Dexter - Season 6

You know a show has fallen on hard times when its new episodes are so bad that they make you question whether the earlier ones that you really enjoyed were actually good. I'm still pretty sure that it's not just a series wearing out its formula to the point of extreme degradation, that it's been getting progressively worse at coming up with competent stories and interesting supporting characters, but I'm at least wondering why I liked it quite as much as I did for the first couple seasons. It's kind of been a slow breakdown in every aspect of the series over time - it started as an adequate police drama with an utterly compelling protagonist portrayed very well by Michael C. Hall. As time has gone by, the police drama has become less adequate as the cases they tackle become less original or even coherently written, and the supporting cast has gotten more and more time to expose just how uninteresting their characters are and how little talent their actors have. Season four showed the show could still live with that, when it had John Lithgow doing a great job playing a horrific counterpoint to Dexter, but since then, they've failed to come up with interesting villains, and even Dexter himself has not been immune to simple bad writing, especially when it comes to his increasingly unnecessary and irritating narration. If I hear him mumble "dark passenger" one more time, I don't know what I'll do.

The show has had ups and downs, and season six was definitely the biggest down. I knew things were shaky when they introduced this year's big theme: faith, specifically in the form of religion. Edward James Olmos and Colin Hanks play serial killers who are using the Bible to justify their crimes, and Mos Def (or Yasiin Bey, I suppose) plays a reformed criminal who now uses religion to keep him on the straight and narrow. Dexter tries to learn about how faith can be good from Bey's character, but he gets pushed aside and eventually it just devolves into a hacky doomsday psychopath plot without really saying anything interesting or new about the subject. Bey is easily the best thing about the first half of the season, but he doesn't stick around and unfortunately his exit isn't the most graceful. Olmos' character never does anything interesting, and Hanks is either ill-suited for his or just doesn't have the talent to pull it off. A lot of the season is the show just shuffling in place as Dexter goes on ill-considered detours and offs very boring random bad guys, and a lot of weight is again placed on the folks at the police station, who repeatedly prove to be some of the dumbest TV cops who ever lived. The show doesn't even pretend that law enforcement is a threat to Dexter this year, and their failure to notice all of the little things that don't add up about him is becoming farcical at this point. Deb is the only one who has anything remotely resembling a passable storyline, and even that can't avoid veering into some seriously ill-considered territory by the end. And yet... I might have to watch season seven, depending on how it looks once we get closer. Because those writers, incompetent as they might be, finally recognized the need to do something to actually move toward what could be considered an ending, and they did that in this season's finale scene. I still might not watch, since sitting through these twelve episodes was a pretty terrible experience, but at least it's better than what Weeds did.

Dexter - Season 5

I did not like this season of Dexter. It wasn't awful, because a show where Michael C. Hall plays a serial killer is always going to be at least passably entertaining. But whereas the boring third season felt like a hiccup more than anything truly worrisome after the fairly awesome fourth one last year, this felt more like the show beginning a true decline. Dexter's bag of tricks just isn't exciting as it used to be. And now I'm suspicious that John Lithgow's amazing job was maybe just an illusion masking a show that's been running out of really good ideas for a couple years now.

The previews leading up to this season and the beginning made it seem like the story might be more organic this time, growing out of the troubles that would arise after the fourth season's surprisingly vicious conclusion. It kicks off just a moment later, with Dexter being questioned by the police and struggling mightily on the inside. But it's not long before that plot is shut down before it can begin, the kids are shipped off so they're less of a nuisance, and we're right back to another big bad on the horizon as Dexter tracks down some bad guys while Peter Weller plays an ex-cop on his tail. Of course they got a special guest for this part, because it's much easier to get rid of a problem like that when it someone who doesn't have an actual relationship with Dexter and a spot on the regular cast list. A big difference this season is that Dexter rescues a victim of this season's boogey man and actually gets her on his side, although it's really just a twist on the same idea from seasons two and three, Dexter gets a friend and we're supposed to wonder if he can keep them. So while Julia Stiles plays the part well and it does provide for some interesting situations, it's not a true game changer like the show pretends it is.

The supporting cast around Dexter continues to be pretty boring and disposable, as the writers keep trying to keep us interested in what they're up to, but they haven't been fun in a while. Masuka's gimmick isn't funny anymore, forcing Angel and Deb into relationships with worse characters really doesn't help them as individual characters, and the homicide unit's side case that runs for most of the season is somehow even less compelling than usual before it gets dropped so the show can pretend that Dexter is in danger of getting caught by someone who knows him. All of this would have been fine if Dexter's stuff was up to its usual standards, but there just seemed like an excessive amount of shortcuts and overly convenient bouts of luckiness and unluckiness just to get the characters through all the story beats they wanted to. It just felt sloppy this year, and while many individual scenes were as raw and thrilling as the show can get, the whole was less than the sum of the parts. It was too easy, like the writers cared more about getting us from scene to scene without making sure it made sense or was even remotely believable. It's sad to see a show you used to love turn into something ordinary, and with the series being as successful financially as it's ever been, I don't see Showtime deciding to end it. Which means the only chance we really have of a proper ending coming reasonably soon is probably for Hall to decide he wants to do something else. Here's hoping that happens.

Characters of the Decade: Part 4

One more to go after this one. Man, this really is TV heavy, isn't it?

Haruhi Suzumiya
Aya Hirano - The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya


"Feelings of love are just a temporary lapse in judgment. Like a mental illness."

I might actually like mild-mannered narrator Kyon more, but the show's about Haruhi, and unlike the vast majority of characters, the universe really does revolve around her. She has a unique, eccentric personality that can make almost anything fun to watch, and is the sort of leader whose followers always wonder why they do what she says but do anyway. And there are enough glimpses at her normal, affectionate side in between world threatening crises that she's inadvertently responsible for that she comes through as a person and not just a cipher for the writers' wacky ideas. I guess I like that kind of character a lot, don't I?

Dexter Morgan
Michael C. Hall - Dexter


"Harry and Dorris Morgan did a wonderful job raising me. But they're both dead now. I didn't kill them. Honest."

In a lot of ways, Dexter is a flawed show. It's frequently predictable and there's way too much time spent on supporting characters and subplots we never actually care about. It's easy to keep watching though, because Hall's work is so good. I admit to being a little tired of his dry narrating style at this point but he can still carry the series through any low points. Until very recently he's been one of the best actors I can think of who only works in television, but he's really damn good at it, finally getting recognized by the Golden globes recently (although that award's tainted because Bryan Cranston wasn't even nominated), and is why I gave Six Feet Under a shot, which turned out to be a good decision. He somehow finds a way to sell the sympathetic serial killer angle, and still be menacing when required. All you could ask for from a lead.

Dr. Steve Brule
John C. Reilly - Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!


"For your health!"

Reilly is supposedly a very good serious actor, although all I've ever seen from him is his brilliant comedy work. His best role is most pathetic, as the befuddled and under-qualified local news correspondent Dr. Steve Brule. He's good for a few appearances per season, and they're routinely pure gold. In addition to his terrible advice and wacky outtakes, there are a lot of things about the character that make him endearing in a sad way like his chronic loneliness and crush on married news anchor Jan Skylar. He's getting his own show soon, and I can't see how it won't be fantastic.

Juno MacGuff
Ellen Page - Juno


"Nah... I mean, I'm already pregnant, so what other kind of shenanigans could I get into?"

Juno's a really divisive movie. Some appreciate its uniquely goofy dialogue and moments of indie cuteness, while others can't stand it. I'm with the former, and a big part of why the movie works for me is Juno herself. She has a unique vocabulary for a teenager, but I'm not selective on what I allow films to be fanciful about, and she really sells the whole teenage girl with problems thing that I usually can't stomach for very long. In a movie I saw for Jason Bateman and Michael Cera, Ellen Page is the one who impressed me most.

Leon Black
J.B. Smoove - Curb Your Enthusiasm


"Barack Obama! I'm the President of hitting that ass!"

Probably the least scripted character on this list. In a show where everybody just says what comes to mind during the scene, Leon takes it to the extreme. He can make any topic funnier than should be possible, from the proper way to respond to an insult to the appropriate amount of discretion required when discussing a friend's wife whose ass you're hitting. I enjoyed seeing Smoove pop up in an episode of Castle and hope to see him get more opportunities, but to me he'll always be Leon.

Emerson Cod
Chi McBride - Pushing Daisies


"Bitch, I was in proximity!"

After watching the rather bad previews for Human Target, I almost decided to give it a shot. That's how much I like the whole cast of Pushing Daisies, and I liked Emerson most of all. While the show lived off its saccharine sweetness, Cod was the bitter one who kept it from floating off into space. He's a perfect foil for pretty much everyone else, and his combination of intuition, wit, and resourcefulness made each case into a classic film noir. The show made strides to humanize him during its short run with love interests and a missing daughter, but it probably didn't need to. He's the kind of guy who'd be a pleasure to watch visit the DMV.

GLaDOS
Ellen McLain - Portal


"That thing you burned up isn't important to me. It's the fluid catalytic cracking unit. It made shoes for orphans. Nice job breaking it, hero."

Portal was already a unique and brilliant mind-bending puzzle game, but GLaDOS made it something that every gamer should try. Just one of the funniest and best executed character arcs in the medium. Encouraging at first, the artificial intelligence guiding you through a test facility you never quite understand slowly becomes more sinister over time, and downright hostile after a certain point. But she never loses her sense of humor, logging one of the best percentages of successful one liners in history (I just made that up, but it sounds right). Plus the song at the end is just icing on the cake. I just made myself groan.

Anton Chigurh
Javier Bardem - No Country for Old Men


"Would you hold still please, sir?"

It's rare to see such an intimidating force of nature in a film. Compared to the other people in the story, Chigurh is almost a caricature, a flesh and blood Terminator that will stop at nothing to accomplish his task. He also sort of rips off Two-Face's gimmick, although he pulls it off better. It's sort of his lack of humanity that makes him work though, taking the movie from being a solid, off-beat thriller and making it into a pretty impressive, unique work that stands alone. I'm not sure if it's exactly a brilliant performance, but it's certainly exactly what it needed to be.

Nathan Drake
Nolan North - Uncharted series


"I didn't think that far ahead!"

As video game protagonists were getting too grim and gritty, Nate came along and reminded people that heroes are allowed to be likable. Sure, his carefree attitude doesn't quite work with his near-genocidal kill count after only two games, but work with me here. It's shifted the tone of a lot of modern action games, and there's been so much demand for North's voice work that the Internet backlash is already well underway. It's clear from some of his roles that he has a good deal of range, but his classic sarcastic good guy voice is what people want, and I'll forever associate it with the first and still most interesting character I heard it from, Mr. Drake.

Daniel Plainview
Daniel Day-Lewis - There Will Be Blood


"One night I'm gonna come to you, inside of your house, wherever you're sleeping, and I'm gonna cut your throat."

I think my favorite single adjective I've heard used to describe Day-Lewis' work in this film was when Quentin Tarantino called it "volcanic". It just fits, doesn't it? There's really not much I can say about it that hasn't been said better by people who have a deeper understanding of acting. I just know that I've never been more impressed while watching somebody in a film. From his silent actions in the very beginning, to his dark charisma as his business gets going, to his increasing madness as the film continues and to the final scene which is both funny and startling, there's not a moment that could have been obviously improved. I won't forget it any time soon.

Walter White
Bryan Cranston - Breaking Bad


"We are going to make a good product that does what it is supposed to, as advertised. No emulsifiers, no baking powder, no bleach, no chili powder."

Despite the Golden Globes' continued negligence (Seriously, Avatar's the movie of the year? Why did I even look up the results?), even the slightly less maligned Emmys managed to see what everyone else has the last couple years with Cranston's great work on Breaking Bad the last two years. Watching a man learn that he was dying, turn desperately to crime to help his family, go back and forth hope and despair, and ultimately lose sight of what's important in his life has been a really eye opening experience. We always knew Cranston could be funny, but I've been a lot more impressed by this. I can only wonder what Walter will do next.

Bryan Mills
Liam Neeson - Taken


"That is what happens when you sit behind a desk. You forget things, like the weight in the hand of a gun that's loaded and one that's not."

What should have been a simple revenge-driven action movie ended up being pretty brilliant thanks to to lead's increasing willingness to abandon reason or sympathy in his quest to get his daughter back. More movies should just put guns in the hands of respected veteran actors and see what happens, because it totally worked out here with Neeson. In some ways it's a bog standard thriller, it's just that extra 10% of gravitas and brutality that makes it one of my favorite films ever of the type. Why exactly did they sit on this for a year before releasing it in America?

Concluded tomorrow.

Best Shows of 2009

Again, things get on this list by having a season end in the year in question. Even if all but one episode was shown in a different year. Causes some odd situations, but it makes it a bit easier. This was a good year for shows I like, with lots of them either maintaining high standards of quality or bouncing back from relatively sub-par seasons.

Best of 2009

8. Pushing Daisies (ABC)


This is one of those odd situations. ABC failed to renew Daisies for a full second season, so they waited until the middle of the year to unceremoniously air the last three episodes. The show's second run didn't have quite the verve of the first, but it was still a beautifully shot, fiendishly clever, and highly charming show while it lasted. Maybe too cute for some, but it never bothered me.

7. Mad Men (AMC)


I really thought this was the show's best run, showing just how much good stuff there was last year. It featured a few of the series' greatest moments so far, some of its best humor, and some truly game-changing upheaval of the status quo in the last couple episodes. Ultimately though, I want to know what happens now more than I want to revisit what already did.

6. Dexter (Showtime)


The show's best go-round since the first, it wasn't perfect but managed to recapture a lot of what was missing the last time and tell an exciting story again. John Lithgow was probably the best pure villain on TV last year, and there were a number of scenes as shocking, disturbing, and downright just as tense as what you can accomplish in the medium. Plus it was the only thing on this list to have a significant supporting character regularly show her tits, which doesn't hurt. Nah, if that actually mattered True Blood would be here.

5. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (FX)


This year's best comedy, and I'd be tempted to name it the comedy of the decade if it weren't for Arrested Development. It's not as smart or subtle as some network shows, but it's just so damn laugh-out-loud funny all the damn time that you can't not love it. This was the year I feel Dennis overtook Charlie as the best character, but they're all so good that your personal pick doesn't really matter. I kind of wish the seasons were longer, but it might dilute the humor if they had to hire more writers.

4. Kings (NBC)


I kind of wish I had given it a shot when it was still airing. Not that it would have mattered, because I'm just one person and I don't have a Nielsen Box. Of all the shows I saw last year this one could be considered unique, with its own sense of pacing, dialogue, design, and themes. And Ian McShane played what was probably the year's best character. Just watching him pontificate while he shook hands with one arm and held a noose behind his back with the other was a treat every time he was on screen. Farewell Kings, I hardly knew ye.

3. Dollhouse (FOX)


It's really, really too bad FOX insisted on changing Joss Whedon's vision for the beginning of the series, because the consistently low ratings after just a few weak episodes show that it never really had a chance to recover, despite every nerd who kept with it shouting "No really, it's good now!" at everyone they come across. The show came to its own in the back half of season one, and the unaired (in America) finale was a big-time game changer.

2. Lost (ABC)


You can probably pencil this in for a similar place on the list for this year, as my anticipation for the show's final season is approaching a fever pitch and the creators have done nothing but prove they can do this sort of thing better than anything else on TV right now. Despite saying they weren't going to do time travel early on, they ended up instead creating one of the best long term time travel stories I've seen without coming close to overdoing it, and it ends with a few more shocking revelations while setting up what could be a truly special last run.

1. Breaking Bad (AMC)


Two straight years at the top of the hill. I don't know how much longer Vince Gilligan and company can keep it up, and it's going to take some doing with Dollhouse currently near the end of possibly the best season of science fiction I've ever seen. Still, I can see them doing it. The second season moved a bit beyond the first's angle, showing the meaning of the title as Bryan Cranston ably depicts a man who's lost sight of what's important and will do increasingly terrible things just to keep a leg up. Few shows manage its combination of genuinely good, intelligent drama and heart-wrenching, brutally intense moments. Just consistently brilliant.

Dexter - Season 4

I see Dexter's fourth season the same way a woman might see her middle aged husband. He has his flaws. He's not as impressive as he was when you first got to know him. And he sags around the middle. But he does enough for you to remember why you loved him in the first place, and at least he doesn't disappoint you like he did when he started hanging out with Jimmy Smits last year.

I do think this was the show's best season since the first. One big factor in that is John Lithgow's role as the season-long antagonist and possible role model for Dexter, a seasoned serial killer who seems to have managed to figure out how to satiate his urges and keep a nice family at the same time. When you're first just seeing how he works, he's one of the creepiest villains I've seen in a TV show. I know Lithgow pretty much exclusively from his comedic work, so I was pretty blown away by how scary he can be when he wants. He gets a little dull once we see him in domestic mode, at least at first, though as Dexter sees more of the truth behind the lies, things start getting really creepy again. The other factor in the season's success was the ending, not just the mind-blowing last couple minutes (which in a way I kind of actually see as a cop out), but pretty much the last episode entirely, and the last scene of the previous episode - maybe the most tense I've ever been at something on television.

Besides that though, the season did have a few issues. There was some inconsistency with Dexter's character and his struggles at home - yeah, he has an infant son of his own now, but that didn't take center stage like I expected. I constantly found myself thinking "Oh yeah, he has a kid" - it just didn't have a lot of impact on him, not anymore than his existing worries about his family anyway. And there's just a fundamental shift in his MO - Dexter has always tried to channel his compulsion into something somewhat positive - killing criminals that the justice system misses. There are a couple moments where he deviates from this system, intentionally or otherwise, and both are acknowledged yet neither are dealt with satisfyingly. The stuff with Deb was pretty solid this year, and Masuka is really turning into a good character beyond comedic relief, but I found myself not caring a single bit about the thing between LaGuerta and Batista, and I'm basically just counting the days until Quinn's arc of mimicking Doakes comes to the same conclusion. Having a fifth season confirmed before the fourth even aired gave them the opportunity to set up what should be a highly intriguing next part of the story, and now I'm back to waiting again.

Dexter - Season 3

I found the third season of Dexter to be neither as enjoyable nor as believable as the first two, but it's still a solid show with an edge. It's hard to pinpoint the problem, because there's still a lot of good stuff going on. It just felt less like a show about a serial killer and more like a show about a guy who happens to kill people occasionally. When the show started, Dexter was a cold, mysterious person, with all of his outward niceness a facade to hide his terrible secret. He tracked down and killed criminals because he had an insatiable desire to. By now, he's basically transformed into the nice family guy he was pretending to be, it's just he still has to murder once in a while, but it's usually protecting himself anyway. This is all the result of developing the characters over a period of time and clearly intentional, it's just less of a compelling existence.

The main problem Dexter deals with this season is Miguel Prado, an Assistant DA played well by Jimmy Smits. He and Dexter become close friends, and eventually, he becomes the third person in as many seasons to learn Dexter's secret. And if you've seen the first two seasons, you know what's probably going to happen after that. The problem is that I just didn't buy his character arc as easily as the others. His transition from seemingly normal guy to a big problem to be dealt with is just too quick. He has strong convictions, but it's just not something you see happening that way. The supporting cast does a fair bit of growing and changing itself, and the major case the cops are working on is solid enough, if not as well connected to Dexter as it's been before. Another season's on the way, and I hope they can maintain the show's identity enough while still doing what they want to with the story.

Dexter - Season 2

The second season of Dexter can't reach the emotional depth of the first, with all of the family revelations, but they still weave quite a web of interesting characters and surprising twists. There's another huge serial killer in town, but this time it's Dexter himself. His graveyard of victims underwater gets discovered by accident, and he has to do everything he can to keep himself in the clear. There's plenty of other subplots, like Dexter faking a heroin addiction to cover up his true secret and Deb trying to come out of her shell after what happened last season, and most of the supporting cast's roles are expanded and developed a bit. Whereas I found Doakes and La Guerta to be pretty non-essential obstacles the first time, much more is shown about their true character, and they actually become somewhat sympathetic.

The show's still really about Dexter, and he's still a really great character, funny and resourceful as he has a major identity crisis and learns more about his past. I thought the background stuff revealed near the end of the first run came a little early in the series, saying too much too soon. But they proved that there's still plenty about the character we don't know. I wasn't a huge fan of his waffling with his woman of choice, but Lila was a unique, interesting character. The end of the story arc resulted more from him being lucky than good, but that's part of Dexter's charm, he's a serial killer, but he has a sense of morality and can make human mistakes. He's become less cold as the show's gone on, and I'm interested to see what happens in his crazy life next.

Dexter - Season 1

Dexter sounds a bit more edgy than it really is, although it is pretty out there content-wise. It's about a blood spatter expert who works with the police, and at night ritualistically murders criminals who have thus far escaped justice within the system. Although this moral code makes him more likable than if he killed innocents, the show doesn't paint him as truly good either. It does a good job of making him sympathetic while making sure we know he's still a disturbed individual who should not be emulated. The show's not really about serial killing anyway, it's just an aspect of a really good character who helps solve crimes. Michael C. Hall does a great job depicting Dexter, both when in every day life pretending to be normal and letting his dark side loose. He's very funny, as his narration reveals character without being too obvious and adding some sly humor. His supporting cast is varying in quality, but his girlfriend Rita and coworker Angel are both very likable.

The first season's story arc is something I might expect later in a show's lifespan, revealing a lot about Dexter's character and how he became the twisted person he is now. He and the police are working to find a serial killer who cuts prostitutes into intricate pieces and leaves them at a scene with no blood. While the cops try to figure it out, they're missing pieces to the puzzle, as the killer leaves clues for Dexter himself, who at first welcomes the game. As far as shows with season-long storylines go, Dexter handles it as well as any, always introducing something else that leaves you craving to know what happens next. It gets a little wacky at the end, but the resolution does justice to everything they built. There's also some trouble with his girlfriend as their comfortable situation changes, and the season ends with a very interesting twist that should provide some entertainment in the next.