Yeah, season 4 was on my list of favorite seasons ever. But I think I'm knocking it out of that list because of the rest of the show. The more I think about it and the more I read about it, season 4 really was kind of weak. On a rewatch (which will never happen unless I'm given 4+ figures) I think I'd really dislike it. All the other favorite seasons of mine are rewatchable until their able to be completely quoted.

Lithgow was fine...but S4 was when Dexter doesn't kill Trinity so he can learn from him how to be a family man. jfc.

Agreed completely. The end of Doakes is where it all went wrong, and Season 4 had a weak plot that was overshadowed by great acting. That said, weak plots can work as long as you can keep the viewers in suspense and not thinking about the plot, which is why Season 4 was still a success.

Lithgow was without doubt the best villain on the series. The rest of Season 4 was pretty meh. But at least Dexter wasn't being so terribly out of character like he was in season 7 and 8.

worst wrap to a series ever? holy ****ing **** was that bad

they introduced random storylines for the minor characters that went nowhere. i mean it's sad that they clearly needed them to fill up the show, bc they had nothing to say or do with the extra time otherwise. i figured they'd at least wrap them up in some half-assed way in order to say that they did, but no, not really. pure filler brought in for the last season and basically dropped without closure. amazing.

then there's the characters acting in idiotic ways from ep to ep with no rhyme or reason. not even gonna bother with all the lolplothole problems. Dexter lacking any kind introspection or self-awareness until the final moments, then making decisions that made zero sense. i mean why did he fake his death and abandon Hannah and Harrison again? i thought he realized that he loved them and Deb more than killing, and didn't really have that urge anymore. i also saw the creators explain that it was for their protection, but in what sense? doesn't Elway know that Hannah fled to South America, and won't he still be after her? (might be harder with international laws, extraditions, etc but i imagine he's at the very least gonna pass along everything he knows to police agencies)

1-4 and 7 are only watchable seasons. 6 and 8 were terribad. At least during season 5 it was only the start of the downfall, and you still had a glimmer of hope it would turn around while watching.

i'd recommend that ppl stop after season 2, the few highs after that aren't really worth everything else

and i'm sure it's already been linked in the last few pages, but the AV Club review is a must-read, they ****in' nailed it

Tell me what makes s3 watchable

ffs a good part of my life has been wasted.

Terrible ending, etc, etc.

Man, this show was so good its first four seasons and from that to this. I could barely bring myself to watch this season. At least it's over.

The Kyle Butler thing was pretty bad. It was the first instance of a recurring pattern where Dexter seems to assume that people who can expose him and have nothing to lose by doing that subscribe to a version of Omerta code that prevents them from testifying against Dexter.

At least the whole Mazuka's daughter plotline payoff was amazing

Scott Buck's wiki entry has been edited to say:

Nice. Between that guy and the chick who ran The Killing, I'm shocked at the lack of talent at these high levels in the industry.

Hey, at least we got boobs out of that, even if they were daughter boobs.

It's kind of funny seeing everyone turn on this show in s8 (not 2+2 but the general public). Obviously it still has a big fan base but reading around the net seems like everyone has really soured on it - but the same people still enjoyed S5 - 7, I don't really have a point, just kind of weird I guess. Would have thought Hanks/Religion Ghost guy arc would have set people off.

The reason so many people turned on this show in the last season is because you expect a climax of some sort in a last season.

Having only 12 episodes left for a show is like having inoperable cancer with 6 months to live, you get to focus on what's important and you can act boldly with so little to lose.

Instead, we got an unfocused mess of a season, with no compelling plots in sight, side quests no one cares about, huge holes in logic, inexplicable decisions by characters and bad acting.

To me, it was obvious this show can only end in two ways: either Dexter gets caught, or he dies.
In the last episode, Dexter gets caught on tape killing a guy and whistles his way out of the police station, then pilots his boat into a storm only to survive as a lumberjack.
This was a purely commercial decision, so as to keep the franchise alive, with MCH or someone else.

Such breathtaking cynicism. How do you know the writers didn't feel like becoming a lumberjack was the natural end to Dexter's character arc?

I actually wonder if that scene was tacked on by the suits. The ending is still meh without that but makes more narrative sense. And the scene itself is such a bizarre sequence, without any real suspense or visual impact.

No more difficult than if they moved to Canada. Since the USA has had an extradition treaty with Argentina for almost 15 years...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ition_treaties

With Dexter as a lumberjack with full beard, they can have him be played by another actor with nobody the wiser. That's why he became a lumberjack of all things. Brilliant!

TIL - Dexter is actually a prequel to Man of Steel.

S4 is great simply because Lithgow can play one scary creepy serial killer

disagree. I don't see how that killed the show. Crappy writers is what did it in

I don't think Elway had any real personal beef with Hannah, save for maybe after the drugging on the bus. His interest in Hannah was strictly a monetary thing, was it not? I think there's a pretty big difference between sinking resources in to finding someone in your hometown and sinking resources in to finding someone on an entirely different continent.

I'd way rather focus on other, more glaring plotholes tbh.