Warning: Full spoilers for Dexter below.
This week marks the 10th anniversary of Dexter, which made its debut on Showtime on October 1st, 2006, and to mark the occasion, we're once more looking back at the entirety of the series to reflect upon the good times and the bad.
Plenty of fans still feel stung by how the show ended, but it's worth remembering that when Dexter was good, it was great. And when it tightened the vice, the pressure could be devastating. Let's not forget that there was a time when we were all telling our friends, "You have to see this show! It's totally awesome and twisted!"
So let's put it all on record. Which seasons sizzled? Which sank like an anchor? And at what point did Dexter's "ingenuity and originality" turn into "textbook Dexter blunder?" Here are all eight seasons of Dexter, ranked from worst to best...
There's a strong case to be made for Season 6 being at the bottom of this list, but Season 8 was the final season. It's what the writers and producers chose to leave us with. And while it didn't, let's say, add up to nothing like Season 6 did, it gave fans a ton of stuff that no one wanted, including plot points and revelations that weren't just unsatisfying, but intolerable. None of the supporting cast (save for Quinn occasionally) was brought into the main story, leaving them to flail and falter in their own weird, unwanted side stories, while the wonderfully intense hostility between Dexter and Deb, which was set up excellently in the Season 7 finale, was "solved" after four episodes - reverting everything back to its previously banal status quo.
Meanwhile, none of the new characters (whose final season presence was suspect anyhow) paid off like they should have, while both Deb and Hannah were transformed from ferocious to toothless. And let's not forget the ending itself - the one we all wished we could wrap in plastic and stab in the chest.
Before Season 8, this was the season that was looked at as the most wheel-spinning, stalling run of episodes the show had ever produced. Completely designed to waste twelve episodes of TV in order to give us the shocking ending that it should have given us at the end of Season 5 (Deb catching Dexter in the midst of a kill), Season 6 decided that it would be fun to explore Dexter while he explored the nature of religion. Except it wasn't fun. Not at all.
This was the first year that Dexter really and truly acted just plain dumb, as we watched him be painfully two steps behind a big "twist" that most everyone figured out right out of the gate (yet still took up nine episodes of the season). Not only that, but there were elements to the shocking reveal itself that didn't make sense - like why, when Travis discovered proof that he was clearly insane, he instantly went even more insane.
Oh, and on top of all this, Season 6 was when it became clear that we just couldn't trust the Dexter's writers room in terms of where they naturally and organically felt the story should go. Because this was when they decided to have Deb figure out that she was in love with Dexter and yearned for something more than just a close sibling relationship. Like sex. With Dexter. Blerf.
Confidence in competent series guidance forever shaken.
Okay, I think we truly got the two actual terrible seasons out of the way, because Season 5 wasn't bad. I actually liked Julia Stiles' Lumen (I know some didn't) and Dexter's need to help her kill off her rapists as a diversionary tactic for his own grief over Rita. But where Season 5 faltered was in its endgame. Not only did Deb come within a hair's breadth of catching Dexter (he and Lumen were literally behind a translucent sheet!) before letting "the vigilante lovers go free," but Lumen herself decided that she was magically assuaged of her "darkness" -- which was conveniently temporary -- and took off, never to be a part of the series again.
There were a lot of (unconfirmed) tabloid rumors about Julia Stiles and Michael C. Hall at the time, which led to all sorts of rumors and speculation about why she never came back for a guest stint. Whether those stories were true or not -- and it's obviously none of our business -- that didn't change the fact that story-wise, this just wasn't the time for a closed-ended season of Dexter. Season 4's big finish had shaken us all out of the nice "bow on top" endings of Seasons 2 and 3 and few wanted a return to that. Now just imagine that Season 5 had ended with Deb catching Dexter in the act, as she almost did. Season 6 is skipped over and then... right into the story in Season 7. And then that story could have been the final story!
Sorry, I'm fantasy booking Dexter.
Oh, and it was also nearly impossible to buy that Lumen, after suffering that much physical, emotional, and sexual trauma, would quickly hop into the sack with Dexter, no matter how grateful she was for his help.
It was hard to realize, at the time, just how basic Dexter's third season really was. The show was only in its third year and still a fairly fresh, young thing, and the set up of Dexter accidentally killing someone in self-defense -- outside the parameters of the "code" -- was a big-ish deal at the time. But after the intense manhunt of Season 2, Season 3 was, you know... okay. It sufficed. So much of it dealt with Dexter's bizarre friendship with Jimmy Smits' Miguel Prado, who was clearly unhinged from the get go, that it left little time for anything else.
In retrospect, it also would have been better if Dexter and Miguel's murderous partnership/apprenticeship had lasted longer than just one episode - but again, back then, it was just a big deal that someone discovered Dexter was a killer and was let into his world.
More interesting though, from a sociopath aspect, was Dexter having to deal with the notion of becoming a father. In Season 3, Dexter was on his way to becoming more rounded as a human being, but there was still a big learning curve ahead of him.
Another funny thing to think about, when considering Season 3, is that LaGuerta was still a likable and sympathetic character - so much so that one of Dexter's big acts toward the end of the season was saving her from Miguel. This was the time that the show should have had her start piecing together all the stuff that didn't feel right about Doakes being the Bay Harbor Butcher, instead of waiting several more years. Not only was the frame-up job still fresh, but she was still in the audience's good graces, and it would have presented Dexter with more of a challenge about what to do with her.
Dexter takes on the FBI and his own family as our list continues...
Continues
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