Quote:
Originally Posted by DC11GTR
Lest I forgot
NAILED IT!!
Easily the best moment of the episode.
It was bad. Not quite season 6 bad but still damn bad. And yet... I kinda enjoyed it anyway. Maybe it's because it's summer so there's so little TV on or maybe I've just gone insane.
The Good:
****ing password
The Bad:
Awful (or if not awful then at least far too obvious/uninspired/clichéd) scene-to-scene writing, especially how they handle exposition. We all know that they're terrible at this and they were on good form this episode. Batista's speech at the funeral explaining how he became a cop again was a particular highlight.
Awful writing from a more holistic viewpoint. They've taken away what was appealing about Dexter's character. He's supposed to be like a wolf in sheep's clothing and that's what's interesting. The first two seasons showed that this alone was enough, and that merely the risk of getting found out was exciting enough. Instead they've just tried to make him normal but flawed like a sheep in wolf's clothing in sheep's clothing. Like, if he tries enough and just believes himself or finds religion (season 6) or love (season 5) or understanding (season 7) then he can shed his dark passenger and become a real boy, for the sake of his son! Yay! Nope. Not buying it. Definitely not. Don't care. They're definitely overreaching and they've committed a cardinal sin of television writing: they've defied their own premise. They broke their code. As soon as you break your code your days are numbered and you're forced into either being downright terrible or self parody (or seemingly more and more frequently, both). Dexter can't be a deep emotional character. You can't change that, the premise is what the premise is. If you wanted a 'deep' character then you should've come up with a different premise, not tried to shoehorn one into this premise.
Lack of follow-through: The mark of a good long running serial (and I mean specifically serials, rather than procedurals or shows that have significant parts of both like The X-Files. Yes this has had some procedural elements but not many.) is have everything constantly escalate (escalation is key, without escalation your show will be boring, guaranteed) without either running out of steam or it seeming implausible. Often that means more or less 'resetting' at the end of a major arc or season or whatever. At the end of the first season they did a good job of this, of bringing everything to a head and then making it seem at least somewhat believable when things went back to normal and then having it escalate again for another great season. This season, and in the last couple, they've not done a good job of this at all. They just ignore what has gone previously. They're writing without much logic or a plan.
Lazy writing techniques. Specifically: Arbitrary introduction of major characters (in this case the psychology woman). Don't know how to write the season? I know, why don't we just introduce another character that will solve all of our writing problems? Great! Now, who wants to clock off and grab some pizza? We don't care about the character and so her playing a large part in the resolution of the show is unsatisfying. Remember how great Doakes was? What if in season two he had just been some random who was introduced? It wouldn't nearly have been as good. Any characters that aren't playing a dramatic function shouldn't be there, they could and should have given her function to an existing character. After the end of last season someone should be able to figure it out so why they didn't do this, having everyone else act like oblivious morons, and introduced an unnecessary character, is mindboggling.
I'm sure I can come up with a lot more to go under the bad but I doubt many people are still reading at this point.
The Ugly:
Def not the babysitter