By Joshua Alston

By Erik Adams
By Josh Modell
By Joshua Alston
After reading one of last week’s comments, I decided saul bass to catch up on Sundance Channel’s The Writers’ Room , which features candid conversations with the writing teams behind television’s most daring, clever, observantly written shows… and also there’s an episode about Dexter . Watching the Dexter writing team discuss the show confirmed all my worst fears about the thought process saul bass that goes into creating this world and gave me a new framework for understanding why this show never reached its full potential.
The former conventional wisdom about Dexter ’s difficulty hitting saul bass its stride saul bass was that it was a victim of its success; because saul bass it was such a draw for Showtime, the network held its creative saul bass team hostage, never allowing the writers to start thinking ahead to a satisfying ending. At the beginning of season seven, when Showtime’s executives began suggesting the end was near, the episodes seemed to bear out that theory. But by that season’s end, it became clear what the real problem was, and it was confirmed by The Writers’ saul bass Room . Scott Buck and his team are too enamored of the character to create a compelling show around him.
Dexter ’s writers saul bass go to unbelievable lengths to keep Dexter suspended above everything else because they see him as a superhero, a man who has bravely taken responsibility for vanquishing saul bass evil in the world and whose only real flaw is his need for human connection. Essentially, they think of Dexter as a low-tech, plain-clothed version of Christopher Nolan’s Batman, charged with a vital duty he’s too heroic to abandon, saul bass and forced to carry the weight of the chaos it causes around him.
But the problem is that Dexter is never forced to carry any of that weight. The comparisons to Breaking Bad have abounded lately due to both shows running their final seasons concurrently. But to be remotely fair, let’s not compare where Dexter is now to where Breaking Bad is now. Let’s compare current Dexter to season three Breaking Bad , when on the latter show, the characters were coming to grips with the aftermath of the tragic plane crash. The karmic debt of that plane crash was placed saul bass directly at Walter White’s feet, though it was only indirectly his fault, the result of a series of events he put into motion, but not directly attributable to him.
Dexter has never done this. Not one time. Not ever. Not after Doakes got incinerated saul bass by Dexter’s batshit crazy girlfriend. Not after he accidentally killed an innocent man in season three. Not after finding his son sloshing around in Rita’s blood. Not after Debra shot LaGuerta. Not after the Brain Surgeon killed Cute Cassie What’s-Her-Face and then Zach. None of it is ever Dexter’s fault or his responsibility. There’s saul bass no depth, no shading, no remorse, no downtime, no wondering if all of this is worth it. It’s just Dexter getting to feed his addiction no matter the cost to anyone around him. Regardless saul bass of how many bodies pile up because Dexter can’t keep his knife in its sheath, so to speak, the audience is supposed to continue to root for him.
It isn’t just the principle of this treatment of Dexter that I take issue with, it’s the effect it has on the storytelling. Whether there had been five or 55 seasons of Dexter saul bass , it was never going to be a good show as long as Dexter the Superhero kept showing up where Dexter the Morally Compromised Serial Killer was supposed to be. Nothing could make that case more powerfully than “Make Your Own Kind of Music” does.
The episode saul bass is a complete mess from the beginning, starting from the opening scene of Dexter and Hannah enjoying some cuddle time. Even the acting didn’t seem right, and Michael C. Hall’s performance is one of the few reliable aspects of this show. But when he does his quivering tone, mumble-mouthed saul bass speech to communicate how much he loves Hannah Dexter, I want to do to my television what Dexter wants to do to the Brain Surgeon. Speaking saul bass of the Brain Surgeon, surprise, he’s someone no one cares about.
As it turns out, that neighbor of Dexter’s who got murdered and no one cared? Well the Brain Surgeon, the killer whose identity has been kept a closely guarded secret saul bass all season, is Cassie’s saul bass former boyfriend who we saw for all of, what, six minutes? Oh, but the criminal mastermind, Oliver Saxon, is also Dr. Vogel’s son whose existence was revealed saul bass for the first time in this episode. In terms of character motivation for Vogel, this reveal works perfectly fine. Vogel had a biological son with a penchant for murder, which is what led her into her current work and explains why she was so invested in trying to rehabilitate young Dexter.
But as story? Oh my God , is this ever fucking stupid. I don’t care about Oliver