This is my first time rewatching season 6 of Dexter. I really didn't like it as it aired. And now I have enough of my adult, writer, analysis, critic, whatever brain to put my finger on some of it.
It is INSANE that this season spends SO MUCH TIME on Batista's midlife crisis and Quinn's dick-led breakdown. Batista and Quinn's horny sadness gets like... 10 peaks and resolutions, over and over. Quinn is a borderline sex pest but it's repeatedly played as a joke. The show pretty constantly does a "and women who are our age are gross" alongside a villain calling women whores for existing. And speaking of sex pests [affectionate, unsrs], I think they do A LOT of Masuka character assassination here. He's horny, he's not stupid. My pervert angel.
Meanwhile, LaGuerta is almost painted as a villain. The show has always failed to push where it should into where racism and misogyny shape her. But this season she's getting less than half of her usual screen time, for the sake of the reveal being that Matthews, established asshole, is an asshole. It would've been so much more interesting to watch LaGuerta grapple with him, to realize that she climbed up and somehow has less autonomy than before. LaGuerta has that moment with Deb, there's no race or gender if you have good numbers. EXPLORE THAT, YOU LOSERS!
Maybe later I'll get into my issues with how they use Deb this season (I genuinely think Scott Buck forgot that she was working alongside sex workers & had been shown to have earned their trust even once she was out a handful of times in prior seasons & there's so much they could do with Brian/ITK rather than just have her say it sometimes). And I'll definitely get into how they WASTED EJO & how poorly cast Colin Hanks was at some point, but really I just...
It's so crazy to go from the Lumen season (my beloved #mybeloved #myfavoriteseason) to a season that is like... women are, at best, ghosts, and time with the psychological weight of all this (despite literal therapist scenes, and girl this is NOT the Sopranos, this is lazy) is the last priority, and the villain isn't cohesive or representative of really anything or at all challenging to anyone's belief system or moral code at the end of the day. Just like... what the fuck?
