(A meeting between two friends: LARRY, a lapsed viewer of DEXTER who hasn’t seen the show in a year or two, and CURLY, a current viewer who has just watched the season finale.)
(Curly doesn’t give a shit about being spoiled, but if you do, hopefully you understand that SPOILERS LIE AHEAD!)
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CURLY: So, I saw the DEXTER season 6 finale last night.
LARRY: Yeah? Was there a big twist at the end?
CURLY: There sure was: Deb finally learned the truth about Dexter when she witnessed him carry out his kill ritual.
LARRY: Wow, that’s big news! The way they’d been building up Deb’s character, I knew it’d only be a matter of time before she used her detective skills and intuition to figure out the truth.
CURLY: Well… she didn’t really use any skills or intuition.
LARRY: What do you mean?
CURLY: She just walked in at the wrong time.
LARRY: Looking for Dex? But how did she find his kill room?
CURLY: It was the scene of a current police investigation.
LARRY: Well, I guess that wasn’t entirely new for Dex. Sort of unlikely that she walked in when she did, though huh?
CURLY: No, not at all. Dex told her he’d be working there that night.
LARRY: He… he set up a kill room right where and when he told his sister he would be?
CURLY: He didn’t seem to think she’d be interested in revisiting the known headquarters of a serial killer still at large.
LARRY: Dex didn’t take any of the precautions he usually would when setting up a kill room?
CURLY: Nope. He didn’t even lock the door. Deb just walked right in.
LARRY: Wow, Dex was really off his game, huh? Harry must have had a field day with that one.
CURLY: Harry did not appear in the episode.
LARRY: Well… was Dex just under too much pressure and mistake-prone like he was in season 4?
CURLY: He did screw up a lot this season, freely outing himself to a serial killer still at large for one thing, but unlike previous seasons, it was never treated like a serious symptom that Dex would have to confront.
LARRY: Oh. So, it sounds like this crucial moment of the series was more like a climax in Deb’s character arc. She must have suspected something was up with Dex to surprise him and finally call him on his weird behavior.
CURLY: Nope. She was actually coming in to tell him she loved him. Like, romantically.
LARRY: Really?
CURLY: Yeah. She realized it last episode, thanks to therapy.
LARRY: Huh. Well, that could be an interesting wrinkle. So she realized she was so madly in love with him that she had to tell him her feelings immediately?
CURLY: No, she had several chances during the episode. But every encounter of theirs had Dex acting his normal weird and stand-offish self.
LARRY: But– I mean… but then, why barge in when she did? What changed for her during the episode?
CURLY: I guess you could say she spoke with her therapist.
LARRY: And her therapist told her to speak her mind to her brother.
CURLY: No.
LARRY: No?
CURLY: No. Her therapist said she couldn’t control how her brother would react to hearing the truth. With the subtext being…
LARRY: Kid gloves.
CURLY: Kid gloves, yes. Telling your brother you’re in love with him is maybe not the kind of thing you’d do while he’s in the middle of a super-important work assignment that you just tasked to him.
LARRY: I’d at least sit him down with a beer first.
CURLY: Or six.
LARRY: So… you’re saying that the big event, possibly the biggest event that every DEXTER fan has been waiting for and the series has been building to since the first episode, turned out to be an unearned, illogical moment predicated on both Deb and Dex acting dumbly out of character?
CURLY: Well…
LARRY: …
CURLY: …
LARRY: So when does JUSTIFIED come back?
The Daily Friction 