These last two weeks have been good and bad. I got a new job, which I still haven't decided whether I should put it in the good pile or the bad one. The job is the same as last time, but it has new management so things might be better than they were before. I spent the last two weeks doing basically zip, and I loved each day of it. All my TV-watching habits were expelled out of my system in a wonderful week of nothing. This is the last day of this wonderfulness, so I thought I would start to get back on track.
I started watching Dexter a few years ago, mostly because I enjoyed Michael C. Hall's narration and the overall delicate style of such a ruggedly brutal show, but the solidity of the show comes directly from the evolution of Dexter's mind. From the first season to now, it's clear that things have changed for him. He has a family, is married, and has a thousand more responsibilities than he can usually handle. It's hard to make a sociopath grow as a character, in fact it's probably one of the most difficult character traits to try to develop. The main device of being a sociopath is not being able to register emotions. Imagine having to act as a character who has literally zero emotions (okay, that's changed a little too), but also has to fake emotions to make himself seem real. That's gotta be tough.
While I stopped watching mainly because there were no new episodes at the time I finished the second season, I think a lot of it had to do with finding a way to make a better season than that one. Season two was incredible in a million different ways. Doakes and Lila were perfect foils for Dexter, and their parts in the second season will always be some of the best conflicts in the Dexter saga.
Sadly, the third season was a major disappointment for me. Jimmy Smits plays the main antagonist, and I gotta say that I just didn't like looking at this guy's face. I didn't believe him when he was angry, and had no sympathy for him when he was sad, and whatever was in between wasn't so great either. I hate watching shows where a character that you start of not liking (not because he's an antagonist, but just because the character doesn't work) becomes one of the main people in the show. I really wished they dealt with him better than they did.
It wasn't just that, though, it was the general story. For the first time, Dexter let's someone into his personal world. This surprised me in its delivery more than its content. It felt like it happened way too fast, like I didn't know Miguel Prado well enough to have him actually take part in Dexter's killings. Then by the end, it doesn't really feel like a logical resolution to everything. Anti-climactic, if anything.
Truth is, I didn't even want to watch the fourth season. I had about six days left in my amazing week of nothing before I had to start working again, and I wasn't really up for wasting another couple days on a eventual waste of time. I did it anyway because of the raving reviews I've read on the fourth season. Thankfully, they were right. The fourth season had an amazing first few episodes, setting in motion the main plotlines for the entire series in brutal and shocking ways.
John Lithgow gives an amazing performance as the Trinity killer. Like a lot of other people, I laughed when I heard he was going to play a crazy murderer, but that's because I've really only seen him on 3rd Rock from the Sun and playing his guitar for kids on the Treehouse Network. As crazy as the guy gets, the scene I remember the most is one of the first ones we see him in where he murders a woman in a bathtub. Creepy shit, and I get shocks of pain thinking about that cut he makes on the ephemeral artery. Ick.
Though I've given away a few spoilers so far in this post, I refuse to give away the ending. The last 50 seconds of 'The Getaway" are a complete twist, throwing the series into a whole new direction. They even made several different endings as to not let a leak be anywhere near reliable.
The series doesn't pick up again until next September, so we have a while yet until we get to see how Dexter deals with his new predicament. In the coming weeks, expect to see more posts. Sunday's include a talk about the new Simpsons episode, Monday's will have a review of the latest House M.D., as well as a blurb on the new Parks and Recreation episodes that start airing again on the 29th of this month.
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