Today I watched the final episode of the fourth season of Dexter, and was instantly shattered into a million tiny little pieces of meat by the last three minutes. I really like Dexter, in a rather intense and emotional way. He may be a little warmer and fuzzier than your average serial killer, but his adorable social inadequacies and quirky homicidal tendencies have completely captured my cold raisin heart. He's just so hopelessly damaged, you just want to stuff him full of cotton wool and make a big leathery teddy bear out of him. Definitely the sort of guy I'd like to have a beer with, maybe later beat a teenager or two into a bloody pulp for being too loud and annoying. The first season of Dexter was really cool, and pretty traditionally structured. There was the whole Ice Truck Killer plot, but mostly it was about the kill of the week, which was just fine by me. The second season, however, is where it really started to get to me. There was the police finding all the neatly chopped-up body parts he's been dumping at sea all this time, and that mean ol' detective dude who's always had it in for poor little Dexter, and that crazy British broad ("pardon my tits") he was banging behind his boring girlfriend's back, and it was all so intense that I could physically feel every bit of stress he was under in my own private bones. The third season was also really good, with that dude from L.A. Law playing a lawyer or something in which Dexter finds a friend of sorts. Among other things it has taught me that even when you're utterly desperate for companionship it is sometimes better to be on your own, and that you should never trust anyone with your deepest darkest secrets, unless, that is, if it's really really funny. The season ended in a wholly heartwarming scene, with Dexter getting married and fathering a child and finally coming to terms with his place in the world, so as I was watching the last episode of the new season today I was expecting pretty much the same thing. Boy, was I wrong. The fourth season was all about the Trinity Killer, portrayed by the awesome and mighty John Lithgow. I'm pretty sure I've only seen him before in 3rd Rock as a goofy alien with a scary old witch for a girlfriend, but now I'm totally convinced that he is fully capable of bludgeoning me to death with a stainless steel hammer. We got the usual cat and mouse bit between Dexter and him, which was just as fun and effective as anything I've come to expect from the show, but absolutely nothing could have prepared me for that one final scene, after which nothing in Dexter's world will ever be the same. It was utterly heartbreaking, but also kind of exciting, because I can't even begin to imagine what the next season is going to look like or what this new Dexter, forged once again by this overwhelming tragedy, is going to be like. I really do hope he finds a way to get over it and move on some day, somehow. *sniff*
Darla will indeed be missed
Dexter is based on a series of novels by Jeff Lindsay, two of which I've read a couple of years ago, Darkly Dreaming Dexter and Dearly Devoted Dexter. I guess they were sort of OK, but the TV show is just so much better. The problem is that Book-Dexter comes across as somewhat of an obnoxious dick who thinks he's hilarious even though he obviously isn't. Not nearly as adorable as TV-Dexter. Also, by the end of the first book Dexter's sister finds out about his true nature, and it doesn't really seem to bother her all that much. Are we going to get something like that in season five, now that Debra knows where her brother came from? I guess I'll have to wait about nine months to find out. Ugh.
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