I finished watching all six seasons of Dexter. It was absolutely amazing and I am still a bit obsessed with the show. I happened to like seasons 3 and 6 most, even though I know they were supposed to be awful, I’d like to seize this opportunity and explain exactly why I think season 6 was grossly underappreciated (beware of spoilers). (Season three was great mostly because they made the characters extra-relatable and amiable.)
Think back to season 1. It ended with a figment of Dexter’s imagination, in which he is walking through a cheering crowd, showing their affection to him for keeping them and their children safe. In that scene, Dexter remarks, ‘This is what it must feel like to walk in full sunlight, my darkness revealed, my shadow self embraced. Yeah, they see me. I’m one of them... in my darkest dreams.’
At this point it merely seems Dexter dislikes the great inconveniences caused by having to lie and hide his true nature, but as the series progresses, we see Dexter is not at all a sociopath, as Harry had him believe; remember Dexter was never diagnosed as such (he deliberately lied in his diagnosis to ruin it), and he definitely doesn’t display the appropriate symptoms: he shows more and more empathy as the series goes on, and he is far too calm and calculated to have ASPD, which is characterised (among other things) by lack of ability to plan ahead and violent outbursts, and he does not lie compulsively but in a calculated way intended for self-defence. Thus, there must be something else to explain his social awkwardness and violent urges, and more specifically the ‘Dark Passenger’ (as I am no psychologist myself, I do not know the professional jargon term for ‘born in blood’); personally, I believe he belongs to the same prestigious club as Satoshi Tajiri, Albert Einstein, Steven Spielberg, and yours truly, especially after he said, ‘I have no idea what Hammertime is, or how it differs from regular time.’ (Jordan Chase from season 5 fits the title much more aptly; this is probably to emphasise that Dexter is not a sociopath, by showing what a sociopath actually is, when not treated properly.)
This theme of Dexter’s search for his place in society is explored throughout the series, at times more seriously, and at times less so. In season 2 he remarks rather off-handedly to Doakes that he kills murderers whom the law would either never bring to justice properly or would take ages to do so, entirely free of charge, which makes him ultimately beneficial to the city (personally, I side with Dexter). In season 4 the discussion is far more pragmatical, revolving around the issue of balancing both his family and his ‘hobby’. Season 5 dealt mostly with the prospect of change, and society’s structure itself, in the series finale. (To be honest, I did not care much for season 4; John Lithgow was indeed a magnificent actor, which makes watching How I Met Your Mother very disturbing, but the last two episodes, as well as season 5’s premiere, just seem like a few people, among them Julie Benz, were trying very, very hard to get fired: somehow Trinity got a hold of Dexter’s home address, even after led to the wrong one, and for some reason he not only broke his modus operandi when killing Rita by slicing her femoral artery instead of forcing her to jump, but he did it in front of Harrison, despite his strong hatred of the idea of ruining a child’s innocence. Then later the season 5 premiere was horribly done, using the same music they’d used for the whole series for the most dramatic scenes, and Christina Robinson played Astor far worse than she usually does. But I digress.)
In season 6 this theme is brought into a spectacular culmination. The theme is explored on two levels: via the prospect of change, specifically through faith, dealt with in a wonderful manner with a character who was reformed through his own willpower, and through the actual search that Dexter should have been doing for his role in society, dealt with on a more philosophical level. Notice how Dexter kidnapped Travis the same way he had kidnapped the murderer in the pilot episode, Mike Donovan; said murderer tried praying for salvation, and Dexter slapped him and said, ‘Stop, that never helped anybody!’ Now Dexter finally takes a step back and takes a better look at things; this is remarkable character development on his side. He also had time to further contemplate his morals after killing Nick and running off with his imagined late brother Brian; when he told Jonah Mitchell to ‘forgive himself’, this marked the beginning of his self-acceptance, followed by Dexter saying to Harrison before his preschool re-enactment of the Flood, ‘We’ve got an ark to get on, and that boat has room for all the animals. Not just the sheep and the zebras, but the lions too. And Dexter is a lion,’ and finally, when he kills Travis, he is completely accepts his perceived role, in his final speech to Travis: ‘Light cannot exist without darkness. Each has its purpose. And if there is a purpose to my darkness maybe it’s to bring some balance to the world. Because, let’s face it, the world is going to be a better place without you.’ When Debra sees him kill, he moves from learning at last to accept himself to testing this role and his new epiphany in the world.
Here I’d like to make a brief break and tell you about a little incident that happened to me just two days ago.
As I was talking to my mum, my stepfather came into the den and asked me whether or not I knew where the bell peppers he’d bought were. I said, ‘I’ve no idea, I don’t eat bell peppers.’
‘I didn’t ask you as someone who eats bell peppers, but as the one who put all the groceries in place.’
‘Oh. In that case... [Here I added a brief description of where they might be]’
My mum watched the scene and was very amused. She explained to me that my response sounded like I was stating the obvious at best and added completely irrelevant details at worst, and that had it not been she and my stepfather, who could ‘translate’ what I was saying, I would have seen like a complete freak. Then she told me about how someone she knew, who was Israeli, went to McDonald’s in the US, and asked for three cups of coffee; however, being unable to pronounce the /θ/ phoneme, and not wanting to pronounce it as the markedly more different /t/ or /s/, as most Israelis do, he ultimately said, ‘I want free coffee.’ The cashier didn’t understand, and said something to the effect of, ‘...We do not serve free coffee here.’ The man then gestured the number three as he repeated his request, at which point she understood.
The moral of the story was very simple: I, like said Israeli, went the extra mile; as a matter of fact, I went the extra hundred. Seven years or so beforehand I’d’ve probably just answered, ‘No.’ As an even younger child I’d probably ignored the question altogether. But here I did not just answer laconically, I tried to relate to the person who was talking to me and how he was thinking, and answer accordingly, with appropriate intonation and whatnot. And, just like the Israeli who tried to produce a more faithful representation of what he was supposed to sound like, all of my efforts would have been entirely lost on the person I was spoken to, simply labelling me a freak. In fact, being so far ahead made matters worse: while a person with a more obvious lack of neurotypical society would have been excused, I was so far ahead these minor deviations were immediately labelled as freakish.
Amd this is what I hate about neurotypical society so much: they always assume the worst of people. A neurotypical encountering a scene such as the one explained above wouldn’t consider the option that there must be a good explanation for this deviation; he’d simply take a step back. Zero bloody tolerance. That is why, when I’m in a foul enough mood, I say that neurotypical people are evil.
And on this basis of feeling lost in society (not just as an aspie, but also as a non-Jew and a bisexual), besides my moral views (which, judging by the contents of TV Tropes, are very unorthodox), I can relate to Dexter very deeply.
Just to finish off the bit about Dexter: I’d like you to notice a bit of the foreshadowing when Brian kills the hick threatening Dexter, and it turns out it was Dexter who killed him, and compare Debra’s expression when hugging Dexter after the session during which she was convinced she is in love with Dexter to that when she hugged Lundy after he told her he chose to work with Morgan just to avoid Masuka. Jennifer Carpenter is an excellent actress. Also, there is a huge stock of excellent quotes and whatnot, some of which really sink in only after a while.
With that, I’ll leave you be. I’m really fucking tired.
Unum diem...
(P.S.: I’m 21 now at last. I can drink anywhere in the world except where it’s illegal for anyone. Yet I still have to combat depression again, and contemplate the horrid idea that I am fundamentally not a happy person, and, perhaps, the prospect of change.)
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