Tonight, (while some people will be watching the Emmys) Showtime will say goodbye to their highest rated series of all time: Dexter. While I’ll grade the series finale later tonight, it’s time to look back at the show’s legacy, and which seasons worked better than others…[Obvious spoilers for all but this season.]
Season 1…What It’s About: Introducing us to the world of the titular serial killer who kills other killers (say that five times fast), and his ongoing game of cat-and-mouse with The Ice Truck Killer, who turns out to be his long-lost brother. At season’s end, he has to kill the Ice Truck Killer because of the very real threat he poses to Dexter’s adopted sister Deborah…Review: A very strong start, and my pick for the second best season all-around. Grade: B+
Season 2…What It’s About: Dexter’s deep-ocean dump site for his victims is discovered and the hunt for “The Bay Harbor Butcher” is on with master FBI agent Frank Lundy there to hunt him down. Eventually, Dexter begins working to pin the crimes on his chief antagonist, Sgt. Doakes, who’s the only one that’s on to Dexter. Also, he has to fake being a heroin addict to disguise his strange behavior but cheats on his long-term girlfriend Rita with Lila, who eventually blows up Doakes to help frame him. At the very end, Dexter tracks Lila down to Paris and kills her…Review: An uneven, slightly-all-over-the-place season, that is still fairly strong. What should have been an ingenious reversal of the show’s season-long-villain (having Dexter play that part to save himself) never quite delivers because Dexter is saved from getting his hands dirty by having Lila kill Doakes. Also, it’s obvious to us that he has a lot more chemistry with Lila than Rita, but the show won’t allow him to wind up with her. Grade: B
Season 3…What It’s About: Dexter eventually marries a pregnant Rita, but the main juice of the season is Dexter’s friendship with Jimmy Smits’ vengeful District Attorney, whose brother he killed in the first episode. Smits turns out to be a little too into killing and eventually tries to get another killer to murder Dexter. All is tied up in a neat little bow by season’s end, as Dexter wipes out all challengers and dances with Rita in a super-sappy final scene…Review: In my opinion, it’s the first weak season Dexter has. I felt like the show was running a bit too firmly in place, and the fact that Dexter keeps getting out of all these scrapes without really breaking a sweat stretches plausibility to a breaking point. Grade: C+
Season 4…What It’s About: Dexter is trying to balance being a new dad, his now complete family, and killing people. As he searches for ways to maintain a balance, he stumbles onto The Trinity Killer (John Lithgow, in an Emmy winning performance) a family man who’s been a serial killer for decades. The case also brings Frank Lundy back to track Trinity and resume his romance with Deborah. The twists start piling up when Lundy is gunned down early in the season, and only grow wilder when Dexter goes deep into Trinity’s sordid world. In the end, Dexter gets Trinity, but only after Trinity has killed Rita…Review: This is the best season of Dexter. Everything is firing on all cylinders. The best villain the show’s ever had in Trinity, the twists of seeing Lundy and Rita die, Dexter’s son being “born in blood” just like Dexter was, etc. The sad news is that the show would never be this good again. Grade: A-
Season 5…What It’s About: While Dexter is processing his version of grief over Rita’s death, he begins helping a woman (Julia Stiles’s Lumen) who survives a “kill club.” It turns out to be a group of friends who rape and kill, led by Johnny Lee Miller’s self-help guru…Review: While many consider season 6 to be the weakest, I actually consider this one to be. First, we start with the ridiculous notion that Miami PD never even seriously considers Dexter for Rita’s murder. Then we have some episodes of him “processing” that grief…by staying exactly the same. Plus, Julia Stiles acting is beyond wooden, and Johnny Lee Miller’s weak villain is completely unmemorable. [Peter Weller’s wild ex-detective is actually much more compelling.] Then we’re asked to swallow that Deborah would just let Dexter and Lumen go (they’re on the other side of a bed sheet, and she can’t see their faces) at the end? I have never felt more like the show was just running in place without new ideas to explore. Things happen solely because the plot needs them to more than anything we can believe the characters would allow (like Deborah letting her vigilante killers go without looking at them, or Quinn not being concerned with the murder of his mentor and dropping his suspicion of Dexter). Grade: C-
Season 6…What It’s About: A “pair” of religious killers (Edward James Olmos and Colin Hanks) become the Doomsday Killers, but it’s really just Colin Hanks imagining he has a partner. Dexter struggles with religious questions and what he wants to leave behind to his son. At the very end, Dexter kills Doomsday and Deborah walks in on him doing it, uh-oh…Review: A weak season that many consider to be the worst. People don’t like the over-earnest Doomsday Killers, who feel a little humorless for Dexter’s world. The large majority of the season just feels like they’re killing time and letting the clock run out, not a great thing for a show that still has two full seasons left. Grade: C
Season 7…What It’s About: Dexter has to deal with Deborah now knowing his secret, plus threats both small (a weird guy who starts dating Dexter’s nanny, who’s also Angel’s sister), large (a Ukrainian gangster played by Ray Stevens), and enormous (his boss begins looking strongly at him as the real Bay Harbor Butcher). Although perhaps the most interesting developments are Deborah revealing to Dexter that she likes him romantically and the appearance of Hannah, a serial poisoner that Dexter falls for. [How’s that for an interesting love triangle?] Stevens’ gangster (who turns out to be gay, and oddly sympathetic) dies a few episodes before the end of the season, and the finale focuses on Hannah (Dexter turns her in because she tried to poison Deborah, but she escapes jail) on the loose and Deborah shooting their cop boss to save Dexter from getting caught…Review: After a pair of weak seasons, I think this one is a return to form and really underrated. It cycles through the “big bad storyline” in an unexpected way (the suave Stevens is hard to root against) to really make the end of the season about Dexter’s attempts to save himself from the good guys. His romance with Hannah delivers in a way that his fling with Lumen never did, and the twists feel organic enough to not just seem like a season seven show desperate to mix things up. Grade: B+
Season 8…What It’s About: Dexter meets his “spiritual mother” Dr. Vogel (a wonderfully icy Charlotte Rampling), a psychiatrist who supposedly helped Dexter’s dad write his moral code. She saw it as an opportunity to “improve” psychopaths by having them take each other out. Meanwhile, someone linked to Vogel is dropping bodies in Miami with a piece of their brain removed (they dub him “The Brain Surgeon”). She enlists Dexter’s help in finding him, while Deborah continues to bottom out over killing her boss at the end of season 7. She’s working as a PI and slowly disintegrating, but begins to slowly improve around the middle of the season. Also around that time, Dexter takes a protege and Hannah resurfaces to add an injection of life into the series…Review: Although I can’t say for sure until the series finale ends tonight (the ending of a season is half the ballgame), I’m not dazzled by the season so far. Everything so far just feels inessential and like the series is running out the clock. I mean, when the show has not one, not two, but three crucial plot lines centering around Quinn (his relationship with Jamie while dealing with ex-fiancee Deborah, him wanting a promotion, and tailing Dexter’s protege as part of a murder investigation), you know things are being stretched a little thin. Grade: We’ll just have to see what the finale brings, but so far I’m tempted not to go higher than a B-
In General: I’ve always been annoyed by Dexter’s constant voiceovers and the presence of his grim, “ghost” father. It seems like lazy storytelling tricks used to spell everything out for the brain dead. I’ve also never liked that Dexter (the series) has never developed a strong supporting cast. The folks working at Miami Metro just feel like space-fillers to pad out Dexter’s more interesting stories. Yet the most troubling thing is that the series seems to practice a form of hero-worship of Dexter (the character). Whereas Breaking Bad’s Walter White is demonized to an excessive degree by its creative team (BB’s creator gives 20 interviews a week talking about what a monster Walter is in a way that feels like overkill), Dexter’s creative team clearly view him as a noble vigilante hero, and maybe that’s why things have always worked out a little too conveniently for him. The central question of the show seems not to be “Can a psychopath change?” but “Should a psychopath even want to?” Exploring Dexter’s inner psyche for eight seasons has shown us that there really isn’t that much to explore. It’d be like taking a shark to therapy. However, the show’s plot moves fast and in a pure-thriller sense, it works more often than it doesn’t. Grade for entire series: B