Season 5 of our favorite serial killer, Dexter was somewhat of a letdown after the brilliant and intense season 4 that featured John Lithgow as his prime enemy and culminating in Rita’s death. Season 5 had a decent villain mind you in Jacob Chase, but overall the season felt like it didn’t accomplish much in way of expanding Dexter’s character, or do anything new.
One of my main complaints is how easily tied up everything was at the end, and that many of the situations were taken care of with slight cop outs. Most notably, Deb finding Dexter and Lumen at the scene where she tracked down Jordan Chase, only to be behind a curtain. Then without ever seeing them she lets them go due to “understanding” their plight.
What was so ridiculous about this was that first she not only let them get away, but she let them take Chase’s body with them! Later int he episode at the B-Day party LaGuerta gives her credit for “solving the barrel girl murders”. While technically half-true, she really didn’t tie anything up. The case isn’t over. Chase was gone. All the suspects were gone ala Dexter and Lumen.
Deb’s character may have been forced into letting them go with her experiences and her foreshadowing all season, but it still didn’t make much sense that she would be so dumb about it all. In my opinion they either had to let her find out it was Dexter, or they shouldn’t have had the scene at all. Letting them just get away before she arrived.
Besides this, the entire Liddy/Quinn murder investigation ended way too abruptly. At the crime scene it was intense, yet 20 minutes later it was all over with because Dexter tapered with the blood results from Quinn’s show. Quinn basically knowing that Dexter did it, but telling him he “owes him one” is not just cliche, but silly. Why does Quinn just think that killing Liddy is OK? Is he really that big a wimp and scared of Deb to accuse Dexter, or just too dumb to get the evidence. Remember he HAS those photos of Dexter and Lumen dumping bags into the water. The case should be far from over.
Quinn is seen dumping all the messages out of his cell phones, they catch him giving Liddy surveillance equipment, and yet the whole thing is resolved cleanly by the end of the episode. At the very least it is highly suspicious even if the blood was tampered with. You can say it was the smoking gun of it all, but he is still very connected with Liddy.
As for Dexter and Lumen. Certainly it was a decent match for the season, and the ending was a bit sad, but none of this is new. Dexter has had the same epiphanies several times before. That he isn’t like everyone else.
Also, another irritating issue was that Dexter barely grieved for Rita at all during the season. Very short and far between moments all the way through. Only in the first couple episodes and maybe the conversation with Aster at the end of the Finale did he spend much time with it.
Overall, Season 5 was good, but not worthy of high praise to me. It felt like a filler season that was trying stand still since it has no end date for the show. It was a highly condenses season that really when all is said and done is one that just didn’t progress the show, and could be skipped without loss of anything. You could say Dexter grieved for Rita by helping and falling in love with another woman, but he really didn’t grieve for Rita hardly at all.
Related Posts:
. ABC will re-air the original two-hour pilot from 2004 from 8-10 p.m. ET. It will reportedly include a ”pop-up” version with enhanced trivia and facts about the $10 million episode. 
