Dexter, "The Getaway": I want to break free

A review of the "Dexter" season four finale coming up just as soon as you give me all your jewelry...

"This Dark Passenger is ruining my life." -Dexter
"It is your life." -Harry
"I don't want it to be." -Dexter

Whatever issues I've had with "Dexter" season 4, or with the series as a whole in recent years, I have to say that "The Getaway" was the show's strongest finale since season one, and possibly ever. (Been a while since I watched Brian go bye-bye, so I can't compare right now.) Michael C. Hall was as good as he's been on the series at showing a Dexter seriously questioning the path Harry put him on, and wanting desperately to be a real boy, and Jennifer Carpenter continued her recent strong work as Deb found out (some of) the truth about her adopted brother. And if Trinity wound up plastic-wrapped to a table like we all assumed he would be, at least he left a shocking surprise behind with Rita's murder.

As Myles McNutt points out, they lifted the Rita idea from the end of "24" season one, but I didn't see it coming, and I'm glad the writers had the guts to get rid of Rita, a character who's been offering diminishing returns for several seasons now.

I'm not sure I'm off the "'Dexter' should have ended after season two" train, but I'm at least curious to see where they go from here, and if Rita's death will have permanent ramifications (other than making Dex a widower), or if it will wind up being an excuse to again justify the status quo. (Dexter could easily say that if it's his fate to be covered in blood, and to have those he loves suffer the same fate, who is he to fight it?)

After all, Deb only got so close to Dexter's secret and no closer, and Trinity still got chopped up and thrown off of Dexter's boat. "Dexter" is still Showtime's biggest hit, so I don't think it's in anyone's financial interest to radically alter the series, or take steps to bring it closer to an ending.

But if season five finds Dexter to be a genuinely changed man - still a killer, obviously, because no one wants to watch a one-hour drama about a socially awkward blood spatter expert who's only a single dad when he leaves work, but changed in how he relates to the world, and to his need to kill - then I'll be pleased. And if not, at least season four was a big improvement on season three, and had a better ending than season two.

What did everybody else think?

Dexter, "Hello, Dexter Morgan": Dexter the dunce

I'm of two minds about tonight's "Dexter." On the one hand, Jennifer Carpenter continues her strong work this season, and the final sequence was one of the more exciting cat-and-mouse moments the show has done. On the other hand, to get to that moment, Dexter has to get an IQ transplant from Peter Petrelli for most of the episode.

Hopefully, it all leads to a finale that doesn't end the exact way we all assume that it will.

What did everybody else think?

Dexter, "Lost Boys": Correcting a mistake?

Spoilers for last night's "Dexter" coming up just as soon as I remind you that "Project Runway" is on...

Okay, here's my issue with "Lost Boys" (which is more of an issue with the series as a whole): in previous years, the show made it clear that Dexter didn't kill bad guys because he was worried about their victims, but because he had a need to kill, and Harry had drilled it into him that these were the only people he could/should kill. That he was saving other people's lives was a byproduct, but one that meant little or nothing to him. This point was made most explicitly in season two's "An Inconvenient Lie," when Dexter didn't really want to alter his killing timetable even if it meant he would stop the evil car salesman from claiming another victim. So seeing him so torn up about saving the little boy didn't ring true to me, even though part of Dexter's inner struggle was the realization that this killing would be his fault for having foiled Arthur's suicide attempt.

"An Inconvenient Lie" was also notable for giving Frank Lundy (RIP) a speech that tore to shreds any attempt by Dexter - or the audience - to justify his murders as some kind of social good, back in a time when the series viewed Dexter with a lot more moral ambiguity than it does now.

These days, the show is mainly interested in pitting Dexter against other killers so despicable that the audience won't have any compunction about seeing our man put them down. Every time the writers introduce the idea of Dexter killing outside The Code of Harry, they quickly dance away from the implications of that and distract Dexter and us with that season's big bad.

On the one hand, I don't want my TV characters to remain stagnant. So the idea of a Dexter who's growing - who's more aware that he has emotions, who can form attachments to people like Rita and her kids, who feels empathy for his target's victims - could, in theory, be really interesting. But in practice, it mainly feels like part of the ongoing attempt to make Dexter into a more palatable serial killer, so Showtime can justify keeping their biggest hit around for many more years to come.

So as good as Michael C. Hall and John Lithgow have been this year, I find it harder and harder to care about what's happening on the show - which is why I wanted to stop reviewing it in the first place.

Talk about it if you want, and maybe next week I'll just do an open discussion thread and save myself the aggravation.

What did everybody else think?

Dexter, "Hungry Man": Turkey for me, and a turkey for you

There's been clamor for a place to keep the "Dexter" discussion going, and I'm not made of stone. So as soon as I'm done watching an episode (as I did with "Hungry Man" a few minutes ago), I'll do a post that at least gives you guys the opportunity to talk about it. All I have to say is that the Lithgow/Hall portions of the episode were very strong this week, but most of the other stuff - particularly the final scene - was as silly and/or boring as usual. (I make an exception for the Masuka scenes, though. Masuka with normal people/children=genius.)

Fire away, guys.

Atlantic's Jill Greenberg: McCain's Trust "Not Very Sophicated"

Atlantic Pulls a Fast One




“He thought he was being lit by a beauty dish with a modeling light set up. But that wasn’t firing. He had no idea he was being lit from below.”
--Atlantic photographer, Jill Greenberg, on her technique for getting the most unflattering photos of McCain for the magazine's cover story.

The Atlantic does a cover story on one candidate and the photographer goes to great lengths to portray the candidate in the most unflattering light. The magazine is Atlantic, the candidate?

The answer, to what must be the easiest question in the world for Mainstream Media watchers, is John McCain.

Little Green Footballs minced no words about the episode:

Gerard Vanderleun posts about some quite amazing perfidy from The Atlantic and photographer Jill Greenberg, whose photo shoot with John McCain was deliberately set up to produce ominous, threatening pictures—by using outright trickery: Out-Takes: Behind The Atlantic’s McCain Cover.

Conservative Punk thinks McCain got "Dexterized".

"Doesn't it look similar to the technique used on the poster for Showtime's Dexter?"





All this would be conjecture--but the photographer in question, Jill Greenberg, couldn't wait to dish on how she pulled a fast one over on the McCain campaign.

When The Atlantic called Jill Greenberg, a committed Democrat, to shoot a portrait of John McCain for its October cover, she rubbed her hands with glee.

She delivered the image the magazine asked for—a shot that makes the Republican presidential nominee look heroic. Greenberg is well known for her highly retouched images of bears and crying babies. But she didn’t bother to do much retouching on her McCain images. “I left his eyes red and his skin looking bad,” she says.

That's taken from "PDN Pulse: How Jill Greenberg Really Feels about John McCain". As is the following:

After getting that shot, Greenberg asked McCain to “please come over here” for one more set-up before the 15-minute shoot was over. There, she had a beauty dish with a modeling light set up. “That’s what he thought he was being lit by,” Greenberg says. “But that wasn’t firing.”

What was firing was a strobe positioned below him, which cast the horror movie shadows across his face and on the wall right behind him. “He had no idea he was being lit from below,” Greenberg says. And his handlers didn’t seem to notice it either. “I guess they’re not very sophisticated,” she adds.

An admission by a media-type who describes "trust to do one's job in an objective way" as "not very sophisticated".

Perhaps that's been the MSM's attitude--and excuse--for their biased reporting the last forty years: anyone who "trusts them to do their jobs in an objective way" is just "not very sophisticated".

A sort of "all's fair in love, war and MSM reporting" philosophy.

Mark us down as among those who are "not very sophisticated". Just like John McCain--and a lot of voters.


by Mondoreb
images: consevative punk; pdnpulse