We can now personally blame Showtime for the ending that happened on Dexter because they called the shot that said ultimately he cannot die…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
It’s pretty much universally recognized by now that the series finale of Dexter was shitty.
There’s no way to sugar coat it or as my old boss at the record store I once managed used to say ‘you can’t spit shine a turd’. Dexter came in like a lion and went out like the lamb chops that got served up to Hannibal Lecter by those poor guards in Memphis — laying on the ground with a pool of blood surrounding them.
Spoiler alert if you haven’t seen the finale by now (some of us can’t unsee it unfortunately) but after dumping his sister’s body in the ocean, Dexter proceeds to drive into the hurricane Perfect Storm style to meet his watery doom after realizing that his continued existence will only serve to infect those that he loves the most.
Of course that says nothing about the fact that he left his only son in the care of a poisonous serial killer, but hey options were limited. At the time when Dexter was presumed dead, it was a conclusion that most people could live with although the whole driving his boat into a hurricane was a touch much.
Still just seconds later, Dexter reappears as a lumberjack living somewhere presumably in the northwest where he now spends his days cutting down trees and his nights sitting in a one room shack all alone staring back at the camera in a weird, off putting seclusion.
At that moment you could probably hear a groan from across the United States while there were equal parts of people going ‘huh?’ (for reference sake I first let out a ‘huh?’ and then let out a ‘what the fuck just happened?’ and concluded by saying ‘what a piece of shit’).
Well as it turns out, the entire finale of Dexter can fall at the doorsteps of one group/entity — the executives at Showtime.
Yep the same people who refuse to kill Brody on Homeland (although the show isn’t nearly as good through two episodes without Damien Lewis in season 3), and brought Weeds to an end that can only be described as ‘futuristically stupid’ also had a hand in making sure that Dexter Morgan was going nowhere near the grave.
According to Dexter producer John Goldwyn, who spoke during the New York Film Festival over the weekend, the writers were given only one directive from the folks at Showtime regarding the show’s ending — Dexter cannot die.
“They won’t let us kill him,” Goldwyn said via Vulture. “Showtime was very clear about that. When we told them the arc for the last season, they just said, ‘Just to be clear, he’s going to live.’ There were a lot of endings discussed because it was a very interesting problem to solve, to bring it to a close. People have a relationship with Dexter, even if it doesn’t have the size and the ferocity of the fan base for Breaking Bad. But it has a very core loyal following.”
Goldwyn was correct about the rabid fan base, but mentioning Breaking Bad in the same sentence only furthers the frustration Dexter supporters had at the odd and overall dumb ending to the show. Breaking Bad, meanwhile, was universally recognized as one of the greatest series finales of all time and some (me) believe it was the single greatest ending in television history.
Somewhere in the world, those of us that stuck around for all eight seasons of Dexter are trying to imagine a time when the last scene we witnessed was Rita sitting naked in a bloody bathtub as Dexter finds baby Harrison sitting in a pool of tepid crimson crying for his mother who is now dead because his father couldn’t stand to off a serial killer he was trying to learn from how to be normal.
If I had to choose between that sad, tragic ending or the really bad, sad, pathetic ending we are now left with forever, I kind of wish Dexter had been done at season four. Alas that didn’t happen so next time you’re in Oregon imagine Dexter Morgan chopping down wood and looking for Cuban sandwiches somewhere at the local deli.
