Dexter, Season 5

TV show, 2010-11 season

Do any of you have Showtime?  Calling all premium cable owners.  I need a friend with Showtime so I can watch season 6 when it starts in October.

I've been a Dexter fan since Netflix had the first two seasons streaming about two summers ago.  Since then it has been an arduous process of waiting for each DVD by mail.  It's always worth it, though, because Dexter never disappoints.

This is Dexter. He kills people.

If you haven't seen the show at all, read this paragraph and then stop.  If you have seen the show, jump ahead if you like, where I will go more in depth about the particulars of this season.  Gone?  Ok, noobs.  Dexter is not for the faint of heart.  It's about Dexter Morgan, who is a serial killer.  But he's the good guy.  See, he only kills other killers.  Vigilante-like.  By day, he's a blood spatter analyst for the Miami Metro Police, so he's an expert in forensics and murder, a handy combination.  The series follows his close calls as he takes down one baddie after another, and also follows his family and friends--his potty-mouthed tough cop sister Deb, his girlfriend Rita and her kids, and his intriguing mix of police coworkers.  Each season has a driving plot arc that usually has to do with a tough-to-catch serial killer and how Dexter and the cops are both going after him/her.  The pace is good--early and mid-season episodes sometimes lose steam as they set up the big reveals to come, but those last few episodes are always a good payoff.  I recommend this series highly--to adults only--and only those adults who can handle copious fake blood and bad language.

Dexter with Deb.  They were married in real life. Gross.

Now for you veterans.  Note: spoilers throughout for this season.  I heard some of you didn't like season 5 as much as some of the previous seasons.  I agree that it can't top the Trinity killer, but I thought it was still a good to very good season.  I think its major weakness was that the bad guys (all of them up to and including Jordan Chase) were just not as deliciously maniacal as, say, Trinity or the Ice Truck Killer.  These were just some perverts.  So when push came to shove at the end of the season, it wasn't as fun when the bad guy went down.  I thought Julia Stiles held her own, though--that was one thing I was worried about when I heard she was in this season.  Lumen was an interesting enough character and Stiles played her just right.  The end of her plot line felt a little abrupt, and I was pretty heartbroken for Dexter.  He had what might be his only chance ever to share his lifestyle with someone he loves, and it didn't work out.  That makes me sad.  Leave it to me to get caught up in the romantic subplot of a serial killer show though.

Speaking of which, how about Quinn and Deb, huh?  What's up with that?  Like Deb, I came around on Quinn by the end of the season, after he stopped being a giant jerkface (he also stopped being a good cop, but whatever).  I was pulling for her to get her butt in gear and return his affection.  I hope that Deb has a least a few episodes of solid happy romance in the next season, but I'm not holding my breath.

Get out of my show, you baby.

I was also happy that we managed to ditch Astor and Cody.  They are always just in the way of more important plot lines.  And Astor still managed to get her drunk emo butt in the way of an entire episode.  Harrison was annoyingly both over-involved ("too many nanny stories") and under-considered ("now that I think about it, where is Harrison anyway?  still with the nanny?  that's weird")  I guess part of the draw of the show is trying to figure out how this guy can be a family man and a serial killer at the same time, but I feel like we kind of played that one out back when Rita was still around. I really just want some more creepy crime scenes and Dexter sneaking up on terrifying serial killers.  Also Deb.  I do like Deb.

Seeing Lumen let go of her "dark passenger" (I really hate that phrase) at the end of the season made me wonder if they are setting up the series finale.  Now that they've proven it's possible for a killer to come back to the light, they're allowing for Dexter to do that too.  I hope that we get some more good murders in before then though.  So, who's hosting me for season 6 watching parties?