Dexter season finale: Serial killing ain’t what it used to be

Posted by Dan December 17th, 2008 at 01:13pm In Dexter

Dexter capped off its third season Sunday night with a snoozer of an episode that was the culmination of an uneven season. Twas disappointing.

The season never really found its focus, floundering among multiple plotlines that never really converged in a compelling way. Last season achieved this feat in an astounding fashion — convincingly (if not realistically) allowing all of the disconnected elements of the season play off one another until they all resolved themselves in an explosive last few episodes.

No such luck this time around. There were indeed a variety of plotlines:

• In Dexter’s personal life (the “play within the play” if you will allow me to be pretentious), he was dealing with Rita’s pregnancy and his impending marriage
• There was the case of The Skinner and Deb’s romance with a key witness
• Most notably, there was Miguel Prado and his friendship with the ‘real’ serial killing Dexter

Then, there was Angel’s romance with a fellow cop, Batista’s complicated friendship with Prado and on and on. There were no shortage of plotlines, but few of them really fully developed or meant anything by the end. The biggest example of this phenomenon was the introduction of the pretty useless (if quite hot) character Quinn. He had an interrupted flitation with Deb and an investigation going after him, but all roads led to dead ends.

The season finale ended without a lot of action. In fact, practically none considering the climax of the season occured on the penultimate episode with Dexter finally taking out Miguel Prado. The Skinner met his end in a hurried fashion and most of the episode seemingly revolved around Dexter’s navelgazing self-analysis — accompanied by hallucinations of his deceased father (who, frankly, is wearing out his welcome with his constant meddling from the beyond).

None of this would be tremendously upsetting if the second season hadn’t ended so spectacularly (killing Lila in gay Paris!). Perhaps next season will further some of the abandoned plotlines from this season, particularly the vague sense of mystery surrounding Quinn.

Any other thoughts?

UPDATE: Via John’s link to E! Kristin’s interview with Clyde Phillips. He basically defends the show from people like me who wanted explosions and mayhem.

Some of the blogs were disappointed [in the finale]. Not enough blood. They didn’t want any subtlety. We stand by what we did, and we did a good job. We didn’t want the ending to be the way it’s been the first two years, where the audience was expecting that whatever the problem in Dexter’s life would be dispatched in the last episode in some wonderful, high-energy resolution. We did that in the episode before the last episode. Then we allowed the audience to think, ‘Oh my god! (A) What is going on, because this isn’t the way Dexter is going to end, and (B) What the hell are they thinking of? What are they going to come up with?’ So it was a conscious decision to kill Miguel Prado in the second-to-last episode.

I get it — that ending every season with an orgy of blood and abnormal psychology might make the show a little less deep than it is. But I still stand by the idea that the overall rising action of the season never really materialized into a great payoff.