fun to watch. We often ended up putting off more "serious" fare to keep watching it. But this last season it wasn't fun OR dramatic. Just messy and random.

I wouldn't say this last season was the worst, because the 6th, in particular, was pretty ridiculous and the 5th was pretty forgettable, but this is definitely in that league. And a huge disappointment, given all the built up emotional weight they had at their disposal, and how much momentum season 7 had. And that's what was really missing: season 7 felt propelled forward, particularly given the way Deb was acting. It felt like things were finally moving. This season completely abandoned that narrative moment and literally just rolled her feelings backwards based on a couple of scenes of sketchy psychoanalysis. It was like they pulled the Deb card sooner than they were prepared for and had to kill another half-dozen episodes, so they had to Restore Point her feelings so they could run out the clock.



The Adventure Starts Here!
I suppose since Deb killed LaGuerta, there was no way she was ever going to have a normal life after that ... even though they did try to just "heal" her a little too quickly through Vogel. I kept thinking, "Why is she getting back together with Quinn? She has this huge, dark secret that, given her history, will bubble back up at some point and land her in cuffs, for sure."

I had hoped that her peace with Dexter and her actions/his actions was a temporary one and we'd see her flip out again, perhaps because she'd realize she has to tell Quinn in order to be with him.

So instead, they killed her off. Fair enough -- it was probably the only realistic way to end Deb's story arc, though having it be through Saxton was sloppy. That whole scene where he's strapped to his own table and then DEB LEAVES THE ROOM was so sloppy, we were actually yelling at the TV. She's so by-the-book that, well... we all know where all the sloppy parts were, so I won't belabor the point.

I'm surprised it's taken them this long to add a hurricane or other adverse weather conditions to a show set in Miami, but hey... and honestly, he escaped that wreckage? What is he, Jason Voorhees or something now?

I would have preferred to think he simply ran into that hurricane to end it all. Not so he could go be a lumberjack somewhere away from his son.

That whole disconnect with leaving his son with Hannah irks me more, the more I think about it. If anything, she's a bigger risk than staying with his own son would have been. It's not her biological child. Her killing is a lot more emotional and random. She has no code. And if anyone was going to see to it that Harrison doesn't end up like his dad, it would have been Dexter, not Hannah.

Ehh, see? Now you got me started all over again.

I agree that season 7, with Deb's angst and freak-out moments, felt like they were finally hitting the hard stuff. But yeah, they seemed to find that getting in the way this season, and so they found a cheesy way to get around it and pretend it never happened.



The Brave Little Weeman Returns!
I hope Showtime don't screw up Homeland like they've seemingly done to this
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Reviews





Kakarot89: The Infamous Thread Killer
YAY! I just saw the last episode this evening (spent the last week out of town) and all I can say is WTF? I had to stop in here just to make sure I didn't dream up the last episode or something. Seriously, the first episode was interesting but it all quickly nosedived from there until it somehow became worse than season 6. I hated season 6 but I found myself simply watching this season to be able to buy a shirt that said "I watched the last season of Dexter and survived." Or maybe I'm just masochistic.



Finished here. It's been fun.
I hope Showtime don't screw up Homeland like they've seemingly done to this
Homeland already jumped the shark in the 2nd half of season 2. I mean it's still pretty good, but it's heading into Dexter territory.



The Adventure Starts Here!
Seriously? Why? So they can keep open the option for, like, a made-for-Showtime movie or something? Please. They butchered it so bad at the end that nobody's going to want to watch any more with that character in it. I expected better from Michael C. Hall too.