So Dexter...

[sistermagpie]

So they detonated the main bomb of the series in a point of no return way that I'm not sure is going to work, but I wonder why they did the dumb incest thing before that? Because okay, I have no problem with shows showing incest and I know plenty of people ship Dexter/Deb and that's completely cool. I don't think it's wrong as a ship.

But this whole "Deb suddenly realizes/thinks she's in love with Dexter" just played out to me as nothing that made sense according to the Deb I've known or human behavior in general. Deb's the black and white person with the straight ahead morals who has trouble understanding crazy people. How many things has she casually judged as wrong because they deviated from some pretty standard forms of behavior? But this woman is going to within days be embracing the idea of turning the main relationship in her life, the one thing she depends on, into something completely different? Something Deb herself, had she heard anybody else describing it, would probably have assumed would lead to the brother running far away from her? Instead she's suddenly looking at her brother and seeing the potential return of his feelings and wondering what it means when he says he loves her back?

And then apparently they do it because Deb needs to be in love with any guy she finds out is a killer? Because Deb seeing Dexter kill someone (whether or not she'll know the full extent of him murdering people) just wouldn't have been a big enough deal if she wasn't coming to tell him that oh, when she said she loved him before she actually meant she was in love with him and could he possibly love her too? I just feel like it undercut the whole reveal by adding this level of soap opera nonsense. Had Deb spent the past few episodes understanding just how much Dexter meant to her as a brother and someone she could depend on I would have felt something, but I wound up just feeling like she looked silly. Like, wouldn't you know it? You were just about to tell the guy you loved him and you walk in on him killing a guy!" *cue sad trumpet noise* That Deb just has the worst luck with men! And I know the therapist was the person who put the idea into her head in the first place as if it was the most normal thing in the world but really, no discussion about how there might be a bit more to discuss about the situation than how Deb ought to express her feelings?

I mean, look, it's not that I don't know that people can sometimes have feelings like this. I'm not averse to seeing a story where it happens. Cable has plenty of incestuous relationships, actually. I just think this one was done so stupidly in a season that's been all over the place to begin with, that it's thrown me out of the whole season. Deb's one of my favorite characters on TV and I just don't buy this at all.

So now it's like I would be looking forward to next season to see how this cliffhanger pans out, but also not looking forward to it because I might have to be embarassed by more of this. I guess I should hope that this revelation will kill Deb's romantic notions but man I'm annoyed by that distraction.

Comments

[ishtar79.livejournal.com]

I...actually agree with you. Crazy shipper I may be, but actually coinciding the (completely out of the blue) Deb/Dex with the reveal seriously takes away from the impact of the latter. Whatever Deb's reaction to this revelation might be next season (and at this point, I wouldn't be surprised at her going catatonic from the shock), I want it to be as his sister foremost, rather than because of the newly discovered (or planted by the World's Worst Psychiatrist) feelings.

Part of me thinks the writers came up with the story just to troll the recently divorced actors. That, or TV doesn't respect female emotions outside of a romantic context.

[ldybastet.livejournal.com]

I really hated that incest plot. Not because I think it would have been wrong in a different show or with different people... but because it was this show and these people, and oh gods, planted in the most horrible way by that shrink! :( That was one of the worst cases of shrink portrayals I've seen in a long time. Really, I could rant for hours about how wrong that was - it was just out of the blue and based on what? That Deb chooses men that aren't her brother? That's true for most women in the world! *facepalm* The furthest I could run with that is that she idolises her brother and don't want a potential partner to be better than him.

I guess I'm getting a bit frustrated by how sloppy and careless Dexter is getting... Why does he insist on taking the shiny new serial killers that the police is actually trying to catch at the same time? I'm sure there's plenty of killers out there who's been able to dodge justice and that still deserve to be offed by him. Like, how he did it at the beginning of the show, first season etc... Hmm... I still like the show, but there are some annoying things it has developed over the years.

But I wonder how they'll resolve this "ooops"-moment of Deb catching him in the act.

[swan-bite.livejournal.com]

It felt like badfic. Plot-twist for the sake of twist with no regard to characterization/logic/credible psychological human behavior.


Fuck that.

[alula-auburn.livejournal.com]

This says pretty much every thing I thought. I feel like I've been looking forward to the Deb/Dexter reveal since S1, and THIS is what we get?

And yeah, so unnecessary and so unconvincing. This whole season has felt kind of like badfic, honestly--so much random dumbing down of Dexter (but the entire MMPD, too), so many false starts going nowhere (Mos Def, Nebraska/Brian/Trinity Redux, Quinn's Bad Hair of Alcoholic Angst, the total non-reveal of Gellar in the icebox. . .) Ugh. It's like it was written by people whose only experience of anything was subpar fanfic. Or possible run through content Babelfish.

Honestly, the character I was most worried about in the finale was the cat.