Amph [Showtime] Your favorite serial killer, Dexter!

Not to beat a horse skeleton, but I think the AV Club review of tonight's episode (plus this comment) is perfect.

 

I just realized I haven't watched this show in three weeks.

 

Dexter has really become an absolute trainwreck, only I can't even look on at the carnage. That AV Club article is absolutely spot-on. I actually felt that the show recovered a bit during season 7, but this season has managed to undue any goodwill earned.

The supposed leaked ending is just the cherry on the crap sandwich. Its single redeeming quality is that it confirms a theory that I've had for a few years.

 

What is the leaked ending?

Spoiler

All I know about is the ****ing hurricane.

 

I just don't understand how a writing staff can't or won't figure out how it's going to end its show. It's arguably the single most important thing to accomplish in telling a story because it allows the writers to stay several steps ahead of the audience (like Breaking Bad) without having to invent massive quantities of new information with each new episode; ie the viewers have almost all the same information that the writers have. Clearly, this is not the case with Dexter. I know it's not over, yet, but with just three episodes remaining, the show has clearly passed the point of no return on the way to abject failure.

I'll still remember this show for its first half, however, especially seasons 1 and 4.

 

Maybe it has all been one giant morality tale. They have chosen to teach people not to enjoy torture porn shows by making their actual product abjectly terrible, reflective of the decency of the undertaking in the first place.

 

Maybe solojones can provide us with a few theories as to what's been going on in Dexter's writing room? I know she's probably been busy with work as of late, but I'd love to hear from her.

edit: you know, the sad thing is, wocky, in the earlier seasons of Dexter, you knew Dexter was this absolute monster who you would cross the street to avoid, but the last half of the series has turned him into ****ing Mr. Rogers.

 

Spoiler

Just as Dexter is about to kill Saxon, he and Saxon get shot from behind. In walks Matthews, who reveals that he has known about Dexter since the beginning, and that he and Vogel created the Code. He then claims that Dexter has 'failed' before shooting him in the head. There is then supposed to be a montage of Deb and Dex's funerals (I forget how Deb is supposed to bite it), the aforementioned hurricane bull****, and Matthews taking custody of Harrison. Harrison looks over to see Dexter waving at him, because yay new Dark Passenger or whatever.

So its single virtue would be confirming that Matthews knows about Dexter's recreational activities.

Obviously there's no real way of confirming it for a few more weeks, and the key term is 'alleged' spoiler, but the AV Club comments aren't the first place that I've seen this rumor.

 

The sad thing is, it will not be seen as a failure by most measures. The ratings are the highest they've ever been, and more (dumb) people than ever love this show. Hell, look at the reactions to season six. The people who hated it were clearly in the minority. The voices of critics won't matter. Scott Buck and his staff will be handed great jobs and large piles of cash for new projects, if that hasn't happened already. Only consolation for those with more than a couple brain cells is that Dexter will probably fade from memory and be overshadowed by so many great shows. This summer will be remembered as Breaking Bad's last, not Dexter's.

RC-1991 Oh my God. Apparently the spoilers have been correct so far. Well, I have a drinking game:

1. Every second Dexter is on, drink the bottle.

 

Guy: I never watched Breaking Bad's previous seasons while they were first airing, so I don't know if any of them aired at the same time as any Dexter seasons in the last few years, but it's absolutely grotesque watching Dexter and Breaking Bad side-by-side these last few weeks.

The visual that most immediately comes to mind is one of swimming, actually. Commentators like to joke that an average joe lap swimmer should swim in an outside lane next to an Olympic swimming event so viewers can see just how fast the Olympic swimmers are. Dexter is that average joe lap swimmer. It's painful.

 

IIRC, Breaking Bad's first three seasons aired in spring and season 4 and 5A aired in summer (I think July). Up until this season, Dexter started in late September. There's never been nearly this much overlap between the airings, if any at all, and yes, it makes the crappiness all the more painful.

 

My friend has Showtime so I watch Dexter there. I try to get him to watch Dexter first just to get it out of the way before we watch the splendor that is Breaking Bad, but we always watch BB first because we just can't help ourselves - that show is SO good.

 

Spoiler: most recent episode

ETA: and someone on r/Dexter just posted a great breakdown of why this season is such a letdown after the season 7 finale. http://www.reddit.com/r/Dexter/comments/1l7fyl/the_official_dexter_sucks_now_and_has_gone/cbwmb82

 

I am officially thinking of not watching the final two episodes out of pure spite.

 

I think its been 5 weeks since I watched this show now. Join the club.

 

Now that Boardwalk Empire has started, there are two other much, much better shows on Sunday night. I will watch until the end, though, no matter how painful or how bored I get. This is out of spite. I want to be able to properly **** on the finale.

 

The best episode of this season was the episode that aired on the Sunday before Labor Day.

 

Sooooo, with two episodes left, what do we have?

- Deb and Quinn are back together. What purpose does their rekindled relationship serve? Are the writers trying to make us care about them more before they are killed off by the Brain Surgeon? Since the audience may be somewhat invested in Deb's life/death, they could be using the pairing to increase the caring for Quinn like they did with Hannah by showing Dexter/Harrison's caring for her.

- So the Brain Surgeon kills his own mother, who next? Dexter? Deb? Hannah? Harrison? All the above?

- Marshal Max Clayton pretty much has put it all together and knows that Hannah and Dexter are planning on leaving the country together. I love Kenny Johnson as an actor, but are the writers really going to give all the glory of capturing two serial killers to this random recurring character that was just introduced 1 episode ago?

- Sean Patrick Flanery's character has pretty much served zero purpose since the beginning of the season. Where is his story going?

 

I've given up at this point. I don't think that I've watched the last 3 or 4 episodes, and I don't plan to watch the finale.

I am curious as to which set of spoilers for the finale turns out to be accurate, as there are a good 2 or 3 floating around at this point.

 

One episode left and of course last night's episode was craptastic. Am I the only one left watching this **** show?

Any thoughts on what is going to happen to Deb? Is Dexter going to live or no?

 

I stopped watching after the first episode....of season 1.

 

I predict that Dex gets off scot-free, because the writers decided that he's Batman rather than Bateman.

I stopped watching around the 6th episode of this season. It's just so awful at this point.

 

Everyone could tell Deb was going to get shot. The regular "oh let's hug it out because we will all be fine" with Dexter then yep there we go. I hope Dexter doesnt get caught because none of these losers deserve to catch him to be honest.

I was expecting a really good last season but this is just the same old stuff we have had for the past few years. Nothing surprising, nothing good. Just bad.