There are spoilers. It feels like I'm the last person in the viewing world who watches Dexter to have completed Season 5, but if you are a fan and have not watched it, it's probably best not to read what I write here.
It always takes me a while to catch up with Dexter. I am not a Showtime subscriber. When the season becomes available on Netflix, I generally wait out the wait, and then I find myself waiting some more. Often when I do start watching it, I then wonder why I waited so long. This season, even after I started watching it, I dawdled. I questioned whether I wanted to continue. I started thinking of it in a very analytical way, the death of any form of entertainment, particularly this venture, where, as the seasons go on, it demands a more significant suspension of disbelief.
The problem is, in every season, Dexter's other life as a serial killer is almost revealed. In every season the writers seem to want to amp up the riskiness, or maybe that's just human nature. If you have been living this life for this long, maybe you ultimately do want to be caught. There were moments in this season—the death in the public restroom, the killing in the warehouse with investigators literally moments away, the murder in the hotel room—how is it that no one would hear and report the melee that occurred there? There are Quinn's suspicions and the subsequent secret investigation of Dexter. Does Quinn really believe that Deb, if handed photographs showing her brother and a woman on a boat throwing garbage bags in the water, would not want to know and to ask questions? The writers want to make us believe that Deb is this ace investigator and that she also has a blind spot about her brother, but to me that would only go so far. To me it would be more believable if there was a scene between Quinn and Deb where he would basically say, "Look, I know you love your brother. I just want you to look at what I found, and then you can make up your own mind." Then have the writers write themselves out of that. That would be interesting.
It feels too easy to me. Are we really supposed to believe that Deb would, after all of her work on this case, let the killers (Dexter and Lumen) go? Their identities are conveniently hidden before a curtain. Yes, the reasoning is supposed to be: Deb narrowly escaped a similar fate in her past. She's been watching all the DVDs of the tortures in this case. She knows what these men did. She has a certain admiration for this woman and her lover for avenging these victims. But I don't believe that she would really let them go free. I think she would have set those feelings aside and done the police work, because that is what the writers have established for me that this character would do. Simiarly, I do not believe that Quinn would in the end decide that for the love of Deb, he will not reveal what he knows about Dexter. It has been established that he can be a dirty cop, but if he was so concerned about Dexter before and now he was many more reasons to back up his concern, I don't think I've been given enough reasons to think that he would allow someone to continue killing.
I did like the work of Julia Stiles as Lumen, the woman who was meant to be a victim, who pairs up with Dexter to make it right for herself. However, again, I felt that it seemed a given that in important moments when she was told to do something, she would always go against common sense and venture into dangerous situations. That was annoying to me, and it again felt like a way to advance the plot, where I wished they could have thought of a more imaginative way to move the story along.
I now try not to read about Dexter until I see the season. I made the mistake of reading too much about Season 4. That was one where the ending should have been a revelation, but it was something I already knew would happen. However, I have heard general news about Season 6, and none of it seems good. I probably will try to watch it, similar to a person who passes an accident and somehow just has to look. Apparently there will be a Season 7. I am really curious to see if they can somehow figure out how to redeem themselves and wrap this up.
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