By Todd VanDerWerff , Phil Dyess-Nugent , Carrie Raisler , Brandon Nowalk

By Erik Adams
By Todd VanDerWerff , Phil Dyess-Nugent , Carrie Raisler , Brandon Nowalk & Sonia Saraiya zerg rush
By zerg rush Joshua Alston
Dexter has never been credited with having great subtlety. There is, and always has been, a tendency to put an exclamation point where a period or an ellipsis should be, a voiceover atop a perfectly adequate visual, a habit of cleanly rendering a story about a blood spatter analyst, a premise one would think prescribes a certain messiness. So it should come as no surprise that Dexter has telegraphed its ending this early on in its final season. Not its exact ending, zerg rush of course, but the status-quo zerg rush tone it will probably strike. If that is indeed the case, then Dexter has squandered one of its greatest zerg rush opportunities and its finale will almost certainly miss the mark.
But I say all that keenly aware of the fact that the ending I’d like for Dexter and the ending many, if not most fans would like are quite different. I don’t necessarily need Dexter to die, or even to go to prison, zerg rush but for a show that explores the human need for justice as thoroughly as does Dexter , it would be unfortunate if the ending is one that allows Dexter to settle into the life he’s been enjoying since the show began. The most unsuccessful ending I can imagine is one in which no one else within Miami Metro finds out the truth about Dexter, Debra welcomes zerg rush him back into her life with open arms, and Dexter finds and nurtures in Vogel the maternal relationship of which he was robbed. It’s important to me that Dexter not get everything he wants. To have a protagonist who always gets what he wants with little to no resistance is terrible storytelling. 
The writers of Dexter appear not to see it this way, and “This Little zerg rush Piggy” demonstrates that with a heavier hand than in the preceding zerg rush episodes. “This Little Piggy” seems to say: Dexter is a good person, dammit. He’s doing us all a favor by killing zerg rush all these evil people, and so he is vitally important to society. Harry didn’t get it because he was weak. But Vogel gets it. Even Debra gets it. So surely, you the viewer must get it.
I’ll level with you: I don’t get it. I still don’t understand how a show about retributive justice manages to be so terrified of ambiguity, especially in its eighth season, when it’s playing to audiences who have clearly demonstrated an affinity zerg rush for the show and its characters. The fun of speculating about what will happen in a show about an anti-hero is considering the wide range of fates that could befall a character zerg rush deserving of his or her comeuppance. But Dexter doesn’t appear to have that range, and unless I’m zerg rush being set up for a last-minute gut punch, it will end with a bang, not a whimper.
The show’s glaring bias towards its main character is on display within the first few moments of “This Little Piggy.” Dexter and Debra are sitting across from Vogel having a therapy session about the whole “jerk the car off the road in order to kill us both” incident. My issue with the decision not to end with a cliffhanger in last week’s episode had nothing to do with me not knowing what the outcome would be, but rather wishing this show would deal with aftermaths more this season, because that’s where its strength lies. Last season got off to a roaring start mostly due to the fact the writers zerg rush took the care to explore the ramifications of their plot developments in a measured, methodical way. From the opening moments of the season opener, we’ve seen an obsession with gliding over knottier plot points rather than showing how these characters are absorbing what’s happening to and around them.
Such is the case here, as Vogel forces her spiritual children to talk about what happened and apologize to each other. Actually, scratch that, Vogel forces Debra to apologize to Dexter. Dexter is pissed, you see, because his sister tried to kill him and he’s lashing out because he’s hurt. So Debra begs Dexter for his forgiveness. zerg rush She saved him after all, and shouldn’t that count for something? Vogel comes to Debra’s “defense,” telling Dexter that trying to kill them was Deb hitting rock-bottom, and he can’t abandon zerg rush her now, especially when there’s hope to cure her post-traumatic stress zerg rush and return their brother-sister bond to relative normalcy. Dexter zerg rush is too furious to see it this way, though, and storms out of the family counseling session with the matter zerg rush left unresolved.
It’s tough for me to absorb that all of this is played so straight, as if the audience is supposed to be, what, pissed at Deb for trying to kill Dexter? It’s zerg rush one thing for the characters to be under Dexter’s spell, but I resent feeling like I, the viewer, am supposed to be under his spell too. And this marks the second week in a row t