Dexter Darkly Departs

 

 

SPOILERS!!!!

To get into the proper mood for this, I highly recommend you put on this Youtube video of a solo piano rendition of the Blood Theme from Dexter. Set it to repeat as you read this and you won’t regret it. The song is beautiful, haunting and creepy. For the multisensory experience.

 

 

The day has come. There will be no more makeshift kill rooms for Dexter. No more vetting suspects that slipped through the cracks. Dexter met his end Sept 22 2013. It was a day I both dreaded and couldn’t wait to get to. I discovered Dexter one long weekend when my cousin was watching a marathon on whatever the local crime cable channel is. I have been hooked since to this guy who brings new meaning to the phrase “brings something to the table”. If you want to learn more about Dexter Morgan’s background this is the official show webpage by Showtime.  I also enjoyed the Dexter discussions in podcast form here. For now just know that Dexter is a deeply disturbed individual who has been a serial killer of serial killers all his adult life.

 

 

Well, I don’t really think that the end can be assessed as of itself as being the end because what does the end feel like? It’s like saying when you try to extrapolate the end of the universe, you say, if the universe is indeed infinite, then how – what does that mean? How far is all the way, and then if it stops, what’s stopping it, and what’s behind what’s stopping it? So, what’s the end, you know, is my question to you.

David St.Hubbins.

 

One way of surmising the end is to look at the long running characters in the show which are mostly Dexter’s Miami Metro co-workers and his family and see how the series parted with them:

• Angel Batista was a goody goody throughout the show regardless of the fact his two marriages crumbled and you never saw him with his kid (s) at least later on in the show. Dexter said something very early in the run ” The only real question I have is why in a building full of cops, all supposedly with a keen insight to the human soul, is Doakes the only one who gets the creeps from me. “  Angel was the worst offender. I am glad nothing happened to him directly.

• Lt. Maria LaGuerta- Batista’s one flaw is that he was attracted to a self serving she devil like LaGuerta. Attracted enough to marry her. It was her death at the end of Season 7 by Deb’s hand that set up the latter’s psycholigical tail spin. Back when I was still not a Dexter watcher, looking at the trailers I thought she was a grown up Kim Fields from Facts of Life fame. Classic career climber who eats up people in her way. Good talker when it came to the police force press duties. Of all the Dexter charcters she is the most like Noynoy Aquino. Quick to take the credit, quick to back stab and will never own up to a mistake. Like Noynoy she also sleeps with men.
• Vince Masuka- though Japanese on the show, his surname could be a subtle salute to pinoy pride since that is what you feel like doing when you hear his references and cracks. Sometimes while they are all examining a crime scene with the corpse still there. I am not sure if Masuka ever did look for love though he was obsessed with looking for lust. This season he found the daughter he never knew he had. Maybe the sole purpose of introducing her was to set up a situation where the normally lewd Vince would turn into a prude.
• Joey Quinn- may be the most volatile supporting character. He has been extremely unsympathetic at times since his introduction in Season 3. Quinn like everybody in the Dexter universe has hard luck when it comes to love. The women leave him no matter what. A lot of it is self induced given his occasional dependence on alcohol and how he sometimes carries on with his job like a pinoy politician. Nothing good ever comes from Joey proposing marriage.
• Harrison Morgan- Dexter’s only biological child. Like his father, he was witness to his mother’s agonizing death and bathed in her blood as a result. The public Dexter made his living reading blood at a murder scene like a story. Now you know why. I don’t know who really buys him being so comfortable with Hannah enough to go away with her. Upon further review I might be comfortable with Hannah despite all the corpses she has been responsible for. The real test of Hannah being a psychopath is if she was ever in any way, shape or form comfortable with me. I have watched Dexter for so long now care for his wife, his child, his sister and his his step children that it did hurt to hear him say his final goodbye to Harrison even if it was under false pretenses. Now that I look back on the show, it’s amazing how Harrison is so comfortable around three serial killers: his dad, Hannah McKay and Travis Marshall. The show sadly says bye to Harrison with no closure in terms of his father.
• Special Mention to Mike Anderson. He was brought in during the Doomsday Killer season from Chicago. Besides being likable and good at his job, his sudden death caused me to exert a loud yelp in the middle of the night during my viewing of the opener for Season 7. There were sleeping relatives in the vicinity.

 

Make no mistake that TV fans not only Dexter fans were spoiled with Season 4. The excellent story line combined with John Lithgow’s Emmy winning performance and the shocking ending may have wrecked the rest of the series for many. Some people think every episode/ season after that should be penalized for not being that. Yet creative people struggle with fine line all the time. They try to do something different and they hear complaints “it’s not the same”. You try to keep to your roots and you are accused of being stale, going nowhere and a self parody.

 

It dawned on me that Dexter all through it’s run hit on parental or parental figure issues. The dysfunctional death inducing Dexter was apparently born in a storage container bathed in his mother’s blood ( Laura Moser ).  A three year old Dexter and his brother Brian witnessed the slaughter. His conversations with the “spirit ” of his dead step father Harry served as his Jiminy Cricket. Deb was always jealous of the attention Dexter got growing up from Harry.  Little did Deb know that Harry was trying to refine Dexter’s homicidal tendencies. Trinity was born out of Mommy issues which then affected his two daughters and his son. Rudy, Saxon, Doomsday Killer all seem to be motivated by a parental figure or abandonment issues of a parental figure. Characters like Jake Elway and Quinn are both glad to be out of their family’s shadow. Masuka was surprised this season to know he has an adult daughter with a matching laugh.

How I would have epilogued Dexter? Fast forward five years and Hannah would be a consultant to religious cults in neighboring South American countries that wanted to commit genocide. Fast forward another 12 years and Harrison would be vetting people and setting up kill rooms. Then again maybe that’s why I write blogs making fun  of Noynoy Aquino and his deluded followers instead of writing for Dexter.

 

“Somehow he’s deluded himself into thinking his feelings for his sister are genuine,unaware there are no real emotions behind them”

From Dr. Vogel’s notes observing the adult Dexter

 

Miami is known as a sunny place and an interesting choice of city to set this dark crime drama. I find myself rooting for a guy who has this insatiable urge to kill. I guess I myself am dark. How Deb meets her end makes sense . If we learned anything in Dexter, nothing good ever happens when he delays a kill. As if anything really good happens with a kill period. Dexter did a similar euthanasia kill for an old friend with Key Lime pie back in Season 3. As for Deb’s burial place, I doubt the Atlantic Ocean will be enough to dilute that potty mouth. Deb cared, Deb gave , Deb put up with LaGuerta and Deb did her job. Dexter’s desire to “learn” something from Trinity cost him Rita. His cheerful mood sensing an impending happily ever after scenario with Hannah and Harrison made him spare Saxon. Deb paid  the price for the delay and  that really did push Dexter  over the edge. It  made him realize that no matter what he does, he can not hope to continue to put his finger in the dike of darkness and not have it eventually spill over to his loved ones. Out of Deb’s half dozen love interests on the show, the one I liked the best was Frank Lundy and oddly enough they are reunited ultimately. You want to see a reasonable Deb lookalike go here.

 

After two days of “reflection” Dexter actually got off easy. Sgt. James Doakes did nothing wrong and yet had his name is forever sullied just to keep Dexter’s cover for six seasons. From a morals standpoint, LaGuerta had that going for her although remains to be seen if she would have done that for anybody since Doakes used to be her lover. There seems to be no accountability for the disappearance of Deb despite being a member of the police force. No logical reason for Dexter to be on his boat with the Mother of all storms raging. Batista and Quinn acquit Dexter from killing Saxon so calmly while Deb’s life and marbles hang in the balance?  The final episode seemed to have story elements we saw in  Man of Steel and Dark Knight Rises.   Maybe the end  seemed illogical and rushed but I am still sad Dexter is gone.  The Internet is full of complaints of how it all ended. For what it’s worth, the creative team behind the last few seasons of Dexter explain themselves here.

 

 

Dexter Morgan could not have it all. There is no way he was going to live happily ever after. He loved Rita and that ended as bad as it possibly could. He had a fling with Lila and she was even more a homicidal maniac than he was. He seemed happy with Lumen and that fizzled. He was going to commit to Hannah before and all she did was try to kill Deb and then she got herself on the APB list. Why should the last show be any different? I find it odd Dexter would end it’s eight season run the same time the U.P. plagiarizing scandal is raging here. Because it seems that the Dexter writers based his love life on James Yap.

 

In the end Dexter did prove Dr.Vogel wrong. He is a sociopath that did care. He loved so much that he did what he thought was best and got his surviving love ones as far away as possible from him lest they befall the same fate as Deb, Harry,Vogel and Rita. With that big a sample size, I could see Dexter making that decision. One question remains. Why did Dexter have to end now? There are a few members of Congress and Senate locally that could use his hands on approach.

 

Lovingly dedicated to my cousin who got me into Dexter a few years ago. Watching the finale for the season together became a Christmas tradition despite the many miles apart.