I’ve tried really hard to like this show. But now at the end of Season 3 of Dexter, I’m just not sure I can muster any more effort. It’s not so much the gaping plot holes or the godawful, blood-pressure-spiking annoyance of Dexter’s sister Deb that are causing me to throw in the towel. It’s the show’s protagonist himself. I’ve tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. I’ve done mental gymnastics in an attempt to keep my disbelief suspended. But I just can’t deny it anymore.
Dexter Morgan is an idiot.
And his idiocy is killing the show for me. It’s such a shame because I REALLY wanted to like him. I’m a sucker for criminal masterminds, and the premise of a vigilante serial killer is super intriguing. But I just can’t get behind his character anymore.
In order to kill people on a regular basis IN THE SAME FUCKING CITY without getting caught by the cops, you’d have to be crazy smart. I’m talking genius-level. There is no other way it would work.
I went into the show with this expectation, and for a little while, Dexter lived up to it. A blood spatter analyst for Miami Metro with a strict “honor code” and meticulous attention to detail, he seemed to fit the part of a brilliant, Batman-esque killing machine. His limited capacity for and understanding of human emotion was believable and consistent at first.
But toward the end of Season 1, I was starting to have my doubts about his intelligence. Every time Dexter makes a kill, he drops the butchered corpses in the EXACT SAME SPOT in the ocean. Why? Is there not enough room out there? Why the hell would you want to have a pile of bodies accumulating in any one place?? A place that you travel to in an obviously predictable manner? Without giving away too much detail for those who haven’t watched the show, the antagonist of Season 1 even follows Dexter out to his dumping site! Of course, the fact that Dexter doesn’t notice that he’s being followed out over the open water brings his intelligence even further into question…
Dexter’s judgment only continues to deteriorate in Season 2, when he gets involved with the walking-talking trainwreck that is Lila. Jesus Christ, even for those of us who haven’t watched Spartacus, one look at her crazy, duck-billed, arsonist ass would send any half-way sensible creature running for the hills. Yet our supposed genius Dexter chooses to entangle himself with her so completely and irrationally that he not only puts his carefully crafted persona in jeopardy but risks his whole world going up in smoke.
But Season 3 really does take the cake. It’s in this season that Dexter proves he has learned absolutely nothing from his past screw ups by forming a stupidly close attachment to the dubious and reckless Miguel Prado. For whatever dumbass reason, Dexter chooses to confide his deepest darkest secrets in Miguel of all people, and as you might expect, this backfires spectacularly. The hunt for The Skinner in Season 3 takes an unintentionally hilarious backseat to Dexter’s drama with Miguel, and as the credits rolled for the last episode, I was left sitting there with such a bad case of WTF that I’m only now starting to come to terms with it.
No matter what contrivances the writers come up with to bail Dexter’s stupid ass out of trouble, no matter how many times they insist through their clunky dialogue that Dexter is “so smart,” I’m just not buying into it any more. Dexter, you’re stupid. You do stupid things, and if you were this dumb in real life you would have been caught long before Episode 1.