Screenshot: Netflix
There’s vitriol, and then there’s the rage engendered by the finale of Dexter. The A.V. Club recently revisited the public and critical response of that series’ ending; to call the reactions negative would be putting it mildly. With the possible exception of Lost, it’s rare for a final season and finale episode to leave such a bad taste in viewers’ mouths that it retroactively sours them on the entirety of the series (and even Lost’s conclusion is more divisive in reaction than the near-universal scorn Dexter received). By the end, the show was on a slow and steady march into the Florida swamp, any good qualities inevitably buried by its final arc.
But no TV show need be judged solely by its worst moments. Like any long-running program, Dexter had its ups and downs—in its early years, it even hit some highs. When the creative team was firing on all cylinders, the series was as gripping and heady as any thriller on television, full of adventurous plots, twisty storytelling, and the occasional nasty bit of violence. True, Dexter always made sure to aim for the cheap seats, crafting colorful, pulpy excitement in its stories and character arcs—but as any Bruce Springsteen fan can tell you, there’s no law that says you can’t make great populist art. And for all its dark subject matter, Dexter was populist TV, through and through. It zipped along with the energy and lurid fun of a paperback thriller, the visual equivalent of a killer beach read. Which is fitting, given that’s exactly where the show found its source material.
Dexter began life as an adaptation of Darkly Dreaming Dexter, the first in a series of novels by author Jeff Lindsey. (While the first season roughly followed the plot of that book, subsequent years mostly cast aside the source material in favor of original stories.) The show revolved around the work of Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall), a forensic blood-spatter analyst who works for the Miami Metro Police Department. From the outside, he looks like a model citizen: Aside from helping catch bad guys in his day job, Dexter has a steady relationship with Rita Bennett (Julie Benz), a working mom with two small boys, Astor and Cody, with whom he gets along well. He lives in a nice but unremarkable apartment, owns a small fishing boat he takes out periodically, and does regular-guy stuff, like bowling with the department’s league team.
Oh, also? He’s a serial killer. But not just any old killer—Dexter lives by a certain code. That would be the code of Harry Morgan (James Remar), his adoptive father and police detective who adopted the toddler after his parents died. As we see in flashbacks throughout the first several seasons, before his death, Harry realized early on that Dexter is a sociopath with an innate drive to kill, a compulsion Dexter eventually refers to as his “dark passenger.” Rather than get him the serious treatment that would doubtless land his adopted child in an institution, Harry decides to channel Dexter’s desires into a strict moral guideline—teaching his son to be a meticulous and brilliant vigilante, taking out only those who have intentionally killed someone else. A killer of killers, in other words. By rigorously following Harry’s code, Dexter is able to methodically dispatch murderers who have escaped conventional justice, disposing of the bodies in the ocean and keeping up the facade of a regular life—complete with his well-rehearsed “performing” of typical emotions like happiness, love, frustration, and so on—to avoid capture and pass for normal.
It all sounds pretty over the top, and it might not’ve worked without the anchor performance by Michael C. Hall. Already a well-regarded TV actor thanks to his role on HBO’s Six Feet Under, Hall brought the perfect blend of dispassionate neurodivergent cool and average-joe ordinariness to the part, seamlessly fusing the sociopathy and fey charm that made the character magnetic. Handsome but not distractingly so, Hall sold the everyman qualities that allowed viewers to believe this was a brutal killer who could disappear in most situations, making his cover the kind of reliable but uninteresting drip who didn’t raise anyone’s curiosity. You could understand why most people liked him—and also why none of them cared enough to be particularly close friends.
When the show begins, Dexter’s living his seemingly unremarkable life—working at Miami-Metro PD Homicide department with colleagues like Detective Angel Batista (David Zayas), commanding officer Lieutenant LaGuerta (Lauren Vélez), and tactless fellow forensic scientist Vince Masuka (C.S. Lee). Also newly promoted to the department is Dexter’s younger adopted sister, Debra Morgan (Jennifer Carpenter), foul-mouthed but eager to prove her worth to not just the other cops, but her older brother. The first season follows Dexter as he attempted to deliver his vigilante justice without arousing suspicion, especially from the one person in Homicide, Sergeant James Doakes (Erik King), who seemed to suspect the forensic analyst was up to no good. Season two features the surprise discovery of Dexter’s underwater burial ground, a massive collection of bodies that leads to a city-wide manhunt for the killer dubbed the “Bay Harbor Butcher.” Dexter’s ability to continue his vigilantism is seriously hampered by the somewhat sympathetic media attention, as well as the increasingly suspicious Sergeant Doakes. Dexter and Rita’s relationship hits a few snags, after he takes up with a pyromaniac named Lila (Jaime Murray). Season two ends with Doakes dead—framed by Lila for the Bay Harbor Butcher murders—and Dexter killing Lila, thereby ensuring no one alive knows his secret.
The plot twists continued to flow as freely as any soap opera throughout the years. In season three, Dexter finds a sympathetic party in Assistant District Attorney Miguel Prado (Jimmy Smits), who initially hopes to help guide his vigilante killings. But Dexter soon realizes Miguel has begun killing people on his own, people who don’t fit Harry’s official code. There are some other subplots—Deb gets a new partner, Joey Quinn (Desmond Harrington), and the two spend the season tracking a new serial killer dubbed “the Skinner” (yes, he skins his victims alive). The season ends with Dexter killing both Miguel and the Skinner, just in time to make it to his wedding to Rita.
Season four follows a similar pattern, but is considered by many to be the high-water mark of the series, a superlative blend of thrills and oddball character study that received its jolt of creative uplift in the form of guest star John Lithgow. The longtime thespian plays Arthur Mitchell, an outwardly pious family man whose community respect hides the fact that he’s also the “Trinity Killer,” a notorious murderer who kills three people a year. Dexter’s initial affinity for Arthur—he sees him as a mentor who can guide Dexter through the double life they both lead—eventually curdles when he realizes Arthur is not just a killer, but a vicious domestic abuser. Lithgow netted an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor In A Drama, but his fictional alter ego was less fortunate: Dexter eventually captures and murders Arthur. Unfortunately, he doesn’t do it in time to save Rita, whose body is discovered in the bathtub (with her and Dexter’s new baby Harrison crying on the floor alongside her), a shocking death that served as the most profound finale the show ever delivered.
After such a riveting and impressive conclusion to a superb season, it was maybe inevitable that Dexter would start to lose steam creatively, if not commercially. (Viewership continued to climb all the way through season seven.) Season five found Dexter helping a woman, named Lumen Pierce (Julia Stiles), who had been kidnapped and was set to be murdered by a group of men responsible for a series of young women’s deaths. Lumen wants to get revenge by killing each member of the group, and Dexter, recognizing something akin to his own Dark Passenger, agrees to help her, as they take them out one by one, leading up to motivational speaker Jordan Chase (Jonny Lee Miller). After Lumen’s departure, season six turned Dexter’s attention to the Doomsday Killers, professor James Gellar (Edward James Olmos) and his student, Travis Marshall (Colin Hanks), who believe they are helping to usher in the end of the world by staging a series of grisly tableaus based on the Book Of Revelations, using the bodies of their victims. Viewers responded overwhelmingly negatively, but the finale—in which Debra walks in just as Dexter captures and kills Travis—suggested a volatile future.
That promised intensity never really materialized. Instead, the show sputtered through potentially rich narratives with only fitfully rewarding results. Season seven ran through a plethora of storylines, including the fallout of Debra’s discovery about Dexter’s vigilantism. These include: a Ukrainian mobster (Ray Stevenson) seeking revenge for Dexter’s killing of his partner; Dexter’s tempestuous relationship with Hannah McKay (Yvonne Strahovski), who had killed several men; and LaGuerta’s increasing suspicion that Dexter was actually the Bay Harbor Butcher. After season seven ended with Debra killing LaGuerta to keep her brother safe, the final season had Dexter’s sister working in private security, while Dexter begins working with Dr. Evelyn Vogel (Charlotte Rampling), who helped Harry create his code and therefore knows Dexter’s secret. Meanwhile, a new killer dubbed the “Brain Surgeon” is soon found to be Vogel’s son, and after killing her and threatening Dexter, the Surgeon shoots Debra. In the finale, she dies from complications after surgery, and Dexter, distraught over her death, abandons his plan to join Hannah and his son, in which the three of them would start a new life abroad, and instead fakes his own death to start a new, isolated life as a lumberjack in the Pacific Northwest. As previously mentioned, people didn’t care for it.
While the series would periodically have strong runs of episodes, it could never quite seem to recapture the all-tension-all-the-time sense of breathless excitement generated by the first half of its run. Some of this might be attributable to behind-the-scenes changes; showrunner Clyde Phillips departed after season four, and after a one-season stint with former 24 exec producer Chip Johannessen in charge, the final three seasons were handed over to Scott Buck, a writer with the show since season two. Phillips, who is returning to helm the upcoming limited series revival, wasn’t exactly shy about his dislike of the latter-day seasons, arguing that the series lost the goodwill of viewers when Dexter violated the very code that had defined the character. After looking over the puzzling miasma of dropped plot threads and character reversals that came to define the final seasons, it’s hard to disagree.
But none of that changes the fact that, for at least four seasons, Dexter maintained a dark and visceral intensity, pulpy storytelling elevated by strong performances, sharp direction, and excellent production design. It may not have ever been the prestige TV programming it occasionally feinted at, but it was a hell of a lot of fun. Below, we’ve selected the 10 episodes that show the scope of Dexter’s bloodthirsty ways, whether they were sprays of arterial enjoyment or simply DOA.
“Dexter” (season one, episode one)
The first episode of Dexter is a superb introduction to the world of Dexter Morgan, with all its attendant secrets and subterfuges. Opening with a sequence in which the series’ protagonist stalks, abducts, and murders a man, all the elements of this serial killer story are quickly established, from the bigger picture of his friends and coworkers to small but crucial details, like how Dexter draws a tiny drop of blood from each victim before killing them, then stores it on a microscope slide as a keepsake. It’s an expertly crafted setup for the ensuing series, setting up all the major characters and the Miami backdrop to great effect. Plus, it introduces the handiwork of the show’s first major villain, the Ice Truck Killer—along with Dexter’s envious response to his victim’s exsanguinated and dismembered corpse: “I’ve never seen such clean, dry, neat-looking dead flesh. Wonderful.”
“The Dark Defender” (season two, episode five)
The show really started to unpack its mythology in a major way with “The Dark Defender,” largely by wisely tearing down Dexter’s idealized view of his adopted father, Harry. Here, the show sends Dexter on a road trip with his new NA sponsor, Lila, and the journey leads to the discovery that not only was Dexter’s mother a junkie and police informant with whom Harry had been having an affair, but that Harry had put her in harm’s way under the false pretense she’d be protected. By stripping away the more simplistic trappings of even its more tertiary characters—all with an eye toward deepening and complicating Dexter himself—Dexter proved itself willing to take the necessary time to pay off investment in these people and their deeply messed-up problems. Not only that, but it gave Dexter a chance to be sloppy in a kill: By making his history even more distant and disturbed, it ironically makes him that much more human.
“The British Invasion” (season two, episode 12)
In its early seasons, Dexter was so skilled at paying off long-running storylines, the audience could be forgiven for not even noticing just how many narrative balls were in the air before the show expertly caught every single one, often simultaneously. There’s no better demonstration of this than the second-season finale, which sees all the many loose plot threads from the previous 11 episodes wrapped up in a slick, blood-stained bow. Lila kills Sergeant Doakes and successfully frames him for the Bay Harbor Butcher murders. Dexter reconciles with Rita. And after Lila tries to kill Dexter and his family, the series demonstrates its willingness to expand this universe far beyond the city limits of Miami, as Dexter travels to Paris in order to kill his former flame (turned pyromaniac, ironically enough). The episode is fast-paced, exciting, and smartly staged and executed—Dexter is arguably never better.
“The Lion Sleeps Tonight” (season three, episode three)
As Dexter Morgan started to evolve as a character, it was almost inevitable that his moral code would start to shift. That changes in a major way in season three, when “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” finds Dexter forced to confront the one thing more important to him than Harry’s code: his family. After discovering that a pedophile has been trying to communicate with Rita’s daughter, Astor, Dexter begins questioning the sanctity of the “only kill other killers” imperative that has driven his vigilantism. By forcing him to grapple with the ethics of the situation, the show made its first tentative steps toward revising our understanding of Dexter’s behavior, for better—and eventually, for worse. The episode is also a good example of Debra’s ever-increasing role on the series, with Jennifer Carpenter’s performance rising to meet Hall’s in a way most of the cast never quite achieved.
“Road Kill” (season four, episode eight)
Once again, Dexter Morgan takes a road trip, but unlike in “The Dark Defender,” here it’s with an eye toward viewing another character through the same perspective as Dexter: John Lithgow’s Trinity Killer, Arthur Mitchell. As the pair returns to Mitchell’s childhood home, we watch as the longtime murderer starts to unravel, culminating with a suicide attempt foiled by Dexter himself. It’s a character study of another killer that doubles as a potent suggestion of a possible future for the show’s protagonist—a world where death is the only possible escape. And the episode also serves as a demonstration of the ways the series increasingly tried to find things for its secondary character to do besides solve crimes—but as Batista and LaGuerta’s affair demonstrates, these subplots rarely felt anywhere near as invigorating as the main narrative.
“The Getaway” (season four, episode 12)
Few shows did episode-ending twists as effectively as Dexter in its heyday, and the brutal twist that concludes “The Getaway,” the season four finale, is as good as the series got with this gambit. There are parts of the Trinity Killer storyline that felt rushed, but the conclusion was so gripping, it retroactively made everything that came before feel that much more potent. After successfully tracking down and killing Arthur Mitchell, Dexter returns home, secure in the knowledge that everyone he cares about is safe from the Trinity Killer. At least, until he walks in the front door—and finds Rita dead in the bathtub, Mitchell’s last victim, with their infant son Harrison crying on the blood-stained floor next to her body. It’s horrifying, and visceral, and a body blow to both the lead character and the audience. It’s the ultimate rug-pull for the series; no wonder subsequent seasons never found a way to top it.
“Teenage Wasteland” (season five, episode nine)
Dexter often felt like two different shows—one great and complicated series about a serial killer trying to carry out his mission while evading detection, and a second, subpar series about police detectives in a homicide division dealing with the soap-opera turns of their personal and professional lives. “Teenage Wasteland” expanded the scope of what the series could do, by bringing back Rita’s daughter Astor to try and repair the fractured bond between her and her stepfather, but in doing so, it started to pull the first show down into the purview of the latter one. In a lot of ways, this was Dexter’s “Very Special Episode”: Astor sees her stepdad take down a child abuser, and in so doing, the two rekindle their relationship. The episode killed any narrative momentum—and worse, it’s all very pat, removing any ambiguities or shades of grey, simply so Dexter could be an unambiguous good guy. In hindsight, it would prove to be a worrying portent.
“Get Gellar” (season six, episode nine)
If there’s an episode that could be considered the shark-jumping moment for Dexter, it’s “Get Gellar,” the season-six episode that shoots itself in the foot so spectacularly, it’s routinely held up as one of the key pieces of evidence for how bad the show got in its later years. Having spent the season hunting a pair of murderers known as the Doomsday killers—Professor James Gellar (Edward James Olmos) and his student Travis Marshall (Colin Hanks)—Dexter ends up believing Travis when he says Gellar has been forcing him through the motions all along, and dedicates himself to taking out the professor. This leads to a rug-pull that beggars belief: Dexter finds Gellar’s body in a freezer and realizes he’s been dead all along, a vision in Travis’ head that we’ve mistakenly believed was real. Whether you saw the twist coming or it caught you off-guard was almost beside the point, which was the most damning thing of all—by that point in the season, almost no one cared.
“Swim Deep” (season seven, episode five)
Maybe the last moment of real greatness the series exhibited, “Swim Deep” showed that when Dexter took a creative risk, it could still pay off in a big way. What’s notable about the episode isn’t what’s there, but what’s not there—namely, the show’s standard go-to maneuvers. No kill of the week, no rambling supporting-character subplot, no voiceover monologues just reiterating what we already know… even the brief appearance of Ghost Harry is deployed to advance the character dynamics. And those dynamics are wholly focused on Deb and Dexter, the fragile trust between them (following her discovery of his deadly ways) given center stage as they try to stay one step ahead of Ray Stevenson’s Ukrainian gangster gunning for them. It’s rich, dense stuff—not to mention tense as all get-out, arguably the last time the show felt as vital as it did in the early years.
“Every Silver Lining…” (season eight, episode two)
The final season of Dexter had one genuinely great idea—to recast the entirety of the Dexter Morgan mythology in an entirely different light. “Every Silver Lining” is the episode that made it seem as though the conclusion to the series could still be excellent, by smoothly and plausibly introducing the reveal that Harry’s Code was actually the code of Evelyn Vogel (Charlotte Rampling), a neuropsychiatrist who informs Dexter that she had helped his adoptive father come up with the social experiment that was his life, guiding a psychopath into becoming a functional member of society with a morally justifiable outlet for his homicidal impulses. And it paired this revelation with a clever twist to the show’s structure: Not only does Dexter not kill someone this episode, but Debra does illicitly murder a man, almost as a challenge to the moral gauntlet her brother put her through the previous season. The siblings’ tormented bond was the frisson that kept Dexter watchable, long after every other element had checked out.
80 Comments
Hey Alex Mclevy…’Rita Bennett (Julie Benz), a working mom with two small boys, Astor and Cody’…except Astor was a girl.
Astor Bennet is a boy you say?
i wish he had killed more minorities
I always took the final season (and the previous season to a lesser extent) as the unraveling of a critical dynamic in Dexter’s life — his need for his sister and who or what Dexter was without it and her. No other person in his life could anchor him to his humanity the way she did. He might care about the other people in his life, but he loved his sister — possibly the only person he ever truly loved. There was no Dexter without Deb. Only his dark passenger, free and unconstrained by his rules or social connections — one last monster for Dexter to kill or die trying. And as a dynamic used to underscore the series’ ending, it would have worked IF the series had spent more time exploring it thoroughly enough to really bring that message home. But they didn’t. They hinted at it. They left spaces where that dynamic could breathe. But when it came to showing it directly, it was too rushed, being compressed almost entirely into a few of episodes, rather than something explored through multiple seasons, or had at least an entire season solely dedicated to it. But that’s just the writer in me thinking, “How would I have done this? How would I have gotten from point A to point B in a coherent manner that the audience could follow and believe?”Also, to add to your list, “Surprise, Motherf***er” was also an excellent episode.
(with her and Dexter’s new baby Harrison crying on the floor alongside
her), a shocking death that served as the most profound finale the show
ever delivered
And that’s exactly when I checked out of the show. For several reasons. i thought making Lithgow’s character an abuser was cheap. Like late seasons Sons of Anarchy where as terrible as Jax was, there always had to be someone worse to justify his actions. But at least Dexter had to face some kind of consequence, although it meant getting an innocent person killed.
Yeah, I remember that, keeping Lithgow as a perfect family man would have been such a better story and bigger moral challenge for Dexter. Making him a monster at home was just one of many of Dexter’s cop-outs.
He wasn’t even the least bit subtle in his abuse. He was straight up breaking his son’s fingers. He was such a straight up psycho in his scenes I never brought that he never got caught.
You got a lot, a lot, of plot points and details wrong in your summation, so I have to wonder if you rewatched the series before writing this, or if you are relying on your memory of seeing the original airings.
What are the plans for the new Dexter? Killing in Seattle? Back to Miami? I assume Lumberjack Dex has not had anyone on his table and finally breaks down and kills some deserving jerk, and then the cops call in the FBI, who have seen these crimes before….
Dexter has a steady relationship with Rita Bennett (Julie Benz), a working mom with two small boys, Astor and Cody, with whom he gets along well.
Might want to fix this, Astor is a girl, as mentioned a few times in the episodes list.Thank you for this article though, sometimes it is hard to remember that it didn’t completely all go to hell after season 4. I’ve been rewatching on and off and I usually stop at 4 but I think I’ll at least wade through up to season 7, don’t know if I can stand to bother with 8.
I think I made it to season 6 before I checked out. This was last year, so I’d long heard of the infamous ending and didn’t want to be disappointed. Plus the first 3 seasons were so stellar, I wanted to remember Dexter for the best of it, not the worst. That being said, I kinda regret not watching it all the way through now. Even at its least interesting, Dexter was miles ahead of a lot of other shows and Michael C. Hall was spectacular. My sister got me into it and I was so shocked at how good it was, not to mention funny. Few “dramas” can bring genuine humor without feeling forced or unbalanced. I also find it interesting how many critically acclaimed 2000s shows had lackluster endings. I mean people still give The Sopranos grief over it (I’m a big fan of that ending btw, it’s subtle and tragic).
Question: How much should the ending of a serialized show impact your decision to ever rewatch the earlier seasons that you loved?I don’t think the final season of Lost is the strongest of the six, but I would absolutely rewatch the whole series some day for all its flawed insanity.Game of Thrones, on the other hand, I don’t think I ever want to revisit. There are so many great moments throughout the show (particularly the first four seasons) but I can’t see myself rewatching it at its best without getting frustrated about where it ends up.Haven’t watched Dexter since it went off the air. I go back and forth. Sometimes, the later seasons of a show really make the flaws of earlier seasons more noticeable.
On a narrative level, the finale of Lost is kind of incoherent. But at least the show still works on a character level. That absolutely isn’t true of Game of Thrones or Dexter.
Having revisited Lost, I can say the sixth season oddly works better in rewatch, because you aren’t focused on trying to figure out the trick it isn’t trying to do. So instead you see how the character stuff is working, especially in the flash-sideways bits, which were bizarrely, intentionally confusing first time through (“how is this alt-timeline going to be important?”) but when you know what they actually are, make a lot more emotional sense. (I have not rewatched Dexter, GOT or Battlestar Galactica, though.)
Completely agree. My husband and I rewatched it a couple of years ago and it all made more sense when watched straight through, instead of in real time/with summer breaks. Doesn’t mean we loved it, but the series definitely felt more cohesive. We’ve also rewatched Dexter and it’s just as bad to watch as it was in real-time. I actually like season 5, but it falls apart after that. We recently rewatched GoT and the final season still doesn’t feel rewarding at all.
Also the characters started to fall apart in latee GOT seasons. Like Bronn season 2 isn’t Bronn season 8 in the sense the writers just gave up.
I’m still so baffled as to why they spared him. He was loved by the fans, but not enough to warrant making him head of the Reach. Like, there’s absolutely no way that’s happening in the books….right?! I know they left a ton of people out but you could always just do what they did with the Martells and give it to an unnamed character.
There is zero chance that was a book choice. Its just nonsense and I liked that character!
See, at least on GOT, I have the opposite reaction. In retrospect, I can accept that the creators weren’t necessarily trying to make Lost about solving the mysteries, but it has some clunky structural problems if that’s true. A lot of it’s constructed around “Holy Shit!” reveals that are just thrown out there and never resolved, or anti-climatically resolved in a throwaway line of dialogue or supplemental materials. The mystery is apparently not supposed to be the point, but if that’s the case, the number of WTF cliffhangers it stuffs in there isn’t really appropriate. (Lindelof mastered using a mystery as a backdrop for a character piece without having its lack of resolution be inherently unsatisfying to much better effect in The Leftovers.) I feel like rewatching Lost would piss me off because it doesn’t feel like it’s playing fair with its big bag o’ mystery. Roughly every other episode has at least one pause where I’m supposed to marvel at this crazy thing that just happened that ultimately doesn’t matter much and may or may not be addressed again.
On GOT, all the big moments — Ned’s death, the Red Wedding, Battle of Blackwater — are interesting for what they do the remaining characters, many of whom are quickly forced to reevaluate their entire worldview as a result. It doesn’t end great, but I don’t feel like the first four seasons or so were actively trying to trick me.
Yeah, it wasn’t until season 5 or so where they just pulled twists out of nowhere to fool the audience and youtube predictors. So the Arya thing wasn’t earned. In retrospect the Red Wedding was foreshadowed and telegraphed pretty hard, even moreso in the books. You really should never have expected Walder Frey to be trusted, ever. Or that Tywin Lannister would just lose a war.
It really depends on how bad the show gets. With Dexter I would prbably only rewatch through season 5 (I may be alone, but I’m a big fan of season five, I thought Julia Stiles was great).I didn’t love the end of Battlestar Galactica, but I am just finishing a rewatch with Tricia Helfer and Marc Bernardin’’s “Battlestar Galacticast”.Buffy, I don’t love season 7, but I still rewatch it.Lost, didn’t love the ending, but would probably rewatch to the end.Heroes, would skip the last original season and the reboot. This the only show that actually angered me. I still want to punch Robert Knepper in the face.I wouldn’t rewatch the last couple of original seasons of X-Files(I would watch the Darrin Morgan episodes of the reboot)
I don’t even remember the last season of the original Heroes run, other than I think Knepper’s character was some sort of Magneto like character with seismic powers instead of magnetic.
No actor on a TV show ever enraged me like he did, although the Urkel guy and the Screech guy came close. I never could watch those shows because of them.Magneto would be one way to describe him, but I think there was a lot of Pied Piper in him also.
Yeah, season five was still very good, even if not quite at Trinity Killer levels.
I didn’t watch much after Season 5. I still think the best work of the series was when they had strong supporting guest actors, John Lithgow in season 4 and Peter Weller in season 5.
I may be alone, but I’m a big fan of season five, I thought Julia Stiles was greatYou’re not alone. Writing off her character was the beginning of the descent into the well of stupidity where Dexter ultimately drowns.
I liked that season and the one with Jimmy Smits (was it the same one?) It really only started to get weird when Debra fell in love with Dexter.
Jimmy Smits was in season 3. One of the annual instance of the guy who’s Dexter’s only true bromance forever, except it’s ultimately revealed they’re psychopaths too.
I’ve loved many shows that flubbed the ending. BSG, Dexter, Lost, True Blood, HIMYM… I’ve still gone back and rewatched them. It was understood that these stories were emergent, they were being written as they go along. We the audience were “discovering” the story along with the writers (they were just a few months ahead of us).GOT was different. I think with GOT, the conceit, or the promise was that GRRM has it all in his head, D&D have it all in their head, the story exits in full, all that is left is the telling, this is all building up to something. And that something turned out to be profoundly disappointing. I felt cheated. Same to an extent with the Star Wars sequel trilogy. I don’t think I’ll ever revisit either.
I think it depends on the show, and how serialized it was. It’s hard to want to revisit Game of Thrones because almost every plotline is dependent on having a satisfying conclusion, and the ending botched it pretty hard across the board. Lost, on the other hand, was a lot less focused on a series-long narrative than a lot of people pretend it was. The audience was invested mostly in the characters and the season-arcs which, while driven by the mysterious forces on the island, weren’t dependent on any sort of explanation to feel satisfying.
Dexter is kind of a mixed bag for me, with rewatchability. On the one hand, Dexter’s comeuppance seemed like an important part of the series’ arc, so the fact that he just sails off to become a lumberjack and the whole thing stops does taint it a bit. But I think the season-arcs of 1, 2 and 4 are strong enough that I could probably watch them again and still enjoy them.
Dexter is kind of a mixed bag for me, with rewatchability.I wouldn’t rewatch Dexter because I never felt like it was any kind of quality television (like, I legit rate Warehouse 13 higher than Dexter). But the finale is not that important in that regard, since Dexter was mostly a procedural show with little in the way of overarching plotlines, beyond “will Dexter be caught?”.
Dexter was fun in the moment but I’d never start it again. They best I could see myself doing is sit through one episode if someone else was watching.Game of Thrones was a show all about the end game and the end game was delivered with such arrogant indifference I think I’d just get angry if I tried watching the early good episodes again. I don’t even think I’d finish the books if they ever get published.In general there are just too many good, great or at least interesting series out there to bother re-watching something I know will be a complete letdown.
A bad final season won’t ruin most shows to me, but shows like Lost that are built around the Mystery, it does hurt. I can still randomly watch early seasons and find enjoyment though, but my desire to rewatch older shows that end badly is much much less.
I rewatch certain shows every 1 to 2 years (Psych, Justified, Deadwood, better off Ted, are some examples)
These shows built around mystery or a core idea that fail or betray that core idea (How I met your mother) make it very hard for me to go back and enjoy them, when they at their core they are hollow trash.
the lighter the show, the less the ending matters when I decide to rewatch it.
That being said, Justified has an amazing finale and only makes me glad I stuck around.
Dexter would be an interesting one to re-visit. Yes it got really bad (I gave up after season 5), but I remember that first season being pretty great, as well as S2 and S4.On the other hand, it will be at least a few more years before I’m ready to revisit GOT, if ever. That one was painful. All that buildup, years and years of speculation, all in service of a big wet fart of an ending.
Sorry, but given the DEEP mythology of Lost, the ending really does retroactively spoil ALL of it. Same with GoT.But with something that’s more or less a procedural with seasons that are basically independent of each other with very little narrative carry-over, there’s no reason you can’t still dig Dexter Season 4 despite the lumberjack bullshit that shows up years later.
How does the ending spoil all of it? Where those characters all ended up made sense. It also didn’t negate anything that happened on the island or why they were there.
It was beyond horrible and dumb and reducing the mythology to a battle between two old gods was incredibly stupid and anticlimactic.
Fair enough. By ending, I thought you were referring to the finale specifically, not the whole final season.
Sorry, but I hated all of the last season, as well. After season 3, each successive season got a little worse until the show bottomed out in the sixth season and ended with the dreadful finale!
I could easily revisit Dexter and cut it off at the Season 4 finale.
I rewatched this once, ending after Season 5 and imagining that Stiles joins Dexter as a rapist-murdering vigilante, happily ever after.
Like most fans, I was driven mad by the slow-motion trainwreck of the subsequent seasons, and I would have liked to have seen the ending the original showrunner wanted. But unlike perhaps GOT, I don’t feel the need to be a completionist to find the show satisfying.
I argue the final season and finale of Game of Thrones is much, much worse than Dexter’s, because at least while watching Dexter’s you would laugh a lot. I still cherish that final F review and its comment section, they’re a thing of beauty.
The worst season from start to finish that I saw was undoubtedly Season Six. Nothing about that year worked. Not hugely fond of Season Three either.
There were certain bits and pieces from the rest of it after Trinity that I liked. I didn’t mind the Julia Stiles stuff and what little they gave Ray Stevenson to do he knocked out of the park as per usual, but the show was running on almost empty by then. Once he was gone I checked out and didn’t bother with the last episodes.
I totally agree…the 3rd and 6th season are the worst. Season 8 is a wretched 2nd half that ruins the first half.
nah the first half S8 is pretty awful as well. It’s already starting out on shitty footing with handwaving away Laguerta’s death. It gets worse I suppose, though I think that’s more a matter of it becoming more and more apparent that the ending isn’t going to be even remotely satisfying.
I’ve never been on board with the idea that a bad ending retroactively ruins a show. Good early episodes remain good. But more than that, I don’t usually see these episodes as being so bad as most people do: Dexter, Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Game of Thrones, Sopranos, How I Met Your Mother, Sons of Anarchy, whatever, they were fine. None of them brilliant, neither wretched, just fine.
A great, transcendent ending is a hell of a thing, and rare, and hard as fuck to pull off. Every viewer has their own expectations, pulling in different directions, and the pressure for a final episode not to be simply an episode, or even the conclusion to a season, but the capstone to an entire series, putting paid to years-worth of plot, theme and character, is tremendous. So I think there’s a call here for a fair degree of latitude, borne of perspective and understanding. Accordingly, I try to keep my expectations in check and just appreciate things for what they are. When the spectacular exception sometimes happens (the Shield, Star Trek: TNG), I celebrate the miracle.
Watching a long-running and deeply involving show is a relationship and while you can still remember the good times fondly later a bad ending does poison the whole affair. I think it absolutely does affect rewatchability of the earlier seasons, I could potentially enjoy some of an old Dexter in the moment sure but there’s no way I’d get invested in re-watching the series knowing how bad it gets later.
I actually don’t think a competent ending is so difficult to pull off… If the destination was always in mind. Creators and show runners ought to have the ending in sight when they’re writing the pilot and the path to get there should be be in the back of their minds all along the way. Obviously things change over a multi-year show and the end you perceive when writing the pilot will need to be adjusted accordingly (or even completely changed if something better develops) but if there’s no destination in mind and it feels like they’re just making it up along the way shows feel pointless and arbitrary. That’s Dexter’s biggest problem— it becomes rudderless, just a bunch of stuff that happens, and the end is just tacked on and trite and obviously a late night last minute solution.
Of course there’s also rushing to an unsatisfying ending because of early cancellation (Deadwood, Rome) and there’s not much you can do about that, but that’s hardly Dexter’s problem.
The problem is that TV shows are long-running, organic things, so pre-planning an ending isn’t usually a good idea. That’s what happened with How I Met Your Mother: they stuck with an ending that no longer fit the show. It’s also why all the Lost copycat series failed: they all touted how they had a whole series plan, but sticking so heavily to the plan meant that the storytelling in the moment felt contrived and boring (see: Flashforward).
I think you’re right about having at least an IDEA of where you want to end up, though. Breaking Bad, for instance, was highly improvisational, with the writers rarely even knowing where a season was going to end up, let alone the series. But the shape of the story, a morality tale, meant that they had to pay the story off in a particular way, and I think that mindset helped guide their decisions throughout the series.
Its funny because many people think Breaking Bad had it all down from the start. For godsame, Jessie was suppose to die originally in season 1.
Yeah, Vince Gilligan is incredibly open about how much they were flying by the seat of their pants the whole time.
I appreciate his openness but when you watch it, it feels seamless. Goes to show how good his writing team is, they can make on the spot choices feel like a plan coming together.
Same with the original Star Wars trilogy. Which should be obvious by Return of the Jedi.
God, I looooooooooooved Rome. Still sad it ended so soon.
Yeah, particularly with the heavily serialized examples people keep mentioning here, the ending is a bit like the last act of a script. So how far do we take this logic? If a movie you were enjoying complete shits the bed in the last half hour, how often would you rewatch the first half?
Serialized drama is a lot longer and a bit more episodic, but I would argue that the main draw is the same implicit promise that the characters’ journey is going somewhere interesting. Otherwise, you go with something more episodic and plot-driven.
If the creators deliver on that promise, you can revisit it again and again, appreciating the artistry and the nuance that gets the characters from A to the inevitable B. But if you know that trip isn’t worthwhile, what’s the point? It’s hyperbolic to say I regret watching episodes of shows I enjoyed at the time, but it’s fair to say that I’m disappointed in the ones that didn’t end up as good as it seemed like they were going to.
Personally, Game of Thrones has been the very first time an ending retroactively ruined something i actually adored. It’s hard for me to go back and watch it knowing where it leads. With Dex, there was never anything major at risk or whatever, so the ending was just a case of ‘that was dumb’ not ‘that made everything i’ve watched up until this point totally without reason’
You forgot the best TV Show finale ever, also starring Michael C Hall ironically enough, Six Feet Under.
Didn’t forget it; just haven’t ever seen it, and I only wanted to reference things I could vouch for, personally.Speaking of which, something I did forget: Babylon 5 had a tremendous series finale, twice!
To add to this, a good finale can save a poor final season and still send everyone home happy.Fringe, Buffy and Banshee all pulled that one off, to different degrees of success.The finale itself is far more important than the quality of the final season when it comes to legacy, it seems. That is where GoT and Dexter really shit the bed. People went away angry, and that shows how fine the line is between success and failure.A show like Walking Dead just drifted into apathy, on the other hand, and at 11 seasons is going to be a hard sell 10 years from now for streaming pickups by unknowing folk to come after us. There is no finale that can save the legacy of TWD. It’s practically a soap at this point.
Even though there were “good episodes” sprinkled throughout the show post season 5 (and without revisiting the series, I’d be okay season 5 was decent enough), the finale was just cherry on top of what was already a crap sundae. Most of the series’ more interesting ideas were already used up by that point, and any new ones were handled poorly to say the least.
Yeah, I mean, the episodes cited here are indeed the better ones but it’s not just that Dexter had a poor finale, the wheels had completely fallen off the bus long, long before.
Okay this is probably just me. But after getting into psychology and serial killers… they just don’t work like this. The I’m gonna repeat childhood trauma and be overly elaborate never happens. Its usually some guy who had a terrible childhood repeating one method on a loop until getting caughr or dying. Most killers are dumb and couldn’t tell you why they do it. Also the older I get, the concept of a serial killer hero gets more problematic. That all being said, I loved Lithgows take on a serial killer. Accurate to real life? No but the idea of Jimmy Carter being a mass murderer is fun.
Yes to real serial killers just being screwed up dolts most of the time. Both Jeffrey Dahmer and Charles Manson got away with at least one of their kills due to some combination of bro code and white privilege. They weren’t geniuses who were always one diabolical step ahead of the police — they just got the benefit of the doubt.
Manson was capable of being funny and likeable when questioned, but Dahmer just acted normal and was allowed to take a drugged, naked teen boy who’d escaped him back from a police officer. Evil is banal — but that doesn’t make for very engrossing crime shows.
No it doesn’t. The worst serial killer ever, Harold Shipmen, was just a local doctor who overdosed patients before saying it was cancer. He wasn’t charismatic or had a plan, he just kept doing this for decades until he killed over 200 people. Other times you have killers that are so awful you’d think people would have figured it out. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were such repulsive people that its shocking her sister never realized she was raping and killing children. Hell the now thankfully late Yorkshire Ripper was probably honest when he said I’m shocked it took this long for the cops to find me. Zodiac got away because of a minor reporting error. These people are not Lex Luther, they are not clever. Most are more Buffalo Bill then Hannibal.
I lived in Milwaukee for a bit, and residents still talk about, even those who don’t really read up on history or current events. The trust in the police is not there, for that and many, many other reasons (like the sherriff that goes on Fox News). If the cops had done a background check on Dahmer when neighbors discovered one of his victims outside, they would’ve realized he was convicted of molesting the victim’s older brother a few years back. But he was a white man and the people reporting were black.
I forgot how much bronzer Dexter wore. Leaving streaky fingerprints all over.
Dexter did get insanely ridiculous but the good parts were pretty great, and Michael C Hall never phoned it in.
The reveal of Colin Hank’s painting in Season 6 was one of the hardest I’ve ever laughed while watching a TV show.
I don’t know, the treadmill is pretty hysterical.
I binged the show after it ended its run. I know there has always been talk of bringing it back in some way. My idea: “Daughter of Dexter” where Astor Bennett is the serial killer and she talks to Dexter like he did to Harry. I think there were signs she could go in that direction. And of course the real Dexter could show up at any time.
Later day Dexter became obsessed with “cool” kills that made absolutely no sense at first glance, much less upon detailed examination. Like he opens season 5 or 6 (I forget) by double killing two evil ambulance drivers (uh… sure) at the same time, right out in the open. No kill room, a plan that makes absolutely no sense and would collapse upon something so simple as “they don’t arrive alone” or “only one of them approaches the supposed victim at a time” or “literally any other ambulance shows up” or etc. Considering the show never had any intention of putting Dexter in danger of getting caught with an investigation that would stick after the WAY too soon season 2, making his methods increasingly sloppy and unbelievable was an unredeemable writing choice. And yeah, doing what should have been the final season (Dexter’s secret comes out!) as season 2 was an insane choice that ultimately doomed the show as a going concern.
The Dexter “Must Watch” (only watch!)Season 2 except for the shitty, cop-out ending!Season 4 (the best!)Season 7, but only until Isaak Sirko dies.That’s it!
How much was AVclub paid to do a Dexter shine job to help build hype for the new series?
I adored and do adore this show. The revival plan is… iffy, if only because we are actively aware that was showtime’s plan and why we got Lumberjack Dex at all. I’m in large agreement on the first four seasons but i would switch three and five personally. I thought the Lumen story was much more compelling than the “trying to find a bestie” shit with Miguel and the Prada family. After five it was dip and dive from there on out, season seven had some excellent shit in it that was largely squandered, season eight was just… Season eight was bad all around. The re-formatting of the code and Harry’s reasons, the “mother” stuff, yet another serial killer with such a distinct pattern showing up in Dexter’s playground…. By then it had become too much.As predictable and shit as season 6 is, I do have something of soft spot for the Colin Hanks/Edward James Olmos stuff. Goofy as it is, i do love myself a religious fanatic killer complete with complicated nonsenical tableaus.
Astor is a girl, not a small boy.
Sorry to be “that guy” but the author of the Dexter series is named Jeff Lindsay (with an “a” in the last name).
I noticed early on that Deb would perpetually get hunches about her investigations, out of nowhere, that would inevitably be right. This was done both to suggest that she was good at her job and also to move the plot along. That’s the level of writing that this show generally dealt in.
That said, I watched like six seasons of it. So that’s a testament to both the concept extremely entertaining, and the general charisma and talent of Michael C. Hall to keep such an absurd premise going.
Someday we will get this article for Game of Thrones, and maybe How I Met Your Mother. And it’ll just reopen old wounds. Dexter’s ending was dumb, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as those two. The finale of Dexter didn’t really matter, you knew one day he’d either get caught or have to skip town.
The killer for me was the moment when the homicide squad was waiting for Dexter to show up before they entered the scene. It served as an excuse for Dex to deface the picture of him left by Colin Hanks killer. I always enjoyed the books more with Dexter’s brother still around, La Guerta killed off early & Dokes shambling along with artificial limbs & voice box after being rescued by Dexter in either the second or third book. In the books the main nemesis is usually dispatched by someone other than Dexter ( his brother, Rita ,his sister & even the kids).
I ended up reading the books after watching season one, and find the first 2 books on sale in an airport. They went batsh**t crazy and I still read them, so sticking with the show to end wasn’t too tough.The worst part was telling some they should check out the show during the first season and feeling guilty about it around season 6.
Spoiler alert:
in the books Astor and Cody become psychopaths….