dhmac

Wow, I have the opposite view and think last season was better and also think that, as a whole, Season Five was one of the best seasons of the show. (Note that I marathon-ed it and watched the entire season in less than a week.)

However this current season is only half over, so it could get a lot better in the 2nd half and I may change my mind if it does. But for now, I rate it down with Season Three as good, but not the show at its best.

Doc Moonlight

So now we have two living people who know Dexter's secret: Lumen and Jonah. I wonder if either will make a return appearance in a future season.

dhmac

I think this episode really supports the view that Gellar isn't real.

The victim that was let go gave an explanation that clearly could've been just one person doing stuff to her (ex. "The Professor" never actually talked to her in the explanation and she just assumed it was Gellar that stepped on her back).

Also, Brian as Dexter's Dark Passenger did a lot of stuff he shouldn't have been able to do as an imaginary person, like eat food and put the pitchfolk in the motel guy (which then quickly switched views to show that it was really Dexter doing it). I think that was to expand within the show what a Dark Passenger can do for the viewers, so that when later it comes out that Gellar is not real, the audience won't claim that the show cheated.

MikahC

I wouldn't claim the show cheated anyway since when you're dealing with seeing things through the viewpoint of a mentally deranged character, you can hardly take anything as proof. Did you guys watch Fight Club? The style is set. When it comes to Hanks, we can only believe what others perceive. The lady heard a 2nd voice while blindfolded. It may or may not still have been Hanks.

PopcornTreeCt

Exactly. I'm curious about the writers dropping these obvious hints about Gellar not being real, makes me sorta hope that he is real.

Shazam

Last year's was very slow until the Big Bad appeared - in episode eight. That was way too long to draw things out.

The whole Quinn trying to find Kyle Butler plot was brutal too. And the Yet Another Angel/LaGuerta Love Plot. Gak.

wearetheborg

+1

I'm not digging this season. I liked the brother sam storyline, but other than that the personal connection to Dexter is missing. S1-4 had Rita and the kids. S5 had Lumen. S6 Dexter is just roaming around. And the villain(s) is(are) deranged mental cases and not scary or very interesting.

Groucho

I thought this episode was terrible. Certainly the worst of the season, possibly for the whole series run.

Throwing Copper

I am finally caught up with all of this season's episodes. What a great year this is.

Way better than last season.

DeputyDave

I'm convinced he isn't real (I was the first to bring that up so where's my cookie?). As mentioned earlier they clearly went out of their way to show Brian "doing things" that were actually being done by Dexter. That and the subtle Psycho homage convince me. Remember, we heard Norman and his mother talking in two distinct voices.

dhmac

Within the established framework of the show over the previous 5 seasons, what Dexter's Dark Passenger in the form of Harry could do was set to be very limited. He just appeared to Dexter standing or sitting nearby, but didn't pick up items or eat or really do anything besides talk to Dexter. That was established as a part of the rules of the show, so if Harry all of a sudden started acting differently than previous seasons, it would have violated these rules and been basically "cheating" by the show to suddenly change things like that.

So to be able to expand this without cheating, the show changed the appearance of the Dark Passenger for this episode to Brian, his brother, and let him behave differently and interact with the environment more. This expanded the role of what a Dark Passenger can do within the show by simply adding to the show's rules that a different persona can behave differently. And that opens it up for Gellar to be more interactive without the show breaking its established rules ("cheating") when it's eventually revealed that Gellar is dead and just imagined by Travis as a very active persona.

dhmac

Maybe marathoning the season made it better, but what I really liked about last season was how the Lumen storyline developed. I thought the whole "helping a victim get vengeance" angle was a nice twist on the show's season-long arc structure.

(I actually even liked it a little better than Season Four simply because, as great as Trinity was, I got annoyed at how too much of the plotting was dependent on Dexter messing things up again and again. Without Dexter's constant mistakes, Season Four would've fallen apart.)

DeputyDave

The problem with this is that Harry (or Brian) is NOT the Dark Passenger. The Dark Passenger is Dexter's urge to kill. That little voice in his mind urging him on. Harry is sort of Dexter's conscience. Brian was his inner desire to let go of Harry's rules and just kill at will.

Josh-da-man

I didn't know there were hard-and-fast rules for imaginary friends.

dvdhook

They seemed to make a special point of showing Dexter take the pen from the motel with the name of the city on it, and also Jonah's neighbor looking at Dexter's face. I wonder if these things will come into play later.

Coral

I don't think Jonah knows about Dexter's dark side though. He knows that he pretended to be Kyle Butler in order to catch Trinity, but he doesn't know that Dexter's a serial killer.

dhmac

Yeah, I can see that interpretation but a flaw I see with it is psychopaths, like Dexter, don't have consciences (that's why they are called psychopaths). Instead, I see the imaginary Harry as Dexter's Dark Passenger as filtered through the Code of Harry, which is why he appears as Harry. Taking away that Code of Harry Filter turned the Dark Passenger into Brian, who's constant urgings to kill are basically what it would be without Harry's strong influence in raising Dexter.

I guess the one that for sure though is the Dark Passenger definitely is NOT...

MikahC

To me, this isn't the same as Batman suddenly having the ability to fly. That would violate the essence of who Batman is (a human being, Bruce Wayne, who through gagdetry and superme physical dedication, becomes slightly more than human). This is more like someone watching someone else eat Rasin Nut Bran for breakfast in the morning, then complaining when the person decides to have Frosted Flakes one morning because it breaks the established rules.

At least in Dexter's case, these "people" do not exist. They are simply expressions of his own psychosis. So just like I may behave one way 90% of my life, and suddenly behave a different way after, say, losing a job, so too can Dexter have slight variations in his behavior. When he's trying to fit in, we get Harry. When he's tired of fitting in, we get Brian. But they're all aspects of Dexter. It isn't cheating to show differences. I agree that we've never seen Harry interact with things before (that I can recall), but I call seeing Brian in a more active role is showing a change, not a cheat. Now that he has put Brian aside (at least for now), it'll go back to the way it was.

It also isn't cheating that we don't know what's going on with the Professor. They simply don't want us to know yet. They don't owe it to us to let us know yet.

dhmac

I'm just saying in the narrative conventions of a series, rules are essentially established within the framework of the story and breaking them tends to be looked down upon by fans. That's why something like R2-D2 all of a sudden having jet packs pissed a lot of people off, because it violated what had been previously established. The makers of this series know that they have established certain rules, so they have to expand them a bit for this particular season to work without pissing off a lot of people. And they used Brian in this last episode to expand the rules in a logically consistent way so that the later reveal that Gellar is dead won't piss off the fans. Whether something is real or imaginary within fiction, the internal rules need to be consistent to avoid possibly driving away the audience.

dhmac

I have another thing I'm predicting about this season: I think that Gellar is not only dead but that it's possible...



(But, then again, I could be wrong.)

dsa_shea

I was thinking this exact same thing, minus the crucification, before I read your post. if Gellar is dead then it is because he wanted to be and maybe Travis is now realizing that he bit off more than he can chew. However, has anyone made any notion that Gellar hasn't been seen in awhile in the real world?

majorjoe23

We saw Harry pick up one of Harrison's toys earlier this season.

mickey65

Angel mentioned how he's gone "underground" for the last 3 years.

Gunde

If he's not real it is however cheating to show the professor doing stuff when Travis isn't there. And they've done that at least twice.
If he's imaginary he should never be in a scene where Travis isn't.

FuQ

He has that pen in his pocket. You know Debra will find it. He will have to explain himself.