Thursday, December 1, 2011

Dexter For Dummies

Dexter For Dummies

No. Seriously. It seems that ShowTime has made it so that Dexter is literally written for complete morons. There's no other explanation that I can think of as to why they use the dialogue that they use.

I seriously enjoyed this show a lot more before I realized that over half of the dialogue used in it is just characters repeating things that we've just seen not minutes before or babbling about the obvious shit like this:
Magical nerd: "...unless there was an antenna!"
Idiot Deb: "What does that do??"
Nerd: "Boosts the signal"
It's almost as if the techno-babble from the intern guy is so hilariously bad that I can't help but want to throw myself off the boat in separate body bags. Then you have the whole "tracing his location based on the source a website was posted on" just felt.. like my brain melted
Police: "Gellar made another blog post. That doesn't help us find him though."
Intern: "We could track the post."
Police: "Is that even possible?"
I feel like I'm being too critical on them, but goddamn, does nobody anywhere understand how the internet works? But hey, at least that's not as bad as Dexter announcing to the audience that "He's been dead this whole time." It really marries the shows themes of stupid obvious twists and stupid obvious narration.

One other example of this that I found so hilariously awful by the writers was when Dexter wanders into one random lecture by this professor, and he just so happens to be talking about the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Why thank you, writers, I may have never figured out that this was the same atheist professor that Dexter was just investigating without your not-so-subtle hints.

And does Dexter even care about getting caught these days. He doesn't even pretend to worry about cameras at all at the university, let alone getting into an elevator while leaving your one backup downstairs. And forget that there's typically cameras in all the parking areas or the elevator itself. By no means will Miami homicide want to look out the persons of interest house to find shady practices all over the place.

All of this is just so far away from reality, that it may as well just bee pure fantasy.



But that catering to the stupidity isn't the end of it. Have you've see the after credits part where the executive producer goes on in his own recap that is so clever. Really clever enough to suggest that Gellar wasn't really there at all. As if Dexter's line wasn't clear enough, the morons who still worship Dexter as some hero just lose some more brain cells.

How else do you explain this said by the executive producer:
"In this scene, Olmos told the actress not to look at her."

"In this scene, Olmos had to tell the waitress not to pour him any coffee."
Why yes. Because, you see, this sensational twist was actually kept from the cast and crew, including Colin Hanks. because they wouldn't want anyone to slip up and have the audience feel cheated, now would they?

I also just have to wonder what logic went through Dexter's mind when he went down into the trapdoor basement. The heavy table was over the door and Travis was unconscious besides it. Why surely Gellar is in the basement and moved the table on top of the trapdoor using magic.



And while this may be completely nerdy, I have to point out Quinn's mad computer sills as he tries to track down the GPS to his gun. He literally just tapped "c" three times, hit enter, and then mashed the mouse button without ever moving it or looking at the screen at all.

I'm guessing that the script probably just said "Quinn uses his computer to initiate a GPS trace for his gun", but as an actor who is supposedly paid in cash and not in craft services, I would take that much pride in my work to actually act that out in a way that at least resembles the reality of it. For fuck's sake just type something instead of mashing some random keys down. It reminds me of this little piece:



So now I guess it's just a matter of trying to figure out WHEN I and everyone else on the planet realized that Edward James Olmos was just a ghost dad in himself. I personally had it click in my mind at the dinner scene, as did so many other people. but jut think about it. The waitress didn't ask him if he wanted anything and ignored topping his cup off.

And may I add something about the Nerdy Intern who just so happens to be the collector and also happens to be very rich. He secretly bought the ice Truck Killer's mannequin hand, makes games about serial killers, and is fascinated by Dexter. Whatever could go wrong? Especially since there's three episodes left... you have to wonder what exactly is going to happen to a young lady who also happens to be on Dexter's babysitter's club. With so little time left and the push to keep intern collector guy bigger and bigger, I'm sure nothing sinister will come from all of this.

At least the intern's slow creepy reveal is more interesting than anything else they've done this season with the Gellar/Travis story. I seriously want to know how the discussion went down for how they were going to do the revealing "twist" in the last episode:
Writer 1 "Now we need Dexter and the audience to learn the truth about Geller. How do we do this?"

Writer 2 "what if Travis starts making mistakes and Dex noticing them and puts it together?"

Writer 1 "No it needs to me more obvious than that... What if Dexter finds Geller's body in a freezer?"

Writer 2 "No, some people might just assume that Geller is a vampire who needs to sleep in a freezer."

Writer 1 "We'll just have Dexter say 'He's been dead the whole time'"

Writer 2 "Perfect!"
That and a lot of glue made this season what it is. Which is sort of sad. Do you want some more examples of shitty writing?
Quinn: "umm, hey didn't we meet at the club last night?"
Girl: "oh, you want my mom"
...
Quinn: "You work at the strip club?"
Mom: "No, waffle house"
Its like the writer's forgot the joke they were trying to make work midway through. And another and lesser known enigma is why they even bothered bringing down in Mike Cutler, the cop from Chicago, to have him do so very little so far.

I was actually looking forward to the dynamic created by an MMPD officer that actually is sort of competent of an officer for the first time since Doakes, but he's done nothing at all in the last couple of episodes. I guess the writers didn't want anyone stealing Dexter's spotlight or moving the investigation forward. So they just decided to not write for him at all.

No comments: