Friday, June 14, 2013
A rather disappointing seventh season
DEXTER – THE SEVENTH SEASON
This season takes Deb down into the deepest
layers of hell. It starts with Deb falling upon Dexter’s killing a Christian serial
killer in his church and it ends with an even grosser and more deliriously
crazy crime. Dexter used to be more or less manipulated by his Dark Passenger,
by a need he had to satisfy, an impulse he had to follow, but little by little he
realizes that there is no dark passenger and that he is entirely responsible
for his crimes and that leads to the idea that he is killing to survive, and
eventually to avenge the killing of his mother.
As soon as this idea that survival is the
main objective Dexter becomes a plain ordinary simple and banal serial killer. He
does not kill dangerous people, I mean dangerous for society because they are
serial killers themselves, but he kills because he feels menaced. His killing
is no longer an act of vigilante justice but an act of pure fear, the fear to
be taken, and when his sister is totally involved, the fear she might get caught
or that she might become the target of some other criminal, and little by
little of the police itself. It is no longer awesome but it has become awful.
The psychological level of the characters,
Dexter among them, then loses a lot of its appeal. Dexter is a monster, a
self-centered, egocentric, selfish monster. He has not one ounce of humanity
left. He has become a danger for society by not being a scavenger that takes
care of mental rubbish and social garbage. Then the suspense in the series is
no longer only about when and how he is going to be caught but rather how he is
going to get out of his mess by killing whom, when, where, how. Up to now there
was an ethical dimension he called a code in that appeal. Now it is purely
morbid and nothing but morbid.
The series uses some circumstantial subjects
to build some kind of setting and environment to the predator’s hunt. The Ukrainian
mafia in Miami
The series tries to widen Dexter’s scope by
making him fall in love with another criminal who has killed exclusively to
protect herself from all kinds of ills, a father first who was brutal, a
gambler, a child molester, etc, and then juvenile institutions and then the
serial killer she makes an escape at 15 with and whose crimes she shares,
apparently with a lot of zeal but her lawyer manages to get her some immunity
for these crimes because she was considered to be a hostage more than an
accomplice. She knows what killing means, and she is in poison, and she understands
Dexter and Dexter understands her. They fall in love, real love, not some
social convenient arrangement like with Rita. But she menaces Deb who is trying
to step between her and Dexter. Then Dexter has to get her in prison for one
crime he had covered up.
But she escapes. Food for the next season.
Then this season revives Maria La Guardia, the
Captain, and her love affair with Dokes, a Haitian sergeant who hated Dexter
and had seen him through, and her obsession, in continuation of Dokes’s own
obsession, against Dexter and she brings back out of the boxes the case of the
Bay Harbor Butcher, but things have become tricky and since Dexter promised Deb
not to compete with the police any more, he has to find other solutions than
killing people and he becomes very good at framing them. He thus frames Maria
who has tried and is trying to frame him. These two framers and their
accomplices are like writing the new constitution of the Crime Republic
I am afraid I have to say this season is
packed with action and dynamic intrigue, but the main and most successful actor
has become the mosquito in the very opening credit sequence, even if its nlife
is very short-lived. Even the love of Deb for Dexter is turned into something
perverse and sickening. Crime corrupts and absolute crime corrupts absolutely.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 2:14 PM 
