That's the most I can say for the final season of a show that at it's best, may have been the most original and well-written crime/procedural drama on television ever (and it turned that genre on it's head). Unfortunately, as even great shows tend to do, Dexter became a sort of parody of itself in the last season. So the end wasn't the epic finale the fan base desperately wanted it to be (oh, some people are pissed), but I also feel like it wasn't awful enough to detract from the overall warehouse of awesome that was the entire Dexter series.
MULTIPLE SEASON SPOILERS BELOW. YE BE WARNED.
Anyway, in my opinion, the main problem with this season, and the previous one to some extent, is that most of the really interesting stuff already got thoroughly explored in earlier seasons. All that remained, really, was the plot-centric question of what happens to Dexter, as in: does he get away or not? The answer: Sort of. He fakes his death and becomes a lumberjack. Because that's what people do when they want to disappear. Just ask Wolverine.
Then there's Hannah. There wasn't really an aspect of her that wasn't already handled in a more likable package (Rita, Lumen), or a more annoying one (Lila, aka the titty vampire). So you get Hannah and there's not a lot to her, because other than being an amalgamated version of the previous women, she disappears for a good portion of the two seasons she's featured. In her first season, she has to share "Big Bad" status with Issak Sirko, who is actually sort of interesting until he gets blown away by his boring henchman, who then gets conveniently blown away by Quinn. Then she reappears halfway through the last season and is suddenly the love of Dexter's life, even though we honestly never got to see why she's so special other than some on-the-nose dialogue where Dexter flat out says so.
At least we got some closure with Cody and Astor... Nah, I'm just messin' with ya. Cody and Astor just sort of bugger off because we need to concentrate on Harrison and ignore the fact that, like the youngest child of a sitcom family, a lot of his stuff is going to end up a rehash of the things that the older kids already went through. Also, seeing too much of Rita's kids would lead more people to question why Dexter thought it best to send his child to live with a fugitive murderer he's known less than a year instead of his actual blood relatives.
The last season also features some subplots that sort of go nowhere. Vince Masuka has a daughter, it turns out, which provides some comic relief, but not much else because it's like the writers realized they only had ten episodes and they also have to deal with the Quinn/Deb/Jamie love triangle and this season's Isaak Sirko played by Charlotte Rampling who previously starred in the greatest movie of all time: Zardoz.
All in all, I think the reason I'm not as angry about this as some other fans is that the show was clearly not what it once was and I'd already sort of lowered my expectations. There's all kinds of "how it should have ended" posts on the net, and a few people going so far as to suggest a kickstarter to shoot a proper send off to America's favorite serial killer. Yes, the lumberjack ending was all manner of lame, but I don't know about actually trying to do something about it. I feel like quoting another great show with an ending that made a lot of people angry, but I felt was a far superior way to end a series:
"What's done is done."
That's right. I managed to shoehorn LOST into a post about the end of Dexter. And tell Vogel's son that "Make Your Own Kind of Music" is Desmond Hume's song, so step off.
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