Dexter 6x12 "This is the Way the World Ends"
Let's talk Season 6. It has gotten a strong negative reaction from a lot of people. And, after a solid beginning, I did think that certain episodes mid-season reached some pretty low lows (namely 6x06 and the execrable 6x07), but in the final estimation I think that the season long arcs were pretty damn good. Yes, I even think the Very Controversial Bits worked.
So Deb's in love with Dexter. And 90% of the people on TWoP are declaring this the official Jump the Shark Moment. But I'm going to attempt to defend that shit. Tough though it may be!
My main argument is that this season was about people making up fictions for themselves about who they need other people to be, which helps make sense of what happened with Deb. There's rather a lot of constructed people in this season, and the Dexter that Debra is in love with is one of them.
Added to Dexter's usual cast of imaginary people, we've got Travis. Dex spends a significant amount of time seeing what he needs to see in Travis. Dexter wants to think of Travis as more innocent then himself, someone who *can* be freed/redeemed whereas he can never escape his dark passenger. I really thought that was brilliant and that it made a lot of sense, because the "Travis" we and Dexter know all along turns out to be a lie Travis tells himself. Travis is such a cipher, because he himself needs to believe in his own innocence/righteousness, and he’s the perfect lure for Dexter. He’s a lie that believes itself - the perfect lie.
So there's Dexter and Travis. And then, upon discovering Gellar has been dead all along, we've got another set up where someone is making another person who they need them to be rather than who they really are. Because we never actually met Gellar, not throughout the entire season. We only ever knew the Gellar that Travis constructed in his mind out of his need. The living person didn't go along with the plan; he couldn't be everything Travis wanted, so Travis made a more amenable version. He needed something to dignify and ennoble the ugliness inside his head, a grand drama -- and Gellar's religious stuff was something he latched onto because it held that promise.
Okay, so that's two instances of characters making others the people they need them to be, rather than who they really are. In addition to Dexter's constructions of Harry and Brian, which are all about Dexter and his subconscious, rather than the people they were.
And then, of course, there's God. I mean, talk about the ultimate example of people constructing a persona based on their needs, right? Who's a bigger cipher than God? Billions of believers, and none of us with the exact same God!person in our heads. We can't even agree on gender pronouns! lol Whatever your personal beliefs, it's true that people come to God for things that are missing, for father and mother figures, for love unending. God is a construction that can be anything people need zir to be, as evidenced by the very different things Travis and Brother Sam get out of zir. The whole God thing... well, I mean, heck. What is more perfect than the scene where Travis is in one room of a church, talking to his imaginary father figure Gellar, and Dexter is in another room talking to his imaginary dad Harry?
People, in churches, talking to the "fathers" in their heads that they need. And God another father that people come to for the meaning they need, the emotional fulfillment.
At the heart of the story is... what do you make your world out of? Who do you make your world? And how that falls apart.
Then we've got Travis and his sister. Debra read the file: Travis was messed up from the very beginning. But his sister didn't see that until her death. And maybe not even then, if he knocked her out or killed her before she knew what was happening. Dex and Deb are specifically paralleled with Travis and Lisa. When Debra is reading Travis' file out loud, Dex sees himself in that, and we're meant to see her too when she asks how Lisa could have not known. Lisa talks about how trauma bonded them together; Deb and her shrink talk about the way trauma has bonded Deb and Dex.
And the thing is, Deb is in love with Dexter. She's in love with him because she doesn't know him. Like Travis, Dexter has created this cipher of a persona. He doesn't believe his own lies as much as Travis, but other people react to him the way he reacted to Travis -- they imbue him with the things they need to be there. And no one does that as much as Deb. The Dexter in her head, the one that she's in love with, he's a fiction they've co-created between them. And of course she's in love with him! He's too good to be true. He's like the Gellar in Travis' head -- more of what she needs than any person who's really being themself could be.
It's not that his protection and support isn't real: it is. But it has limits, like all love... and she's never been allowed to see those limits, because they're so terrible. With Dexter, apart from his emotional distance, she only gets to see what she needs to see. He's a savior, the good/smart one, the best man in her life, her world. And even the emotional distance plays into her feelings, because it means that he's forever just out of reach. Super-human mystery man. Always there to save her, and so difficult to understand.
She tells her psychologist that she used to sleep on the floor in Dexter's bedroom after her nightmares. He didn't even know she was there, and if he had we know that whatever caring reaction he gave her would have been largely manufactured at that point. But what she needed wasn't even about him, it was about this source of safety and comfort she made him in her head.
I can believe her being in love with that. I think the point is that this conspiracy of lies between them has gone so far, that it's warped her life so much. He's been as good to her as he's been capable of being. But he's also been a poison to her life. And she sees him as the reason for all the good things she has. She deserves the right to find the truth between those two extremes -- the wreck of a person he is who really is trying his best, rather than an angel or a devil. She's growing as a person, facing so much -- but she can't really go further without addressing this huge lie her life is based around.
She's losing her religion, you know? She doesn't want to make Harry proud anymore; she wants to make Dexter proud. She's not sure whether there's a God, but she's sure of Dexter. She's been done a great injustice by being encouraged to believe so strongly in the lie of a person Dexter has made for/with her. We all at some point realize that the people we love are flawed. They can't always save us. They don't always love us like they should. And growing up is facing that, loving anyway. For Debra that moment is just... really, really, really devastating because Dexter's flaws and his failures are so vast. But it's the same journey. This is about Debra growing up and owning her life, making her own decisions.
But first everything falls apart.
Speaking of which... that final scene. Guh! GUUUH. I loved it so much.
There's Travis on the table, and God--like his other father figure Gellar--isn't the person Travis thought he was. And then in comes Deb and there's Dexter, not at all the person she thought he was. It's like...
I love the title of the episode, because it's precisely that, but not the way you expect. It's the end of the world. The episode is about the end of the world. But it's all *personal* apocalypses. Whimpers rather than huge bangs. Debra thinks that everything makes sense, finally. That all the shit can come to something good. And then she sees Dexter and... that world ends. For both of them. The worlds they meant to each other, irrevocably destroyed. Because you know that Dexter loved being the lie she could love as much as she loved that lie. And on the table in front of Dexter is the serial killing fuck who thought he was doing the will of God, who thought he was special and important. Who thought that all the ugliness inside of him could be something sacred. And everything he believed was just proved wrong. Everybody in that room has just lost everything. Personal fucking apocalypses all around.
That's fucking excellent, IMO. And I hope they handle the fallout well, because there's such promise here.
Lisa and Travis are the imperfect parallel of Deb and Dex. Lisa's story ends in death. She never gets to decide what she’d do about Travis if she really saw him for who he is. And we're getting the alternate story with Dex and Deb - what’s the sister do if she has to live knowing what her brother really is? Lisa tried to protect Travis before she knew everything, and in Deb's talk with the therapist they say yeah, that’s what sisters are supposed to do. So what’s Deb’s choice?
From her angle, it's a powerful, important story. This lie has gone on too long, it's done too much damage. She deserves to know the truth, though her world falls apart. She deserves the right to make a world in light of the truth, rather than be Dex's darling, dearly deceived Debra forever. Her continuing growth as a character and her agency demands that this happen, and I'm glad that it's happening. As a character, Deb is really pretty damn awesome.
And I think they were trying to make it a powerful story from Dex's POV as well. They made it so it's as important for his life moving forward that Debra find out as it is for Debra herself.
Dex is, by the end of S6, pretty *over* Harry. He's tried replacing him with Brian for a while, and then come back to him. But it's not quite working. Dex's giving Harry all this awesome back talk that questions whether Harry ever gave him a chance to live without being a serial killer. He needs someone to see him who doesn't want him to give into a full-blown killing spree, and he needs that someone to not be Harry; even the Harry he's put together in his head can't quite hack it anymore.
One of the things the parallel with Travis drew out was how much control Dexter has comparatively... and how little. He's definitely a neater monster, and credit has to be given for his decision to "surrender to a higher power" and tell the police about wormwood but... we've got a whole freaking season where he's letting his desires rule him. He misdirects the police, claims these Doomsday Killers for himself. Even though he says he cares about Deb's career, he puts his kill first. Even though this exact sort of situation is what got Rita killed, he again presumes to decide what should happen to killers that are his. And people, one could argue, die because of these decisions he makes. People who wouldn't have died if he hadn't hidden Travis from the police for so long.
If Dexter were acting more rationally, he'd have never behaved like that. His behavior shows that, for all that he tries, he's not really in control of himself. And that lack of control hurts other people.
Deb needs to know the truth, and Dexter needs someone to really see him. So... here we are.
Please, writers. Please do your own set up justice!
I feel like they've given Deb some excellent stuff to do. I loved everything about her becoming Lt and all that led to for her. I loved everything about the therapy and digging at how she feels.
They just... oh man, they've got to work this in a way that's right for her character and I just... ((flail)) I wanted to see what Dexter's like in this new world they have to create together out of the wreckage of their treasured lie.
So Deb's in love with Dexter. And 90% of the people on TWoP are declaring this the official Jump the Shark Moment. But I'm going to attempt to defend that shit. Tough though it may be!
My main argument is that this season was about people making up fictions for themselves about who they need other people to be, which helps make sense of what happened with Deb. There's rather a lot of constructed people in this season, and the Dexter that Debra is in love with is one of them.
Added to Dexter's usual cast of imaginary people, we've got Travis. Dex spends a significant amount of time seeing what he needs to see in Travis. Dexter wants to think of Travis as more innocent then himself, someone who *can* be freed/redeemed whereas he can never escape his dark passenger. I really thought that was brilliant and that it made a lot of sense, because the "Travis" we and Dexter know all along turns out to be a lie Travis tells himself. Travis is such a cipher, because he himself needs to believe in his own innocence/righteousness, and he’s the perfect lure for Dexter. He’s a lie that believes itself - the perfect lie.
So there's Dexter and Travis. And then, upon discovering Gellar has been dead all along, we've got another set up where someone is making another person who they need them to be rather than who they really are. Because we never actually met Gellar, not throughout the entire season. We only ever knew the Gellar that Travis constructed in his mind out of his need. The living person didn't go along with the plan; he couldn't be everything Travis wanted, so Travis made a more amenable version. He needed something to dignify and ennoble the ugliness inside his head, a grand drama -- and Gellar's religious stuff was something he latched onto because it held that promise.
Okay, so that's two instances of characters making others the people they need them to be, rather than who they really are. In addition to Dexter's constructions of Harry and Brian, which are all about Dexter and his subconscious, rather than the people they were.
And then, of course, there's God. I mean, talk about the ultimate example of people constructing a persona based on their needs, right? Who's a bigger cipher than God? Billions of believers, and none of us with the exact same God!person in our heads. We can't even agree on gender pronouns! lol Whatever your personal beliefs, it's true that people come to God for things that are missing, for father and mother figures, for love unending. God is a construction that can be anything people need zir to be, as evidenced by the very different things Travis and Brother Sam get out of zir. The whole God thing... well, I mean, heck. What is more perfect than the scene where Travis is in one room of a church, talking to his imaginary father figure Gellar, and Dexter is in another room talking to his imaginary dad Harry?
People, in churches, talking to the "fathers" in their heads that they need. And God another father that people come to for the meaning they need, the emotional fulfillment.
At the heart of the story is... what do you make your world out of? Who do you make your world? And how that falls apart.
Then we've got Travis and his sister. Debra read the file: Travis was messed up from the very beginning. But his sister didn't see that until her death. And maybe not even then, if he knocked her out or killed her before she knew what was happening. Dex and Deb are specifically paralleled with Travis and Lisa. When Debra is reading Travis' file out loud, Dex sees himself in that, and we're meant to see her too when she asks how Lisa could have not known. Lisa talks about how trauma bonded them together; Deb and her shrink talk about the way trauma has bonded Deb and Dex.
And the thing is, Deb is in love with Dexter. She's in love with him because she doesn't know him. Like Travis, Dexter has created this cipher of a persona. He doesn't believe his own lies as much as Travis, but other people react to him the way he reacted to Travis -- they imbue him with the things they need to be there. And no one does that as much as Deb. The Dexter in her head, the one that she's in love with, he's a fiction they've co-created between them. And of course she's in love with him! He's too good to be true. He's like the Gellar in Travis' head -- more of what she needs than any person who's really being themself could be.
It's not that his protection and support isn't real: it is. But it has limits, like all love... and she's never been allowed to see those limits, because they're so terrible. With Dexter, apart from his emotional distance, she only gets to see what she needs to see. He's a savior, the good/smart one, the best man in her life, her world. And even the emotional distance plays into her feelings, because it means that he's forever just out of reach. Super-human mystery man. Always there to save her, and so difficult to understand.
She tells her psychologist that she used to sleep on the floor in Dexter's bedroom after her nightmares. He didn't even know she was there, and if he had we know that whatever caring reaction he gave her would have been largely manufactured at that point. But what she needed wasn't even about him, it was about this source of safety and comfort she made him in her head.
I can believe her being in love with that. I think the point is that this conspiracy of lies between them has gone so far, that it's warped her life so much. He's been as good to her as he's been capable of being. But he's also been a poison to her life. And she sees him as the reason for all the good things she has. She deserves the right to find the truth between those two extremes -- the wreck of a person he is who really is trying his best, rather than an angel or a devil. She's growing as a person, facing so much -- but she can't really go further without addressing this huge lie her life is based around.
She's losing her religion, you know? She doesn't want to make Harry proud anymore; she wants to make Dexter proud. She's not sure whether there's a God, but she's sure of Dexter. She's been done a great injustice by being encouraged to believe so strongly in the lie of a person Dexter has made for/with her. We all at some point realize that the people we love are flawed. They can't always save us. They don't always love us like they should. And growing up is facing that, loving anyway. For Debra that moment is just... really, really, really devastating because Dexter's flaws and his failures are so vast. But it's the same journey. This is about Debra growing up and owning her life, making her own decisions.
But first everything falls apart.
Speaking of which... that final scene. Guh! GUUUH. I loved it so much.
There's Travis on the table, and God--like his other father figure Gellar--isn't the person Travis thought he was. And then in comes Deb and there's Dexter, not at all the person she thought he was. It's like...
I love the title of the episode, because it's precisely that, but not the way you expect. It's the end of the world. The episode is about the end of the world. But it's all *personal* apocalypses. Whimpers rather than huge bangs. Debra thinks that everything makes sense, finally. That all the shit can come to something good. And then she sees Dexter and... that world ends. For both of them. The worlds they meant to each other, irrevocably destroyed. Because you know that Dexter loved being the lie she could love as much as she loved that lie. And on the table in front of Dexter is the serial killing fuck who thought he was doing the will of God, who thought he was special and important. Who thought that all the ugliness inside of him could be something sacred. And everything he believed was just proved wrong. Everybody in that room has just lost everything. Personal fucking apocalypses all around.
That's fucking excellent, IMO. And I hope they handle the fallout well, because there's such promise here.
Lisa and Travis are the imperfect parallel of Deb and Dex. Lisa's story ends in death. She never gets to decide what she’d do about Travis if she really saw him for who he is. And we're getting the alternate story with Dex and Deb - what’s the sister do if she has to live knowing what her brother really is? Lisa tried to protect Travis before she knew everything, and in Deb's talk with the therapist they say yeah, that’s what sisters are supposed to do. So what’s Deb’s choice?
From her angle, it's a powerful, important story. This lie has gone on too long, it's done too much damage. She deserves to know the truth, though her world falls apart. She deserves the right to make a world in light of the truth, rather than be Dex's darling, dearly deceived Debra forever. Her continuing growth as a character and her agency demands that this happen, and I'm glad that it's happening. As a character, Deb is really pretty damn awesome.
And I think they were trying to make it a powerful story from Dex's POV as well. They made it so it's as important for his life moving forward that Debra find out as it is for Debra herself.
Dex is, by the end of S6, pretty *over* Harry. He's tried replacing him with Brian for a while, and then come back to him. But it's not quite working. Dex's giving Harry all this awesome back talk that questions whether Harry ever gave him a chance to live without being a serial killer. He needs someone to see him who doesn't want him to give into a full-blown killing spree, and he needs that someone to not be Harry; even the Harry he's put together in his head can't quite hack it anymore.
One of the things the parallel with Travis drew out was how much control Dexter has comparatively... and how little. He's definitely a neater monster, and credit has to be given for his decision to "surrender to a higher power" and tell the police about wormwood but... we've got a whole freaking season where he's letting his desires rule him. He misdirects the police, claims these Doomsday Killers for himself. Even though he says he cares about Deb's career, he puts his kill first. Even though this exact sort of situation is what got Rita killed, he again presumes to decide what should happen to killers that are his. And people, one could argue, die because of these decisions he makes. People who wouldn't have died if he hadn't hidden Travis from the police for so long.
If Dexter were acting more rationally, he'd have never behaved like that. His behavior shows that, for all that he tries, he's not really in control of himself. And that lack of control hurts other people.
Deb needs to know the truth, and Dexter needs someone to really see him. So... here we are.
Please, writers. Please do your own set up justice!
I feel like they've given Deb some excellent stuff to do. I loved everything about her becoming Lt and all that led to for her. I loved everything about the therapy and digging at how she feels.
They just... oh man, they've got to work this in a way that's right for her character and I just... ((flail)) I wanted to see what Dexter's like in this new world they have to create together out of the wreckage of their treasured lie.