Dexter

Man, crow does not taste good. Props to the people who called it!

Well I'm glad that Professor Gellar was real and even gladder that he's dead.

There was really no question of his existence. After all, that lady did know him. It was more a question of his involvement in the murders. Again, props to the people that called it.

Yeah, given the evidence and all but I still had the rather baseless fear (only made worse after watching last week's House) that the writers would pull some weird stunt to make it so he was never a real person, just a complete fantasy made by Travis.

Also, Dexter=chair, not table

edited 29th Nov '11 11:37:33 AM by hybridelement

This does place Dexter in a bit of a tight spot. His collegues know about Travis and Gellar. He can't let Travis go free, because he's DDK, and the guy he was going to pin it on has been dead for weeks at least, something the rest of the forensic team are going to find out if they get their hands on Gellar's body. Dexter can't afford to let Travis fall into the hands of the police alive, because Travis might ID him. He can't be left to roam free either, so Travis has to die. He'll have to be found too, because otherwise such a high profile case is going to draw a lot of attention, and Dexter is too heavily involved to risk prolonged scrutiny of the DDK case. If travis' body is found, the police will have to find Gellar's body as well, because otherwise they won't close the DDK case. If Dexter doesn't dispose of Travis before the police find Gellar's body, he'll be in a great deal of trouble. MMPD homicide will come down on Travis with everything they've got, and unlike Gellar, other people can actually see him. He'll be found, and he might talk. The police is already on the doorstep of the church, so Dexter will have to hide the body for now while he hunts Travis.

Yeah, can't use some of his tricks. Here's a stupid idea, he could stage Travis' death as a suicide like he did with his brother in the first season and the Skinner guy in the second.

Coming to think about it, it is really retarded that we are shown an imaginary guy who exists only inside a side character's head. I mean, the audience is shown a character the protagonist can't see. Dexrer was like, tricked by people, but we were tricked by the show's reality. And that is dumb.

I also hate the whole ghost thingy in the series. I mean, originally Harry represented the voice of morals, or.. his code, or something, and that was cool. But later he just talks to Dexter about stuff, and last thing you know you find both of them drinking beer together. That is sad, too.

edited 1st Dec '11 1:50:43 AM by tkalir

Travis is gettin' kinda badass.

Is anyone else concerned that Masuka's intern is probably crazier than Travis?...

well, it was revealed he was the one who bought the piece of evidence from the Ice Truck Killer's case that the previous hot blonde intern sold in an auction,he idolizes Dexter because he does things too perfect,and made a game about being a serial killer and even including the Bay Harbor Butcher as one of the playable characters,which made Dexter feels uncomfortable,and even more if the BHB in the game is based on Doakes,whom Dexter set up as the murderer to make the Police close the case and leave him alone.Pretty sure by the end of the season,the guy will either get killed off,arrested,or,most unlikely,even have a change of heart and giving the piece back and keep working since he showed he has been helpful

what I find funny is how Dexter has been showing he didn't learn his lesson with Trinity at all and is committing the very same mistakes that are,again,costing innocent lives(one in particular at the end of season 4...) and judging by what might happen now in the next episode, Batista may be the next one to pay for Dexter's recklessnes for not just finishing the guy already or worrying too much to go out of his way to mislead the Police to have the killer for himself.Not mentioning the entire Metro Police might suffer a bio-terrorist attack if Beth succeeds...

So...incest.

From a Certain Point of View...

The intern is psycho though. Really psycho. And he's going to have to die.

I don't think he's really psycho. I think he's gonna keep buying body parts off the internet, turning them into clues, and sending them off to Dexter because that would be like a video game (clues, a nemesis), but is gonna chicken out when he has to actually kill someone.

The fuck was that? Incest? Jesus. The one thing I always liked about their relationship was that they never played up the "technically not related" angle. Also isn't a little late to be starting any interesting subplot with the intern? Unless it's a setup for next season, or else we're left with a What Could Have Been.

The intern subplot has been simmering all season, really.

Regarding the quasi-incest thing, don't worry about it. Deb will have largely forgotten all about it by next season, like she does everything except ITK and Lundy...

FUUUUUUUUUUCK YEEEEEEEAAAAAHHHHH! DXD! DXD! DXD! DXD! DXD!

Oh, I was always such a huge Dex/Deb shipper, but I didn't expect this. Entire shitty season forgiven. By the time the psychologist was bringing it up, I was already flailing around my arms, and making excited noises, just because the writers finally moved it up from Crack Pairing hell, to an acknowledged possibility. By the time she was looking at his lips, I was stuffing a pillow to my mouth cover up my incontrollable Squee.

Though sadly, plot points brought up at the second to last episode tend to be resolved in the last episode, so probably Deb will just have some experience to make her get over it, like deciding that she doesn't want to ruin their relationsip or something, but still... It was there! It's totally canon! Squee!!!!

Well, what "else" did she have? Sean, the secretly married mechanic? Gabriel from the Gym? Anton the CI? (The latter two she intentionaally both broke up with, for Lundy). As I already said, it might very well end in this stage as mere Ship Tease, with Deb writing this off as an insignificant dream, but if they continue it any more than that, with actual events in the show, it will stay.

As much Status Quo Is God this show uses, Deb's Character Development was always treated consistently. Sure, she had some failed relationships, too, but every event that was actually important for her, left a mark.

edited 12th Dec '11 12:45:43 PM by Ever9

"Not blood related" is the dumbest reason for incest being okay- they still grew up with each other, they are emotionally related and that is thicker than any biological bound. As long as everyone in-universe is aware of how icky this is, I'm okay with it though, since Deb has issues and if they get tackled, good for her.

Until I checked the forums, i had no idea what the intern was up to. I thought he was going to send the hand to Masuka (or to himself at the station) because he saw the error of his ways or something. Either they are setting up the next season, or it will be one scene of Dexter dope-slapping him with the hand.

Well, it might be a dumb reason, but people acually do think that way. If they think that not-blood-related incest is at least less squicky, it's only realistic to bring it up in the plot. If they would actually become a couple, and everyone would be like "But INCEEEEEEST!!!!!!", that would be a less realistic prtrayal than if everyone would shrug and say "well, at least they are not blood-related, so whatever".

Well, objectively speaking, there are two reasons that incest is squicky.

First, because male/female pairing incest can produce children with a higher rate for birth defects.

Second, because in almost all incestual situations, there's a power differential (because one of them is older or otherwise has more influence on the situation).

Clearly, the first reason is not a problem (due to the lack of blood relation). The second reason is also mitigated because they are both rational (well, rational-ish) adults, though there's added inappropriateness due to the fact that Deb is Dexter's boss, technically.

There is an unofficial third reason for incest being squicky, that being the Westermark Effect, whereupon children who were raised together have an aversion to having a sexual relationship with each other, regardless of blood relation.

This last one is the one that hits Deb and Dexter the most. They were raised together from a young age and typically (as we've seen) would never think of each other as a sexual option.

The therapist notably did not actually suggest this. She was talking about how Deb chooses men in her life, because she has a constant male presence for which she does not "need" another man for. It was Deb who went off on the sex tangent, but that's not even indicative of anything. Deb goes to those weird places almost as naturally as Masuka.

The Westermark Effect is why, I assume, the relationship wouldn't take off the ground on Dexter's side.

Actually, Debra is the younger, so she would have had more time for imprinting in the first 6 years than Dexter.

And anyways, Dexter implied in the first season that he is asexual, and all his previous relationships could be seen as only romantically and/or pragmatically motivated, so assuming that it's true and he wasn't just in denial, he already has experience in relationships with women to whom he isn't biologically attracted to.

I think the Westermarck Effect has been a bit overused recently on the Internet, along with The Uncanny Valley, and some other popular psychological hypotheses, that were only supposed to speculate about some vague trends in society, but recently everyone uses them as if they would be infallible scientific facts, like "This is how people work, period". Westermarck might be part of the explanation why certain behaviors are less usual than others, but it isn't a "proof" that anything would be "objectively squicky" for everyone. We have all sorts of instinct remnants, from knee-jerk reactions to blinking, from arachnophobia to sexual preferences, and we are constantly ignoring them.

Besides, we were only talking about the plausible in-universe reactions of people around them. The Westermarck Effect only speculates if the couples themselves would have squick imprinted on them. But as long as it wasn't, the rest, like hypothetically Masuka finding it hot, Quinn being freaked out, and Batista shrugging and accepting that it's not that weird, would have nothing to do with the Westermarck effect, or it's lack, just general cultural preferences.

edited 13th Dec '11 2:13:12 PM by Ever9

Yeah, that's why I called it an "unofficial third reason"... it's not objective. Sorry if that was confusing.

The other two reasons are objective, though.

Debra has the worst therapist ever.

Her therapist is trying to help, and I think she did a pretty good job...

No, the problem(s) is 100% Dexter...

Dude gets his wallet, keys, and cellphone taken... And he doesn't think that Travis could go to his apartment?

Not to mention the whole "Debra wants me to be at the church, so I'm going to kill Travis at the church, and not even think that she might wander in on it..."

This is the largest collection of mistakes I've seen Dexter make since he was "high on heroin"...

Edit: .... Oh shit... Debra is going to find that box sitting on the top of Dex's fridge and see the hand, and freak out worse than she will from this latest "revelation"...

edited 18th Dec '11 9:32:02 PM by Swish

...

That was the meanest thing the writers could have possibly done.

For me, anyway.

I just wrote out a rather long and angry rant about cliffhangers. I'm deleting it from this post and am going to talk about this episode like a sane, rational human being.

I had, in watching earlier seasons, imagined various ways she could have found out. Now that they've done it...mixed with this cliffhanger... I don't really know what to think.

I do have one legit question though. What happened with the broken slides? I mean, it happened in the last thirty seconds or so of one of the episodes and...that was it. I expected the next episode to be about him sneaking the slides in to run DNA tests on them under the table, but it was never mentioned again.

*sigh* And in nine and a half months, we'll find out.