Original Air Date: 4 December 2011
Dexter: I am the Bay Harbor Butcher.
Louis: So... What do you think?
Dexter: I think this is offensive. Who would choose to be a serial killer?
Louis: Well, I mean, it's like a vicarious thrill.
Dexter: Vicarious thrill? How could you possibly know what it's like to take a life? Why would you even want to?
Review: The reason why I don't completely understand why this show was renewed for two more seasons was the inability of bringing anything new anymore. The serial killers Dexter follows around are different, but the character fails to evolve in one direction or another. We've seen all of his internal turmoil regarding his condition as a serial killer himself again and again over these past six seasons and it's getting tiresome. We even saw him question Harry's decision to redirect his rage instead of trying to remove his Dark Passenger, so I don't really get the need of revisiting that theme yet another time.
But let's move on to this week's episode and say it was yet another prove inventiveness is gone when it comes to putting pen on paper. The idea behind it was not bad, but it was poorly and chaotically written, so it was easy to get distracted by other things around me. All this was to be expected; after all, last episode's twist was one of the worst I've seen on TV so far, and I'm including bad soaps here as well. And guess what? Travis is not all that different from Dexter: he talks to his dead mentor and was a sociopath even from childhood. Sound familiar?
As the hunt for Gellar turned into the hunt for Travis, I started to feel cheated. There was so much potential in developing his character that I'm actually pissed so much of this season was wasted on useless plots like that of brother Sam when we could have seem a lot more of Marshall and start understanding his motivations much earlier. The secret - though not so much a secret - for a good crime procedural is creating a believable, rootable at times and definitely complex villain, which didn't happen here, despite Colin Hanks' potential.
I won't even go into Debra's arc, but I just want to say I'm already bored of her therapy sessions where she talks incessantly about her relationship with her brother. The only thing I hope for is that she takes Matthews and LaGuerta down.
Despite the poor writing, the ending of this episode intrigued me; too bad it's too little too late. I read an article the other day about the last two episodes of the season setting the base for the series finale, and if you add to that the fact that Batista is now Travis' prisoner and that this one targeted the the police department for his Wormwood tableau, not to mention Dexter's surprising decision to call the police instead of going after Marshall himself, one can only speculate.Dexter 6x09: Get Geller Back to Season 6
