“Dexter” — The British Invasion (Season Finale)
The daily routine.
And so another mostly successful season comes to a close for America’s favorite (?) serial killer, Dexter Morgan. Good times were had, capture was evaded, blood was spilled, and all with a catchy Latin beat! I’ll slice and dice the details after the jump…
What I love about Dexter is that the actual narrative drama of an episode can be kind of meh at times but the ideas the series dabbles in are seriously heavy and often outshine the frequently maddening plot.
Such was the case for this, the series second season. A year ago I speculated there wasn’t any more emotional ground to be mined from the character after the big season one revelation. On this I was completely wrong. The big reveal a few episodes back where we learn Dexter’s dad was horrified of the monster he created and by extension making the audience (us) complicit in both of our blood lust was startling on a level you don’t often experience with television — it took us out of the show and made us think about our own motivations. Sadly, the season reached that emotional peak with a lot of story left to tell, making the finale, for the most part, heavy on plot.
Once Lila blew up Doakes (talk about your ungraceful series exits), we all could collectively relax about the possibility that she’d be the one to blow Dexter’s cover (so to speak). From that point forward it was pretty obvious what was going to happen. There would be some mid-grade cat-and-mouse but ultimately Dexter would have to kill Lila and then go on with his life as the new self-actualized Dexter we had grown to know and love.
That this unfolding of events isn’t particularly exciting should be of no real surprise to anyone, but what caught me off guard while watching this season finale was the realization about halfway through the episode that we’re suppose to be rooting FOR Dexter and AGAINST Lila. What’s the difference exactly? Aside from the fact that Dexter is the star of the show and Lila is technically a tourist, these characters are the same. Both are “emotionless killers” hell-bent on personal survival. The only difference is Dexter kills with a code and Lila kills for love (though not the love of the kill). Lila is presented as being the crazy, obsessive, villain but is that because we don’t get to hear her inner monologue? In short, the series is asking us to not only root for Dexter but to assume his ethics. For a show that so frequently dabbles in flat characters and ridiculous, pointless side-stories that is some heavy shit to drop at the feet of your audience, and is precisely the reason why the series is so significant as a piece of entertainment.
All in all I think I’d say that I liked season two way more than season one despite its obvious shortcoming. While I might had a better idea as to where things were going dramatically, nothing could really prepare me for the emotional head-games it was able to put its audience through. I’m dying to see how Les Moonves adapts the show for CBS.
