Has anyone been watching Dexter Season 5 AND Walking Dead? Because I have things to say about both their finales. (If you like one of them, you should probably watch the other one... they have pretty much the same target demographic I think).
Spoilers for both, throughout the rest of this thread:
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This whole season of Dexter, they've been tantalizing us with the possibility of changing the status quo for good. Dexter has found a woman who can genuinely understand and love him for who he is. His sister is catching up with him on a case where she already sympathizes with a killer, even if she doesn't know it's him. So for the first time, there was real possibility of two people Dexter cares about finding out about his secret, without leading immediately to his arrest.
Instead... they didn't. And I was annoyed, because I was really hoping they would. But I must confess that if they're choosing to preserve the status quo... they did a pretty beautiful job. Deb's decision not to look behind the curtain was beautiful and was perfectly in character. And as much as I'd love Lumen to stick by Dexter and have everything work out happily for him, leaving when she did was the sane, healthy thing for her to do. And Dexter knew that too, so he let her go.
Now, what does this have to do with Walking Dead?
I hated the CDC in Walking Dead for being suddenly introduced and then destroyed in one episode, without giving us a chance to even care, and for providing no new information at ALL (seriously, the dude couldn't even figure out if the plague was fungal? What the hell kind of scientist are you if you haven't at least rule OUT some disease possibilities?). It was pointed out to me that one thing the episode DID accomplish was removing all hope from the show.
It does so in what I consider a lame, heavyhanded manner. The brightest minds in the US studying the plague were unable to come up with a cure. It creates an atmosphere of total desolation, which is important. But it does so before we've even had a chance to get a grip on how hopeless the situation looked in the first place. When the world is filled with zombies, you don't need to know that there is never going to be a cure, ever, ever EVER for the situation to feel desperate. You only need to feel like you, personally, are never going to get that cure. The CDC episode could have come eventually, but there's only so many times you can make the situation seem even more hopeless before we become numb to it. Now that the lack-of-cure-card has been played, it can't be played again.
By contrast, Dexter's gone for several seasons with him exploring various possible connections to people. It never quite works out. His life with Rita was fairly idyllic but it still wasn't a genuine connection because she didn't understand who he was.
In this season, Dexter thought he may have found a genuine soulmate. He literally is never, ever going to find a woman who can come close to Lumen's ability to look him in the eye and understand him. Anyone else would be too much like Lila was: pure crazy, without the lingering humanity that Lumen had. And even understanding and loving Dexter, Lumen STILL could not stay with him. Rita's death left him alone and devastated, but Rita never truly understood him. Lumen gave him enough genuine hope for the future that losing her means basically losing everything. It was very sad and poignant.
I still would have liked Julia Styles to do another season, A) to keep things mixed up, B) to give Dexter some brief window of happiness, and the subsequent hopelessness all the more powerful, and C) to make her eventual departure feel a little less abrupt and contrived. But I recognize that Julia Styles' has places to go and people to be, and considering the constraints they work with to keep the TV show running, I think they did a good job of accomplishing what the Walking Dead episode failed to.
Spoilers for both, throughout the rest of this thread:
-
-
-
-
-
-
This whole season of Dexter, they've been tantalizing us with the possibility of changing the status quo for good. Dexter has found a woman who can genuinely understand and love him for who he is. His sister is catching up with him on a case where she already sympathizes with a killer, even if she doesn't know it's him. So for the first time, there was real possibility of two people Dexter cares about finding out about his secret, without leading immediately to his arrest.
Instead... they didn't. And I was annoyed, because I was really hoping they would. But I must confess that if they're choosing to preserve the status quo... they did a pretty beautiful job. Deb's decision not to look behind the curtain was beautiful and was perfectly in character. And as much as I'd love Lumen to stick by Dexter and have everything work out happily for him, leaving when she did was the sane, healthy thing for her to do. And Dexter knew that too, so he let her go.
Now, what does this have to do with Walking Dead?
I hated the CDC in Walking Dead for being suddenly introduced and then destroyed in one episode, without giving us a chance to even care, and for providing no new information at ALL (seriously, the dude couldn't even figure out if the plague was fungal? What the hell kind of scientist are you if you haven't at least rule OUT some disease possibilities?). It was pointed out to me that one thing the episode DID accomplish was removing all hope from the show.
It does so in what I consider a lame, heavyhanded manner. The brightest minds in the US studying the plague were unable to come up with a cure. It creates an atmosphere of total desolation, which is important. But it does so before we've even had a chance to get a grip on how hopeless the situation looked in the first place. When the world is filled with zombies, you don't need to know that there is never going to be a cure, ever, ever EVER for the situation to feel desperate. You only need to feel like you, personally, are never going to get that cure. The CDC episode could have come eventually, but there's only so many times you can make the situation seem even more hopeless before we become numb to it. Now that the lack-of-cure-card has been played, it can't be played again.
By contrast, Dexter's gone for several seasons with him exploring various possible connections to people. It never quite works out. His life with Rita was fairly idyllic but it still wasn't a genuine connection because she didn't understand who he was.
In this season, Dexter thought he may have found a genuine soulmate. He literally is never, ever going to find a woman who can come close to Lumen's ability to look him in the eye and understand him. Anyone else would be too much like Lila was: pure crazy, without the lingering humanity that Lumen had. And even understanding and loving Dexter, Lumen STILL could not stay with him. Rita's death left him alone and devastated, but Rita never truly understood him. Lumen gave him enough genuine hope for the future that losing her means basically losing everything. It was very sad and poignant.
I still would have liked Julia Styles to do another season, A) to keep things mixed up, B) to give Dexter some brief window of happiness, and the subsequent hopelessness all the more powerful, and C) to make her eventual departure feel a little less abrupt and contrived. But I recognize that Julia Styles' has places to go and people to be, and considering the constraints they work with to keep the TV show running, I think they did a good job of accomplishing what the Walking Dead episode failed to.
