I want this.
Sep. 30th, 2013 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarea
We have had record-setting rains here in Seattle. That's right, the place known for being rainy is now the rainiest it's ever been. There was even a rare tornado! Honestly, it's times like this when moving back to Cali seems more attractive than ever.
Another bit of randomness: Did you know that it's generally believed that 1 of 255 women and 1 of 12 men (sheesh!) have some degree of color blindness? Yeah! The next time you ladies get some guy arguing with you about color, punch him in the mouth and tell him he doesn't know jack about color! ;) (LOLadelagia, can you imagine being a guy and trying to pick out your proper Pandemic pawn?) Just rearrange the boxes according to hue and get your score! I got a 7.
So I have two series finales to talk about. Both are for shows that I enjoyed a lot while they were on, and coincidentally, both featured protagonists who were kind of iffy in nature: Breaking Bad and Dexter. I saw the Dexter one first (and it ended up being really, really long), so I'll talk about that one first.
Dexter Season 8 (Series Finale)
The last season of Dexter seriously left a lot to be desired. It wasn't a bad season – I don't know if Dexter really has bad seasons – but it certainly wasn't the kind of send off it deserved. It spent most of its time undoing everything that had come before, which is silly, and also ended with a really lackluster big bad.
In terms of "big bads," the show never really topped the Trinity Killer. And that season culminated in one of the most shocking and gut-wrenching twists of all time, the murder of Dexter's wife Rita. I was hoping for, but not really expecting, something of that caliber for its final season; instead, we got something that was one of the seasons in between, a season that was OK but rather forgettable, a season you can't really distinguish from the others.
Let's talk about the retconning that happened. This happened in a number of ways. First was the idea of Dexter being a serial killer at all, and what it means to be a sociopath. The show, from its inception, has played around with this, and the idea of it really only lives in this universe. I don't think, in real life, that "curing" sociopathic behavior is possible. But just like I can suspend my disbelief for The Notebook at the idea that an Alzheimer's patient can have periods of lucidity spurred by her husband, I'll willing to believe that in this universe, a sociopath like Dexter can learn to love, learn to shed that part of himself. (Although from what we learn about how he has always had some degree of empathy toward Debra, I kind of question whether he ever really fit the sociopath mold.) So I guess it's a little unfair to call Dexter's finding his way toward humanity as a "retcon," since it's something that's been played around with for some time… but I'm not sure that it was in a truly linear way, wherein they really earned that it finally happened this season. This is part of the problem, I guess, with serialized TV that doesn't have a definite beginning, middle, and end – I mean, I'm sure they knew when they were going to end the series, but I'm not sure that they were really working toward it all this time in a believable way.
The next retcon, which was a true retcon, was the character of Hannah. It was ridiculous how much they retconned her. The whole reason why Dexter was able to pinpoint her for what she was last season was because she had enjoyed her first kill, and it wasn't her last. The implication was that she enjoyed killing, the same as Dexter, which was why she chose that as her method of escape (most of us don't resort to killing as the solution to our problems with other people), and why they were able to connect so well and "fall in love." Yet this season Hannah tells us that she never enjoyed killing. Oooookay… Then there was the reason Dexter had to break things off with her – she poisoned Deb, nearly killed her, because Dexter chose Debra over her. That was when I concluded, withjade_okelani, that it could never work between them, because she would always look out for herself above others, and any threat to her relationship with Dexter, she would immediately take care of it the same way she always has – through the death of whoever was in the way. Thus, she could never really be trusted around Dexter's family, particularly Harrison and Debra. And without such a trust, there was no relationship possible. Dexter recognized that, which is why he did what he did when he turned against her. Yet this season, Hannah returns, to be Dexter's HEA, and they "fix" things by having her have the opportunity again to kill both Dexter and Debra, and she tells him she doesn't because Dexter's "it" for her and she could never do anything that would hurt him, especially hurt the people he loves. Conveniently, they also have Harrison remember and love Hannah, despite the fact that the person he should really think of as a mother is Jamie, who spends more time with him than anyone. Kids are really not that complicated; they don't hold their affections for some random person who came into their lives for a brief moment over someone who takes care of them every day. But this was all to make it okay that Harrison ends up with Hannah.
The final retcon was "the code." Since Harry is dead and they can't bring him back for real, they did away with the idea that he was the originator of the code, and brought in some random, stupid psychologist to have created "the code" with Harry, despite the fact that no one had heard of her until this point. She was made out to be Dexter's "spiritual" mother, the person who thought he was perfect and who created the code to make his current life possible. This was dissatisfying in a number of ways, but mostly because it was completely unnecessary. Harry's been the creator of the code all this while; why did that need to change at all? Why did he need to have doubts about it? Then there was Dexter's immediate attachment to Dr. Vogel, which was frankly unbelievable. This was a man who supposedly had trouble forming normal human attachments – the ones he does have, we can believe, just – but she shows up out of nowhere and says that she helped create the code, and suddenly he looks on her as a surrogate mother? Please.
It would seem that the ultimate point of Dr. Vogel's existence was so that they could tie the season's "big bad" to Dexter in some way… because of course she would have a son who supposedly died as a child, and of course that child was a sociopath, and of course he would come back right at this moment to start wreaking havoc in her life. Of course. Except this all sounds very familiar… and it is. Because it's basically the same storyline as the first season, when Dexter's bio brother comes out of nowhere to do the exact same thing, but with a few of the players and circumstances changed. So that right there is super disappointing, getting a retread of a big bad in the final season. That it's also weakly tied to a retcon of something we've believed all this time – that Harry created and instituted "the code" for Dexter – just makes it even worse.
Hannah as the HEA is incredibly ham handed, since they basically shoe horned that potential ending in so that they could take it away. That was obvious from the start. For nearly half the season, we heard Dexter say that in "xx number of days, I'll be in Argentina with Hannah and Harrison." We heard it so often that it could not have been more obvious that that was something that was never going to happen. I just didn't know how it was going to not happen. I don't know if they didn't even consider bringing Julia Stiles back, or if they did and she didn't go for it, or what, but Lumen would have actually been the best choice for this role. Hannah was good because she was the most recent, but, as shown above, they had to retcon so much material to make it even remotely possible. Lumen Pierce would have been the best choice in terms of a character who had made a huge emotional difference to Dexter, as well as been a "normal" human being herself, someone who we could see being a good stepmother to Harrison. Of course, the reasons she left Dexter made it difficult to conceive of a reason for why she'd return after all these years… but they could have made it work. Hannah ended up being fine, but only because they basically changed everything about her this season. And even then, Harrison really should have ended up with Jamie.
Because, of course, he couldn't end up with Deb, and that's actually the crux of my dissatisfaction with the season and the end of the series. Clearly, they were going for an ending in which Dexter was not going to get a HEA, which I don't really have that big a problem with. Sure, I do think it kind of goes against the morality of this particular show/universe, because he has never killed anyone who didn't "deserve" it. He was a serial killer, but one the audience rooted for, and with a fairly clear conscience, because of the types of people he went after. Sure, of course it wasn't always the case that I thought that criminal deserved Dexter's justice vs legal justice, but I also never saw Dexter as being "evil." I rooted for him and was nervous when it appeared that he might get caught. So if he had gotten a HEA ending, whether that meant that he would continue on as he always has in Miami, or whether he found humanity and stopped his ways, I wouldn't have minded it. It would not have gone against my personal moral code within the context of this show.
The showrunners apparently felt differently. Despite the fact that they must have known that their viewers rooted for their antihero protagonist, they felt that Dexter needed to "answer for" his transgressions against general societal mores. Thus they took everything he loved from him, right at the moment when he realized his own humanity and ability to live as a normal person. Yeah. Not a satisfying ending for him, but more importantly, not a satisfying ending for viewers who likely rooted for Dexter and didn't feel that he had just desserts coming. The viewers who felt that way probably stopped watching in season one. There's no way that anyone who followed the show all this time had any judgment about Dexter or his choices. If they did, they would have stopped watching! Every episode would have been dissatisfying, or even sickening. Only those who saw Dexter as an antihero would have continued. So by ending the series as they did, it was almost like they were heaping their judgment on those of us who stayed, who liked Dexter and wanted him to get some sort of HEA. Or worse, that they went outside the moral code that has governed the show this entire time, to meet the demands of the "external" moral code of "real life."
Apparently one of the showrunners got his job after pitching this ending. I don't know enough about Dexter to know whether it's had the same showrunners all this time, or if he came in toward the middle or end or what. What I do know is that if he's been there since the beginning, and he pitched this from the start, no one could have known what the show would evolve into. I can see how a studio might be concerned with this kind of show, one wherein the sympathy is with a serial killer, and want to know how it'd end, to be sure that they wouldn't get flak from the general critical and viewing populaces on championing a serial killer, and therefore why an ending like the one we got would have been attractive to a studio. But if this was fairly recently, I have to say that I don't think they understood their show or their audience at all.
There are different forms that "just desserts" can take. Dexter could have been caught and imprisoned. He could have been killed. There are several ways that Dexter could have been punished, if they felt he needed punishing. They could have punished him without also punishing the viewers, but apparently that was not the road they wanted to take. The viewers, apparently, also needed to be punished for our temerity in rooting for a serial killer. They wanted the show to end as bleakly as possible, with the exception of the death of Harrison, which really would have tipped the scales. But I would say that of the adult cast, the one person who was the "heart" of the show, was Deb. (This is coming from someone who despised her in the first season. Over the next seven seasons I'd grow to like her a lot.) Deb needed to live for the end to not be bleak, but apparently they just loved the idea of Deb being Dexter's last kill. This is what I would call serving an idea vs serving your story. As a one-off idea, it's poetic. I can see why they liked it. It feels "authentic," because it fits in so nicely with this grand plan they had for Dexter's comeuppance. The problem is, it comes out of nowhere for the viewer, and ends the series on such a downer note that I can't imagine wanting to ever rewatch this series, or even recommending it to a new viewer! That's why the ending to something is so important – no matter what came before, how awesome it is, what people remember is the feeling or the ideas it leaves you with.
That doesn't even mean that it has to end happily. I love tragic things as well, as long as they're right for the story. In this case, a true HEA was probably not in the cards. The problem is, the ending they went for didn't fit their overall story. They forced a lot of things to make it happen, even within the same season, and it didn't feel right for the story or the characters. Dexter not getting a HEA, I can live with. Maybe that means losing his humanity right as he gains it. Maybe it means living out the rest of his life as a serial killer, which is good for him, but we know that it's sad. Instead, they kill Deb, the only beacon of hope that the audience really has, in order to stick it to Dexter. To me, that's like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Harrison ending up with Hannah is not a HEA. It's its own sort of bleakness, in a way, regardless of how much they changed Hannah. First is that Rita would certainly not be happy with her little boy being raised by a killer. Second is that even if you get past that, there's the fact that Hannah and Harrison themselves aren't going to be fully happy without Dexter.
When things started working out with Joey again, I pretty much assumed that something fucked up was going to happen to keep her from being happy (seriously, they were signaling big moments throughout the season with exactly this sort of obviousness). I didn't think she'd actually die until she was shot, and then I figured that that was probably where they were going (they had the doctor be so sure of Deb's recovery that they might as well have stamped "gonna die" on her forehead), even though I was still hoping that the source of her unhappiness or things not working out would be Dexter being caught/killed. Deb's involvement in his activities made it difficult to let her off the hook completely, but I think they could have done it, especially since she was in a place where she was just starting to pick up the pieces of her life again, after shooting La Guerta in cold blood (her death being the pinnacle of Dexter's "evil" activities). Because of La Guerta, it's hard to say that Deb "didn't deserve" to die, but this is where the morality of the show parts ways with "normal" morality, because I could forgive her even that.
As Jade pointed out, what was the most dissatisfying about Deb's death was not that she died, but that it was a result of Dexter doing "the right thing." How is that truly payback, then? Had Dexter killed Daniel Vogel his way, none of this would have happened. He would be in Argentina with Hannah and Harrison, and Deb would be alive and probably engaged to Joey Quinn. He would have had a HEA if not for realizing his humanity! What kind of sick message is that, ultimately?
That said, once Deb did die – or at least, was basically rendered a human vegetable – I think the show got it right with what happened after that. It's right that Dexter took her off life support, because even without being told, everyone knows Deb would not have wanted to live that way (though of course, part of me was like, maybe a miracle will happen! Maybe her brain isn't as damaged as they think! You don't know Dexter, you don't know!). I see the "poeticness" of Deb being his last "kill" (though of course, since he didn't die, we don't actually know that for sure), that he would do that for her. I'm torn about his taking her off to the water and dumping her body where he'd dumped the bodies of all his other victims, though. Is the implication that she was just as bad as they were (see La Guerta)? Or if not, then it's really messed up that her burial was so similar to theirs.
Did Dexter intend to kill himself when he sailed into the heart of the storm, or had he only intended to wreck his boat and fake his death? I honestly don't know or even care to speculate. Now he's alone, without anyone he loves, or even Harry's ghost or his own voiceover. I guess this might have felt "right" at some point early in the series, but it didn't by the end of this season.
Breaking Bad Season 5 (Series Finale)
Most people that I've talked to, or whose reviews I've read, seem to be fine with the way Breaking Bad ended. Or even if they had gripes, they're not the gripes that I have. I'm actually really surprised by that. I was personally a little disappointed, though not because of what they did, exactly. Given where it was headed, and how it could have all gone down, it was pretty much the only acceptable kind of ending for me, and I'm glad I got that. Yet at some point the show "broke" for me, and I was hoping until the last that it would truly repair it, though I didn't know how. It didn't.
For me, and I thought for a lot of viewers, the show has always been about Walt and Jesse. I can even understand that the focal point, despite that, was Walt. But there's not a promo poster or a DVD cover that goes by that's of just Walt. Regardless of how the show was conceived, it became something different. Jesse wasn't supposed to be the heart of the show, but he was. That is almost universally true for viewers. The show's impetus was Walt's journey, but early on, it was established that the relationship between Walt and Jesse became central to that. At least it was for me, and for many seasons, that remained true. So for the ending to be so Jesse lite, to the point where he had maybe five-ten minutes of screen time in the series finale? Felt totally wrong to me.
But now I have to back up a bit and share where it all went wrong. From the start, Walt and Jesse had a contentious relationship. They were a dysfunctional father/son team. Walt "ruined" Jesse the same way tough fathers everywhere ruin their sons, at the same time that he was also the only person who was ever truly there for Jesse, doing things for his "son" the way fathers have done since time immemorial. He wrecked him and patched him together again and again. It was an imperfect relationship, but it was real. The show kind of died for me when they killed that. As Jade says, I basically need to turn off the TV in the middle of the season 5 episode "Confessions," when Walt embraces Jesse as the latter breaks down in the desert, and say, "the end." That was the last "good" feeling I got about that relationship.
Here's the thing, I'm not totally blinded by my "ship" preference. I understand that Walt was abusive toward Jesse and that the latter needed to break away from that if he was ever to know true happiness for himself. But maybe in my naivete, I believed that could happen within the context of the show and the relationship that had been established. I didn't think their relationship had to be destroyed to make that happen. And yeah, I did think that perhaps some lies would never come to light, because I also understand that Jesse finding out about some of the things Walt had done for his own good (such as letting Jane die) would be a relationship killer. Clearly, however, I still thought that despite Walt's abuses, the things he'd done had been good for Jesse, regardless of Walt's true motives in doing them. I don't even count Jane, because I think that was one of the terrible things Walt did for Jesse. Poisoning Brock falls on the other side of that line. That was for Walt and Walt alone, even though part of me still felt that he was justified (in this show's morality at least) in doing so, because Jesse was falling under Gus and Mike's spell, and they were really no better than Walt, in my opinion. I know a lot of people like Mike, but I don't really understand that, and certainly don't think that he would have been any better for Jesse than Walt was. Mike was a cold-blooded killer, one who worked without blinking for an even colder man, Gus. These men, to me, were all the same, one no better than the other… and the only reason I rooted for Walt was because a) I'd known him longer, having been with him on this journey from season 1; and b) I knew that deep down, he cared more about Jesse than either of the other men (certainly more than Gus). If push ever came to shove, I'd trust Jesse in Walt's hands more than in almost anyone else's, Jesse's bio parents included. Thus I felt it would be justified if Jesse never learned the truth about Jane or Brock, as long as he truly made it up to Jesse in some way… or if Jesse could break from him getting to feel, for once, that he was loved and/or approved of by Walt.
But clearly the writers didn't feel that way. Not only did they feel that by the end of the show, all secrets and truths had to be revealed, but also that each person would get what s/he deserved (totally unlike the realism of ASOIAF), mostly. Thus, despite the fact that Jesse was mostly a sympathetic character, he had to become a slave – for the shit he's done in the past (here I'm thinking mostly of killing Gale, though Gale was not lily white innocent himself) as well as for being a rat. The second they decided Jesse was going to be a prisoner, however, was the moment when his agency in the story ceased to exist. There are only a few things prisoners can do. One of them is try to escape, and that didn't work out, so it was just Jesse in a cell/making meth, and that's not interesting to watch.
They could have gone in so many directions with the end of the series. Walt and Jesse could have stayed working together til the end. Jesse could have gone to Alaska. They had to work through Jesse's disillusionment and the fact that he didn't trust Walt, I get that. But I still think it could have been done. They were even on track with doing so, when Walt reaches out to Jesse after Jesse attempts to burn down his house. Instead of Jesse siding with Hank and the Feds, turning into a rat, they could have made him less paranoid, and actually met Walt on that bench. He'd maybe realize what Hank realized, that Walt actually cared about Jesse.
That's what I feel cheated on the most, that we didn't get to see Jesse realize that. Was it a messed up love? Sure. Does that take away all the abuses that Walt rained on him in the past? Of course not. But Jesse wanted Walt's approval, has always wanted it. He deserved to know that he had it and more, even if he no longer needed it. But you can't tell me that even though he finally saw Walt for the man he was, that he was better for it. IMHO Jesse would have had a much better psyche had he been allowed to go to Alaska, knowing that Walt cared about him, than learning the truth about everything. Clearly, I am not one of those people who believes that truth > all. In the case of Jesse, I feel like his character didn't get what he deserved, because they were too busy making sure that Walt got what he deserved. Jesse at the end of the series, despite finally being "free" – of Walt, of meth, of the neo Nazis – is even more damaged than the Jesse who broke down in Walt's arms in the desert. His physical freedom cannot possibly compare to the horrible truths he learned, the way Walt basically threw his life away, the loss of Andrea (and Brock, to Jesse at least). You can't tell me that that Jesse is better off than the Jesse who didn't know the truth about Jane or Brock's poisoning. And that being the case, even though the scene cuts away from his feeling of freedom as he drives away, leaves me with nothing in terms of hope for the future. I guess we're supposed to assume that he'll be happy, but how, exactly? He's free from the neo Nazis, sure, and that's worth celebrating. But what's he going back to? He has nothing now – no money, no job, no skills, no Andrea or Brock, no Mike, no Saul to help him change his identity. He has nothing, not even a Mr. White to go back to, as someone to depend on. Oh, and he's technically still a wanted criminal. Hank wasn't going to let him off the hook, even with his cooperation, so what hope is there that he'll get the easy treatment from the authorities when/if (though really, knowing Jesse – when) he's caught again, especially now that Hank, Gomey, and even Walt is dead? Skyler has the lottery ticket, at least. Jesse has nothing. How long before he turns back to cooking meth as the one thing he can do really well? Oh sure, in my imagination, in fanfic land, I can imagine a scenario in which Jesse picks the pieces of his life back up and makes some sort of decent living… but even imagining that is a little depressing, since it's exactly the sort of job he'd hate. And in any case, realistically, it doesn't work when you know what you know about Jesse. So basically his "yay" moment in the finale, that was dedicated all to Walt (as were the last three episodes of the show), was a "yay" for that moment, the moment of getting free of the neo Nazis, and maybe Walt. But it was not a yay for the audience who cares about Jesse, who wants to know that Jesse is going to be okay long term. We got nothing on that front.
Am I happy that Walt essentially died for Jesse, by lying on top of him when the gun was going off? Of course I am. I'm not thrilled with the scenario that made that a necessity in the first place, though, and I'm definitely not happy with the fact that Walt basically went there to kill Jesse again, because he thought Jesse was working voluntarily with the neo Nazi guys. Given both of those things, though, I have no issue with how things went down. But I have to say, that's a little bit like being offered dessert, then told that nothing you want is actually available except the lamest possible thing. "Well I guess if you don't have strawberry pie, or chocolate cake, or a three-scoop sundae with the works… I'll take the banana." Better certainly than no dessert, or getting spat in the eye, but jeez.
What I will give the Breaking Bad ending is that they at least got the big things right. It's "right" that Walt died after making good on everything else, coming clean about his motivations, and rescuing Jesse. They at least made it so that the show is rewatchable, wherein I'm not so upset with what I didn't get that it ruins the rest of the show for me (though it'll never be as good as it was before the end, because I feel like the central relationship petered out to nothing). Like with Dexter, I'm disappointed that the "big bad" at the end turned out to be so lame and one dimensional, at the same time that I'm not someone who felt like Walt needed to be taught more than the lesson he learned (he wasn't the monster, to me, that so many people thought he was), so it's okay by me that it was so easy to root for him at the end.
Another bit of randomness: Did you know that it's generally believed that 1 of 255 women and 1 of 12 men (sheesh!) have some degree of color blindness? Yeah! The next time you ladies get some guy arguing with you about color, punch him in the mouth and tell him he doesn't know jack about color! ;) (LOL
adelagia, can you imagine being a guy and trying to pick out your proper Pandemic pawn?) Just rearrange the boxes according to hue and get your score! I got a 7.So I have two series finales to talk about. Both are for shows that I enjoyed a lot while they were on, and coincidentally, both featured protagonists who were kind of iffy in nature: Breaking Bad and Dexter. I saw the Dexter one first (and it ended up being really, really long), so I'll talk about that one first.
Dexter Season 8 (Series Finale)
The last season of Dexter seriously left a lot to be desired. It wasn't a bad season – I don't know if Dexter really has bad seasons – but it certainly wasn't the kind of send off it deserved. It spent most of its time undoing everything that had come before, which is silly, and also ended with a really lackluster big bad.
In terms of "big bads," the show never really topped the Trinity Killer. And that season culminated in one of the most shocking and gut-wrenching twists of all time, the murder of Dexter's wife Rita. I was hoping for, but not really expecting, something of that caliber for its final season; instead, we got something that was one of the seasons in between, a season that was OK but rather forgettable, a season you can't really distinguish from the others.
Let's talk about the retconning that happened. This happened in a number of ways. First was the idea of Dexter being a serial killer at all, and what it means to be a sociopath. The show, from its inception, has played around with this, and the idea of it really only lives in this universe. I don't think, in real life, that "curing" sociopathic behavior is possible. But just like I can suspend my disbelief for The Notebook at the idea that an Alzheimer's patient can have periods of lucidity spurred by her husband, I'll willing to believe that in this universe, a sociopath like Dexter can learn to love, learn to shed that part of himself. (Although from what we learn about how he has always had some degree of empathy toward Debra, I kind of question whether he ever really fit the sociopath mold.) So I guess it's a little unfair to call Dexter's finding his way toward humanity as a "retcon," since it's something that's been played around with for some time… but I'm not sure that it was in a truly linear way, wherein they really earned that it finally happened this season. This is part of the problem, I guess, with serialized TV that doesn't have a definite beginning, middle, and end – I mean, I'm sure they knew when they were going to end the series, but I'm not sure that they were really working toward it all this time in a believable way.
The next retcon, which was a true retcon, was the character of Hannah. It was ridiculous how much they retconned her. The whole reason why Dexter was able to pinpoint her for what she was last season was because she had enjoyed her first kill, and it wasn't her last. The implication was that she enjoyed killing, the same as Dexter, which was why she chose that as her method of escape (most of us don't resort to killing as the solution to our problems with other people), and why they were able to connect so well and "fall in love." Yet this season Hannah tells us that she never enjoyed killing. Oooookay… Then there was the reason Dexter had to break things off with her – she poisoned Deb, nearly killed her, because Dexter chose Debra over her. That was when I concluded, with
jade_okelani, that it could never work between them, because she would always look out for herself above others, and any threat to her relationship with Dexter, she would immediately take care of it the same way she always has – through the death of whoever was in the way. Thus, she could never really be trusted around Dexter's family, particularly Harrison and Debra. And without such a trust, there was no relationship possible. Dexter recognized that, which is why he did what he did when he turned against her. Yet this season, Hannah returns, to be Dexter's HEA, and they "fix" things by having her have the opportunity again to kill both Dexter and Debra, and she tells him she doesn't because Dexter's "it" for her and she could never do anything that would hurt him, especially hurt the people he loves. Conveniently, they also have Harrison remember and love Hannah, despite the fact that the person he should really think of as a mother is Jamie, who spends more time with him than anyone. Kids are really not that complicated; they don't hold their affections for some random person who came into their lives for a brief moment over someone who takes care of them every day. But this was all to make it okay that Harrison ends up with Hannah.The final retcon was "the code." Since Harry is dead and they can't bring him back for real, they did away with the idea that he was the originator of the code, and brought in some random, stupid psychologist to have created "the code" with Harry, despite the fact that no one had heard of her until this point. She was made out to be Dexter's "spiritual" mother, the person who thought he was perfect and who created the code to make his current life possible. This was dissatisfying in a number of ways, but mostly because it was completely unnecessary. Harry's been the creator of the code all this while; why did that need to change at all? Why did he need to have doubts about it? Then there was Dexter's immediate attachment to Dr. Vogel, which was frankly unbelievable. This was a man who supposedly had trouble forming normal human attachments – the ones he does have, we can believe, just – but she shows up out of nowhere and says that she helped create the code, and suddenly he looks on her as a surrogate mother? Please.
It would seem that the ultimate point of Dr. Vogel's existence was so that they could tie the season's "big bad" to Dexter in some way… because of course she would have a son who supposedly died as a child, and of course that child was a sociopath, and of course he would come back right at this moment to start wreaking havoc in her life. Of course. Except this all sounds very familiar… and it is. Because it's basically the same storyline as the first season, when Dexter's bio brother comes out of nowhere to do the exact same thing, but with a few of the players and circumstances changed. So that right there is super disappointing, getting a retread of a big bad in the final season. That it's also weakly tied to a retcon of something we've believed all this time – that Harry created and instituted "the code" for Dexter – just makes it even worse.
Hannah as the HEA is incredibly ham handed, since they basically shoe horned that potential ending in so that they could take it away. That was obvious from the start. For nearly half the season, we heard Dexter say that in "xx number of days, I'll be in Argentina with Hannah and Harrison." We heard it so often that it could not have been more obvious that that was something that was never going to happen. I just didn't know how it was going to not happen. I don't know if they didn't even consider bringing Julia Stiles back, or if they did and she didn't go for it, or what, but Lumen would have actually been the best choice for this role. Hannah was good because she was the most recent, but, as shown above, they had to retcon so much material to make it even remotely possible. Lumen Pierce would have been the best choice in terms of a character who had made a huge emotional difference to Dexter, as well as been a "normal" human being herself, someone who we could see being a good stepmother to Harrison. Of course, the reasons she left Dexter made it difficult to conceive of a reason for why she'd return after all these years… but they could have made it work. Hannah ended up being fine, but only because they basically changed everything about her this season. And even then, Harrison really should have ended up with Jamie.
Because, of course, he couldn't end up with Deb, and that's actually the crux of my dissatisfaction with the season and the end of the series. Clearly, they were going for an ending in which Dexter was not going to get a HEA, which I don't really have that big a problem with. Sure, I do think it kind of goes against the morality of this particular show/universe, because he has never killed anyone who didn't "deserve" it. He was a serial killer, but one the audience rooted for, and with a fairly clear conscience, because of the types of people he went after. Sure, of course it wasn't always the case that I thought that criminal deserved Dexter's justice vs legal justice, but I also never saw Dexter as being "evil." I rooted for him and was nervous when it appeared that he might get caught. So if he had gotten a HEA ending, whether that meant that he would continue on as he always has in Miami, or whether he found humanity and stopped his ways, I wouldn't have minded it. It would not have gone against my personal moral code within the context of this show.
The showrunners apparently felt differently. Despite the fact that they must have known that their viewers rooted for their antihero protagonist, they felt that Dexter needed to "answer for" his transgressions against general societal mores. Thus they took everything he loved from him, right at the moment when he realized his own humanity and ability to live as a normal person. Yeah. Not a satisfying ending for him, but more importantly, not a satisfying ending for viewers who likely rooted for Dexter and didn't feel that he had just desserts coming. The viewers who felt that way probably stopped watching in season one. There's no way that anyone who followed the show all this time had any judgment about Dexter or his choices. If they did, they would have stopped watching! Every episode would have been dissatisfying, or even sickening. Only those who saw Dexter as an antihero would have continued. So by ending the series as they did, it was almost like they were heaping their judgment on those of us who stayed, who liked Dexter and wanted him to get some sort of HEA. Or worse, that they went outside the moral code that has governed the show this entire time, to meet the demands of the "external" moral code of "real life."
Apparently one of the showrunners got his job after pitching this ending. I don't know enough about Dexter to know whether it's had the same showrunners all this time, or if he came in toward the middle or end or what. What I do know is that if he's been there since the beginning, and he pitched this from the start, no one could have known what the show would evolve into. I can see how a studio might be concerned with this kind of show, one wherein the sympathy is with a serial killer, and want to know how it'd end, to be sure that they wouldn't get flak from the general critical and viewing populaces on championing a serial killer, and therefore why an ending like the one we got would have been attractive to a studio. But if this was fairly recently, I have to say that I don't think they understood their show or their audience at all.
There are different forms that "just desserts" can take. Dexter could have been caught and imprisoned. He could have been killed. There are several ways that Dexter could have been punished, if they felt he needed punishing. They could have punished him without also punishing the viewers, but apparently that was not the road they wanted to take. The viewers, apparently, also needed to be punished for our temerity in rooting for a serial killer. They wanted the show to end as bleakly as possible, with the exception of the death of Harrison, which really would have tipped the scales. But I would say that of the adult cast, the one person who was the "heart" of the show, was Deb. (This is coming from someone who despised her in the first season. Over the next seven seasons I'd grow to like her a lot.) Deb needed to live for the end to not be bleak, but apparently they just loved the idea of Deb being Dexter's last kill. This is what I would call serving an idea vs serving your story. As a one-off idea, it's poetic. I can see why they liked it. It feels "authentic," because it fits in so nicely with this grand plan they had for Dexter's comeuppance. The problem is, it comes out of nowhere for the viewer, and ends the series on such a downer note that I can't imagine wanting to ever rewatch this series, or even recommending it to a new viewer! That's why the ending to something is so important – no matter what came before, how awesome it is, what people remember is the feeling or the ideas it leaves you with.
That doesn't even mean that it has to end happily. I love tragic things as well, as long as they're right for the story. In this case, a true HEA was probably not in the cards. The problem is, the ending they went for didn't fit their overall story. They forced a lot of things to make it happen, even within the same season, and it didn't feel right for the story or the characters. Dexter not getting a HEA, I can live with. Maybe that means losing his humanity right as he gains it. Maybe it means living out the rest of his life as a serial killer, which is good for him, but we know that it's sad. Instead, they kill Deb, the only beacon of hope that the audience really has, in order to stick it to Dexter. To me, that's like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Harrison ending up with Hannah is not a HEA. It's its own sort of bleakness, in a way, regardless of how much they changed Hannah. First is that Rita would certainly not be happy with her little boy being raised by a killer. Second is that even if you get past that, there's the fact that Hannah and Harrison themselves aren't going to be fully happy without Dexter.
When things started working out with Joey again, I pretty much assumed that something fucked up was going to happen to keep her from being happy (seriously, they were signaling big moments throughout the season with exactly this sort of obviousness). I didn't think she'd actually die until she was shot, and then I figured that that was probably where they were going (they had the doctor be so sure of Deb's recovery that they might as well have stamped "gonna die" on her forehead), even though I was still hoping that the source of her unhappiness or things not working out would be Dexter being caught/killed. Deb's involvement in his activities made it difficult to let her off the hook completely, but I think they could have done it, especially since she was in a place where she was just starting to pick up the pieces of her life again, after shooting La Guerta in cold blood (her death being the pinnacle of Dexter's "evil" activities). Because of La Guerta, it's hard to say that Deb "didn't deserve" to die, but this is where the morality of the show parts ways with "normal" morality, because I could forgive her even that.
As Jade pointed out, what was the most dissatisfying about Deb's death was not that she died, but that it was a result of Dexter doing "the right thing." How is that truly payback, then? Had Dexter killed Daniel Vogel his way, none of this would have happened. He would be in Argentina with Hannah and Harrison, and Deb would be alive and probably engaged to Joey Quinn. He would have had a HEA if not for realizing his humanity! What kind of sick message is that, ultimately?
That said, once Deb did die – or at least, was basically rendered a human vegetable – I think the show got it right with what happened after that. It's right that Dexter took her off life support, because even without being told, everyone knows Deb would not have wanted to live that way (though of course, part of me was like, maybe a miracle will happen! Maybe her brain isn't as damaged as they think! You don't know Dexter, you don't know!). I see the "poeticness" of Deb being his last "kill" (though of course, since he didn't die, we don't actually know that for sure), that he would do that for her. I'm torn about his taking her off to the water and dumping her body where he'd dumped the bodies of all his other victims, though. Is the implication that she was just as bad as they were (see La Guerta)? Or if not, then it's really messed up that her burial was so similar to theirs.
Did Dexter intend to kill himself when he sailed into the heart of the storm, or had he only intended to wreck his boat and fake his death? I honestly don't know or even care to speculate. Now he's alone, without anyone he loves, or even Harry's ghost or his own voiceover. I guess this might have felt "right" at some point early in the series, but it didn't by the end of this season.
Breaking Bad Season 5 (Series Finale)
Most people that I've talked to, or whose reviews I've read, seem to be fine with the way Breaking Bad ended. Or even if they had gripes, they're not the gripes that I have. I'm actually really surprised by that. I was personally a little disappointed, though not because of what they did, exactly. Given where it was headed, and how it could have all gone down, it was pretty much the only acceptable kind of ending for me, and I'm glad I got that. Yet at some point the show "broke" for me, and I was hoping until the last that it would truly repair it, though I didn't know how. It didn't.
For me, and I thought for a lot of viewers, the show has always been about Walt and Jesse. I can even understand that the focal point, despite that, was Walt. But there's not a promo poster or a DVD cover that goes by that's of just Walt. Regardless of how the show was conceived, it became something different. Jesse wasn't supposed to be the heart of the show, but he was. That is almost universally true for viewers. The show's impetus was Walt's journey, but early on, it was established that the relationship between Walt and Jesse became central to that. At least it was for me, and for many seasons, that remained true. So for the ending to be so Jesse lite, to the point where he had maybe five-ten minutes of screen time in the series finale? Felt totally wrong to me.
But now I have to back up a bit and share where it all went wrong. From the start, Walt and Jesse had a contentious relationship. They were a dysfunctional father/son team. Walt "ruined" Jesse the same way tough fathers everywhere ruin their sons, at the same time that he was also the only person who was ever truly there for Jesse, doing things for his "son" the way fathers have done since time immemorial. He wrecked him and patched him together again and again. It was an imperfect relationship, but it was real. The show kind of died for me when they killed that. As Jade says, I basically need to turn off the TV in the middle of the season 5 episode "Confessions," when Walt embraces Jesse as the latter breaks down in the desert, and say, "the end." That was the last "good" feeling I got about that relationship.
Here's the thing, I'm not totally blinded by my "ship" preference. I understand that Walt was abusive toward Jesse and that the latter needed to break away from that if he was ever to know true happiness for himself. But maybe in my naivete, I believed that could happen within the context of the show and the relationship that had been established. I didn't think their relationship had to be destroyed to make that happen. And yeah, I did think that perhaps some lies would never come to light, because I also understand that Jesse finding out about some of the things Walt had done for his own good (such as letting Jane die) would be a relationship killer. Clearly, however, I still thought that despite Walt's abuses, the things he'd done had been good for Jesse, regardless of Walt's true motives in doing them. I don't even count Jane, because I think that was one of the terrible things Walt did for Jesse. Poisoning Brock falls on the other side of that line. That was for Walt and Walt alone, even though part of me still felt that he was justified (in this show's morality at least) in doing so, because Jesse was falling under Gus and Mike's spell, and they were really no better than Walt, in my opinion. I know a lot of people like Mike, but I don't really understand that, and certainly don't think that he would have been any better for Jesse than Walt was. Mike was a cold-blooded killer, one who worked without blinking for an even colder man, Gus. These men, to me, were all the same, one no better than the other… and the only reason I rooted for Walt was because a) I'd known him longer, having been with him on this journey from season 1; and b) I knew that deep down, he cared more about Jesse than either of the other men (certainly more than Gus). If push ever came to shove, I'd trust Jesse in Walt's hands more than in almost anyone else's, Jesse's bio parents included. Thus I felt it would be justified if Jesse never learned the truth about Jane or Brock, as long as he truly made it up to Jesse in some way… or if Jesse could break from him getting to feel, for once, that he was loved and/or approved of by Walt.
But clearly the writers didn't feel that way. Not only did they feel that by the end of the show, all secrets and truths had to be revealed, but also that each person would get what s/he deserved (totally unlike the realism of ASOIAF), mostly. Thus, despite the fact that Jesse was mostly a sympathetic character, he had to become a slave – for the shit he's done in the past (here I'm thinking mostly of killing Gale, though Gale was not lily white innocent himself) as well as for being a rat. The second they decided Jesse was going to be a prisoner, however, was the moment when his agency in the story ceased to exist. There are only a few things prisoners can do. One of them is try to escape, and that didn't work out, so it was just Jesse in a cell/making meth, and that's not interesting to watch.
They could have gone in so many directions with the end of the series. Walt and Jesse could have stayed working together til the end. Jesse could have gone to Alaska. They had to work through Jesse's disillusionment and the fact that he didn't trust Walt, I get that. But I still think it could have been done. They were even on track with doing so, when Walt reaches out to Jesse after Jesse attempts to burn down his house. Instead of Jesse siding with Hank and the Feds, turning into a rat, they could have made him less paranoid, and actually met Walt on that bench. He'd maybe realize what Hank realized, that Walt actually cared about Jesse.
That's what I feel cheated on the most, that we didn't get to see Jesse realize that. Was it a messed up love? Sure. Does that take away all the abuses that Walt rained on him in the past? Of course not. But Jesse wanted Walt's approval, has always wanted it. He deserved to know that he had it and more, even if he no longer needed it. But you can't tell me that even though he finally saw Walt for the man he was, that he was better for it. IMHO Jesse would have had a much better psyche had he been allowed to go to Alaska, knowing that Walt cared about him, than learning the truth about everything. Clearly, I am not one of those people who believes that truth > all. In the case of Jesse, I feel like his character didn't get what he deserved, because they were too busy making sure that Walt got what he deserved. Jesse at the end of the series, despite finally being "free" – of Walt, of meth, of the neo Nazis – is even more damaged than the Jesse who broke down in Walt's arms in the desert. His physical freedom cannot possibly compare to the horrible truths he learned, the way Walt basically threw his life away, the loss of Andrea (and Brock, to Jesse at least). You can't tell me that that Jesse is better off than the Jesse who didn't know the truth about Jane or Brock's poisoning. And that being the case, even though the scene cuts away from his feeling of freedom as he drives away, leaves me with nothing in terms of hope for the future. I guess we're supposed to assume that he'll be happy, but how, exactly? He's free from the neo Nazis, sure, and that's worth celebrating. But what's he going back to? He has nothing now – no money, no job, no skills, no Andrea or Brock, no Mike, no Saul to help him change his identity. He has nothing, not even a Mr. White to go back to, as someone to depend on. Oh, and he's technically still a wanted criminal. Hank wasn't going to let him off the hook, even with his cooperation, so what hope is there that he'll get the easy treatment from the authorities when/if (though really, knowing Jesse – when) he's caught again, especially now that Hank, Gomey, and even Walt is dead? Skyler has the lottery ticket, at least. Jesse has nothing. How long before he turns back to cooking meth as the one thing he can do really well? Oh sure, in my imagination, in fanfic land, I can imagine a scenario in which Jesse picks the pieces of his life back up and makes some sort of decent living… but even imagining that is a little depressing, since it's exactly the sort of job he'd hate. And in any case, realistically, it doesn't work when you know what you know about Jesse. So basically his "yay" moment in the finale, that was dedicated all to Walt (as were the last three episodes of the show), was a "yay" for that moment, the moment of getting free of the neo Nazis, and maybe Walt. But it was not a yay for the audience who cares about Jesse, who wants to know that Jesse is going to be okay long term. We got nothing on that front.
Am I happy that Walt essentially died for Jesse, by lying on top of him when the gun was going off? Of course I am. I'm not thrilled with the scenario that made that a necessity in the first place, though, and I'm definitely not happy with the fact that Walt basically went there to kill Jesse again, because he thought Jesse was working voluntarily with the neo Nazi guys. Given both of those things, though, I have no issue with how things went down. But I have to say, that's a little bit like being offered dessert, then told that nothing you want is actually available except the lamest possible thing. "Well I guess if you don't have strawberry pie, or chocolate cake, or a three-scoop sundae with the works… I'll take the banana." Better certainly than no dessert, or getting spat in the eye, but jeez.
What I will give the Breaking Bad ending is that they at least got the big things right. It's "right" that Walt died after making good on everything else, coming clean about his motivations, and rescuing Jesse. They at least made it so that the show is rewatchable, wherein I'm not so upset with what I didn't get that it ruins the rest of the show for me (though it'll never be as good as it was before the end, because I feel like the central relationship petered out to nothing). Like with Dexter, I'm disappointed that the "big bad" at the end turned out to be so lame and one dimensional, at the same time that I'm not someone who felt like Walt needed to be taught more than the lesson he learned (he wasn't the monster, to me, that so many people thought he was), so it's okay by me that it was so easy to root for him at the end.
