Great episode, it looks like this season might turn out to be pretty solid after all. Mos Def is turning into a respectable character for a show that usually has a pretty weak supporting cast. Even Deb's storyline isn't groan-inducing. The highlight of the show was the JarIt ad in the background of the hospital waiting room. It was so obvious I couldn't tell if it was product placement or allusion, lol.
Side note, Wikipedia just revealed to me that Olmos is married to the attractive Hispanic chick that played Denzel's wife in American Gangster. Not bad work for an old Mexican man whose face looks like a topography map.
Spoiler Interesting that Dexter let Travis go so readily after what happened when he stalled in killing Trinity. Especially considering our theory that Travis/Geller are the same person anyway.
I don't know about you guys, but last episode made Travis a sympathetic character for me. His speech when Dexter was about to kill him when he was saying "No, God doesn't speak to me, I can't hear him" and talking about how he's a failure was heartbreaking, despite knowing what he's failing at. I think it would be more heartbreaking, in a twisted way, if the theory ends up being true, that the Professor is just another part of him and he's that fucking crazy and just thinks this pathetic person is his true nature. Either way, I think he's the most complex and well-written villain since the Ice Truck Killer. (Trinity was the best because he was so scary, but he was a pretty straight-forward bad guy.) I'm surprised that they killed off Mos Def so soon. (He is dead, right?) It just seemed that his character was going to have a bigger purpose in the season. I'll be interested to see if there's any reason, because right now it's so sudden it made me wonder if Mos Def suddenly had conflicting schedules, or something, so they had to just get rid of him somehow.
There isn't much that disturbs me (as evidenced by my membership here), but something about this season is turning my stomach. Maybe it's seeing the actual murders and watching Travis struggle with himself, but the murdered angel scene along with several of the Travis/Gellar POV scenes in this episode were seriously uncomfortable to watch. I guess that means they're doing something right?
I'd say so. After last season I wasn't that excited about the show... I thought it was maybe starting to get repetitive; Dexter kills people, Dexter battles some big scary serial killer, he ends up winning. This season is following that same formula again, but now I'm thinking that's a good thing; it's a fucking great formula, if they can do it in fresh ways, which I think they're doing this season. Like Frosty said, the religious undertones make it seem extra dark and intriguing. And the theory that Olmos is in Travis' imagination is brilliant... Damn you clever assholes, I kind of wish I hadn't read that. I'm pretty sure that's going to turn out to be right. And Mos Def is an awesome actor playing a great character... I hope he survives.
Spoiler Really? Harry=Angel ITK=Devil I was hoping they'd avoid something so cliched in a season about religion...
Spoiler Well wasn't that the theme of the first season anyways? At least without the religious part, the temptation of being free versus the teachings of the code? I thought it was interesting, I don't think we've seen ITK since Dexter "let him go" in the beginning of season 2. It could be an interesting dichotomy. Anyone else feel bad for Misuka? Poor guy gets a lightweight for his first assistant, a thief for number two and now a fraud for number three.
Not sure how I feel the ITK making a reappearance, but the episodes where Dexter battles with his Dark Passenger are invariably always better than the ones where he coasts around killing people and evading capture. Hard to tell whether the season will get better or worse, but at least it looks like it's making a strong turn toward something climactic. About time.
Well here's the thing. It looks (from next weeks preview) like Dexter is going to embrace his darkness and go completely off the reservation for a while, presumably eschewing the Code. The Code is what makes Dexter Dexter. Now we're going to have a few episodes of a pure evil Dexter doing what he wants until some moment will happen along that allows him to see his "light" allowing for some catharsis that will allow him to come to grips with everything. This will most likely happen after he realizes that Colin Hanks is a split-personality with the persona of Gellar acting as his Dark Passenger. I just wish they'd get off the trend of devoting a season to a particular personality trait and tailoring the villains so that they fulfill the necessary requirements to allow Dexter to have a realization regarding the trait of that season. Season 2: Can Dexter be a good partner Season 3: Can Dexter have a normal friendship Season 4: Can Dexter be a father/spouse while being a serial killer Season 5: Can Dexter be a role model Season 6: God and Dexter
The preview for the next episode was fucking nuts. This episode was pretty boring, except for the last scene with Mos Def and the last scene of the whole thing, which were both awesome. But I'm so excited for the next episode.
Alright so I'm only 15 minutes in on last night's episode, but...did they just go full-on apeshit dream-sequence on us? So far this feels like one of those weird Sopranos eps (which is not a bad thing to me at all btw). And it seems like they read all the theories on the net about the big character returning that they just said fuck it, we'll get em both back! Maybe or maybe not I'll return with more thoughts on this later
I have LOVED Mos Def in this roll. Sad that it's over so soon. I feel like his relationship w/ Dexter could have been given more time, but I see how he served his purpose (showed Dexter some people can change, that you can push your dark passenger into a corner & "let you light shine", that some religious people aren't bat shit insane) and needed to die a.k.a. be a catalyst for Dexter's little personality disorder trip in this week's episode. And boy, his trip was a TRIP. Shooting a gun. Speeding. Not answer his phone. Staying up way past his bed time. Hanging out with a hallucination his Dad Hallucination doesn't approve of. It felt very... teenage rebellion-ish. And I get it, I do; it all comes back to redemption. (how could you not, the writers beat you over the head with the parallels sometimes, and I think this is one of the episodes where they let it get a little heavy handed) He couldn't forgive Brother Sam's killer & in a panic about not being good he swings back to the dark side. But of course he over comes the dark side thanks to his son's parallel with Trinity's son and realizes he's not all bad. It sounds like I'm hating on this episode, but I'm really not. It was fun to see Dexter be all dark and crazy for a little bit. And the guy who plays his brother is a good actor that he plays off of well so all of their scenes were well done. But one more little issue with this episode: what the FUCK is up w/ Travis & his sister's relationship? Do they seem a little touchy-feely to anyone else? Maybe it's just because we're used to seeing Deb & Dexter do the brother/sister thing in a more "we're too bad ass for mushy shit" way that it seems a little gross? I just... I don't know. It doesn't feel right. But Travis' scenes this week were pretty fantastic. I love Colin Hanks. Even though it takes me about halfway through every episode to stop waiting for him to be funny and realize that he's playing a pretty dark character & doing it WELL. Um, I know some people have a problem with Deb, but I freaking love her. She has the best lines. And I have this sinking feeling they're going to kill off Quinn. A year ago I wouldn't have had a problem with that, but I actually like him this season. And that scene with him & Deb made me choke up a little. Sorry, girl moment.
So...what are people thinking about the Gellar=nonexistent dark passenger theory now? On the one hand, we still haven't seen anyone else interact with him, and even Dexter didn't ever actually see him in the church...but on the other hand...all of the other stuff that happened with the most recent tableau, even the tiny detail of not having the hidden number anywhere... I'm liking the turn of working with Travis now, especially since he's considering it his own way of honoring Brother Sam.
I still think Olmos is an apparition, and I think there are plenty of not-so-bright viewers out there that have never had it cross their minds in the first place. This is the plot device that I think is dragging too far this season. Angel threatening the intern with his gun was not cool. That's not like Batista. So the chief killed a hooker and LaGoofy is covering it up, huh? Do you think he said "Alright, cockmeat sandwich time" right before it happened?
I'm thinking it's still a possibility. Travis saw Deb leaving his sister's house. There was no cut-away scene to show Geller watching Deb & Travis' sister talking. And the lighting was different when Travis saw Geller in the balcony than when Dexter looked up at the empty balcony. So, I think for those "not-so-bright-viewers" this episode was actually supposed to be the one that made them think "oh SNAP, Geller might not be real!!"
Man, if that really is the case and they're dragging it out this far, I'm going to be disappointed. I had a bit of an issue with it, but up until this episode I thought it would've been a good twist, especially once Travis started struggling with that side of him. After this one, though, if it turns out that Travis killed his sister, chained himself up, they bothered with the missing number detail, and now Dexter is hunting someone that doesn't exist, it's just going to feel way too cheap to me with ja few too many red herrings to consider it good writing. I thought that too. Kind of a weird thing to throw in there. Even though I knew something suspicious was up, I have to admit I agreed with LaGuerta with her conversation with Deb about not caring so much about one hooker who OD'd and was left to die when there's a serial killer to focus on. Not the most ethical solution, especially considering she's hiding something, but she had a point.
I don't know if I'm rationalizing but it seems like they are making too concerted of an effort of not having him be seen or heard by anyone for him to not be a figment of Colin Hanks' imagination. I really hope they don't wait until the last episode to reveal he isn't real. This season has been great so far but now it's starting to seem a bit repetitive. 13 hours is a whole lot of television especially given the criticism the side stories get, without which it would be impossible to reach that goal. I think they could have gotten a lot more out of the interaction between Brother Sam and Dexter than they allowed. That storyline ended a little too quickly and would have been much more interesting than this Batista not liking the intern dating his sister business.