Hey 3.5 readers.
VGRF here with some sad news. Richard Hatch, the actor who played Starbuck in the original 1970s Battlestar Galactica and Tom Zarek in the updated 2000s version has died.
His cast member in the updated version, Edward James Olmos, who played Admiral Adama, tweeted this:
So say we all, indeed.
By: Leo McCoy, the Man Who Once Delivered a Sandwich to James Van Der Beek
Howdy doo, 3.5 readers.
Leo McCoy here with my first column for the Bookshelf Battle Blog. When Video Game Rack Fighter called and asked me to write for her, I immediately responded that I would check my schedule to see if I was busy. Then I admitted I was lying because I haven’t been busy since 1998, on that glorious day when I delivered a sandwich to James Van Der Beek.
Oh how I remember it like it was yesterday. Dawson’s Creek or “The Creek” as we 1990s people called, was the hottest show on the WB, next to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Oh, the WB was once a hot network filled with shows for 1990s era young people.
Although it was owned by Warner Brothers and thus they could have chosen any of the Looney Tunes characters to headline the channel (Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck, for example), they chose that damn racist frog. You know the one. “Hello my baby, hello my mammy, hello my rag time gal.” Sorry, I can’t steal that joke. That joke belongs to Dave Chapelle.
Anyway, I was a duly designated employee of a local delicatessen. Got a call that a fella was looking for a Reuben sandwich, a bag of barbecue potato chips and a Dr. Pepper. Diligent worker that I was, I ran it right over to the Random Motel, the number one spot for tourists to stay while they’re visiting East Randomtown and who should appear at the door but none other than James Van Der Beek himself.
Oh how handsome he was. I’m not saying that in a gay way. Any heterosexual man can surely appreciate the aesthetic features of a good looking man without wanting to touch his bits and pieces although, I can’t lie, the man was famous as all get out so had he asked, I’m not sure I would have been able to deny him. Again, that’s not a gay statement. It’s just a recognition of the power of celebrity.
What a golden haired Adonis he was, standing there with his flowing locks and flannel shirt. Open with a white shirt underneath, as was the style of the day. You weren’t anyone in the 1990s if you didn’t dress like Paul Bunyan.
“I’m sorry sir,” I said. “But are you James Van Der Beek?”
“Maybe,” the man replied. “What’s it to you?”
I then lifted up my shirt and handed the man a pen.
“Mr. Beek, sir,” I said. “I’d be honored if you’d autograph my nipple.”
“Get lost, weirdo,” the man replied, before tossing the money he owed, taking the food, and slamming the door in my face.
Sigh. My nipple remained unsigned, but I knew it was him. I don’t blame Mr. Van Der Beek for wanting to lay low. Had word gotten out that the world’s sexiest Dutchman was in town, he would have been swamped with fans and no one wants to sign the nipples of fans when they are hungry for deli food, let me tell you.
Ahh, on that day I knew life would never get any better. I peaked so early that I quit my job at the deli and started waxing the stool of the Random Bar with my ass. Same stool, same ass for nearly twenty years and I don’t regret a single day. I accomplished what I was meant to do early in life and I’ve been waiting for the good Lord to take me ever since.
Now, as all 3.5 of you readers know, I have a rivalry with BQB. People say Battler is the most famous man in East Randomtown because he started a WordPress blog with 3.5 readers.
Oh, whoopee. Anyone can start a blog on WordPress. Sure, even less people get 3.5 people to read their blogs but still, it can be done. Have any of you ever a man that you were ninety-nine percent sure was the infamous James Van Der Beek, star of the most popular show about a teenager just trying to make it in the 1990s as an aspiring filmmaker whilst trying to win the love of the precocious Joey Potter all the while maintaining his friendships with bad Pacy Whitter and town slut Jen Lindley? I think not.
Anyway, I’d like to thank Video Game Rack Fighter for inviting me to be a columnist on this blog. I gotta admit, I’m getting a kick out of the fact that I get to blog on BQB’s blog while BQB is no longer allowed to.
Oh, you may have noticed in the past my last name was spelled, “McKoy.” Yeah, that’s because I always wanted to be a rebel but now that VGRF has promoted me from bit player to featured cast member, I figured I’d switch to the traditional spelling.
Also, I’d like all 3.5 of you to know that even though BQB has been my longtime enemy and I despise him from taking away my position as East Randomtown’s most famous citizen by starting his stupid blog, I am still a Christian and thus I have gladly opened my room at the Random Motel to him for his use.
BQB needs a place to stay as Video Game Rack Fighter has been awarded 99.99% of BQB’s paycheck from Beige Corp. That’s gotta hurt. Luckily, I never married. Marriage never interested me after I got a close look at Mr. Van Der Beek’s angelic face. No, that’s not a gay statement. Can’t a man just appreciate the statuesque features of a living god without being accused of gayness?
“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” as Jerry Seinfeld once said. You know, I was ten percent sure that I once delivered a pastrami on rye to Jerry Seinfeld but then it just turned out to be a guy who just said, “What’s the deal” a lot. Oh well. I suppose no one could ever be blessed with meeting James Van Der Beek AND Jerry Seinfeld in one lifetime.
Let me end this column with some questions you no doubt have:
Q: Are you and BQB staying at the same room James Van Der Beek once rented?
A: Yes. On the same day Mr. Der Beek checked out, I sold my house for pennies on the dollar and moved into the same room and have never left since. Also, I have been snaking the bath tub drain for twenty years in search of errant golden locks, the DNA of which might prove to all haters and naysayers that I did, most assuredly, meet James Van Der Beek.
Q: Is BQB a good roommate?
A: No. He cries into his pillow all night over losing his beloved blog to VGRF. Also, he misses VGRF. I offered to dress up like her and dance around to make him feel better. He said that would be gay but frankly, I don’t see how. Ungrateful homophobic bastard if you ask me.
Q. Why do you and BQB spoon?
A. Partially due to the fact that there’s only one bed and it is very small. Partially because the furnace in the Random Motel has been broken for twenty years. Rumor has it that when Mr. Der Beek left, the Random Motel’s owner smashed the furnace to pieces whilst shouting, “This place will never get any hotter now that James Van Der Beek has left!”
Q. Are you sure the owner did that? Kind of sounds like something you would do.
A. No comment.
Q. Where does the yeti sleep?
A. On the floor. He makes for a fine throw rug. Occasionally I put a blonde wig on him and recreate my glory days, or rather, the glorious day when I delivered a sandwich to James Van Der Beek.
Q. Do you have anything else to say?
A. Yes. “I don’t want to wait…for my life to be over…until you realize that I’m more famous in East Randomtown than BQB…” Oh James Van Der Beek, you are a national treasure.
Hey 3.5 readers.
Video Game Rack Fighter here. Did you miss Lady Gaga’s Halftime show at the Super Bowl?
Don’t worry. The fine folks at Pepsi have posted the entire thing on YouTube for your viewing pleasure.
My thoughts:
She did a great job. I can’t imagine all the time, money and effort that goes along with putting on a show that has that moving parts. I mean, literally, there are so many moving parts. The crew had to assemble a stage and break it down all in time for the Super Bowl to continue.
I give her applause, applause, applause (get it?) for being willing to leap off of the stadium and then fly down to the platform using wires. I’m not sure I’d trust those wires myself. I worry a little that all these pop stars are being put in danger for our visual pleasure. I mean, they had Katy Perry riding some kind of giant animal contraption at the 2015 Super Bowl.
Good on Gaga, I don’t think I’m even in good enough shape to be transported by wires. I’d be too heavy for the wires and they’d snap and I’d land on a dancer and crush him/her.
The best part was that I didn’t have to watch it with BQB and be interrupted by his various gaseous emissions.
What say you, 3.5?
Hey 3.5 readers.
VGRF here again. What are you favorite super bowl commercials, either from tonight or from the past?
The one I remember the most from last year is Mountain Dew’s “Puppy, Monkey, Baby” though only because it was very weird.
Anyway, let me know and also BQB, enjoy watching the Super Bowl with Leo and the Yeti.
Hmm. “Leo and the Yeti.” Sounds like a good 1970s buddy cop drama.
Zombies! Murder! Mayhem! Sitcom stupidity.
Video Game Rack Fighter here with a review of Netflix’s Santa Clarita Diet. Meanwhile, enjoy your BQB free diet because that nerd will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever write on this blog ever again, ever.
So, Netflix has taken the iZombie idea of a zombie who can still basically function as a human who speaks normally and Dexter, where the protagonist murders bad people, except here she does it for food.
Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant star as suburban California realtors Joel and Sheila Hammond, just another boring couple living a quiet life with daughter Abby (Liv Hewson) on an idyllic cul-de-sac where all the houses look the same.
In the first episode, Sheila inexplicably dies and yet, does not die. SPOILER ALERT: there’s a lot of vomit involved.
Sheila’s heart beat stops, she can be injured without being hurt, she loses control of her base desires and just wants to have sex with her previously sex deprived husband all the time. Clearly, there’s been a big change.
Rather than, you know, consult a doctor, the family brings in a nerd, creepy next-door neighbor kid Eric (Skyler Gisondo). He diagnoses Sheila as a zombie because, you know, he reads comic books and shit so apparently he’s an expert. It’s all presented tongue in cheek and the audience is winked at to just go with it.
There are parts that are funny and parts that are just gross. I feel sad for Timothy Olyphant. I got so used to watching him play the tough cowboy in Justified that it seems depressing to watch him become the stereotypical pussy sitcom dad, completely impotent and unable to get any respect from his wife or kid and left to write sternly worded letters to the company that failed to design his toaster oven properly.
The main rule that all good writers must follow is, “Show, don’t tell.” Viewers prefer to see things happen rather than be told that things happened and yet, at least in the first episode, we are told that things happened rather than shown that things happened.
I almost wondered if that might be a result of the episodes only being a half hour long. With only a half hour, the show comes across as a zany sitcom. With an hour, the characters could be developed more without the characters just blurting out the details of scenes we missed.
The verdict is still out on this show. The first episode had its ups and downs but it was interesting enough to get me to come back for more.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy, and I hope BQB enjoys spooning with Leo McCoy in the Randomtown Motel because he will never be allowed to Netflix and chill with me in BQB HQ ever again.
Also, as a grammar issue, I think the show should be called, “The Santa Clarita Diet.”
OK. I’m about five years late with this complaint, but I guess that’s what happens when shows are preserved forever on Netflix and you can watch them whenever you want.
For the most part, I hate it when there are cast changes on a TV show. If a group of actors/actresses wowed everyone in the first season then every effort should be made to keep the band together.
You don’t change your socks in the bottom of the ninth. To change an actress is to change the character altogether.
In the first season, Last Man Standing was basically Tim Allen taking his winning Home Improvement formula and applying it to modern times.
On Home Improvement, Tim Taylor lusted after power tools, was kept in check by intelligent wife/psychology student Jill, and was a father to three wacky boys. From time to time, he’d seek advice from his TV show co-star Al or his mysterious neighbor, Wilson. During his Tool Time TV show, he’d regale the studio audience with a rant about some subject related to a problem he was experiencing with his family.
On Last Man Standing, the three boys are traded in for three girls. Mike Baxter lusts after crossbows, shotguns and assorted pieces of hunting equipment. He’s kept in check by intelligent wife/geologist Vanessa. He seeks advice from his boss/confidant Ed. In a modern twist, he regales the Outdoor Man website visitors with rants related to some problem he is experiencing with his family.
Symmetry. Gotta love it. Then they ruined it.
In the first season, Mike’s eldest daughter Kristin is played by Alexandra Krosney. Her backstory is that she got pregnant during her senior year of high school, thus destroying all of her college hopes and dreams while leaving Mike with his only male ally in a house full of girls, his little grandson Boyd.
There was definitely a subtle lesson behind that character. The message to young people who have kids way too young is, ok, you made a mistake. But life isn’t over. Kristin gets up everyday, works at a rancid diner, takes care of her son and occasionally takes a college class when she can fit it into her schedule. Mom, Dad and younger sisters pitch in to help Kristin out.
Happy family. Gotta love it. You’re left with a hope that as long as Kristin keeps plugging away, she will eventually get her long awaited award. She’ll get her education and she won’t have to work at a stank ass diner anymore.
Alas, in Season Two, Krosney is replaced by Amanda Fuller. I don’t mean to knock Fuller. She’s playing the character she was hired to play but, this version of Kristin stinks.
Jordan Masterson is brought in to play Boyd’s dad, Ryan, who in the first season had been played by Nick Jonas in a one time guest spot.
New Kristin and Ryan become liberal foils to conservative Mike. What used to be a sweet, funny show about a happy family descends into a weekly political debate show where everyone comes across as though they want to slap the crap out of each other over the latest political happenings of the day.
I have a hunch what the network was trying to do. They essentially moved from modern Home Improvement to modern All in the Family.
If you missed All in the Family, it had the same vibe. Die hard conservative Archie Bunker would go toe to toe with his super liberal daughter Gloria and son-in-law Mike aka Meathead.
People tend to forget that as much of a hard ass Archie Bunker was, Mike and Gloria were, at times, unbearable in their own ways.
Archie had his pros, namely, he was a good provider and the only one in the household with the brains needed to earn a dollar or get any work done. He also had his cons in that he was brutish and harsh, stubborn and set in his ways, though occasionally a heart of gold peeked through.
Mike and Gloria had their pros. They cared about people and the world and were happy go lucky flower children. But they had their cons, namely, neither one of them could work their way out of a wet paper bag and by the end of the show they had ended up a pair of forty year olds dependent on their elderly father/father-in-law because they were too free spirited to figure out how to earn a living on their own.
In short, the show runners, in my opinion anyway, were trying to say, “Hey, look, both sides have some good ideas, and bad ideas, no one has a complete lock on right and wrong and sometimes when people on opposing sides lock horns, all reason is thrown out the window.”
Apparently, the “new and improved” Kristin and Ryan worked enough to keep the show going for years but personally, I liked the first season better. I get they are going for modern day Archie vs. Meathead and Gloria in the form of Mike vs. New Kristin and Ryan, but to me, it just comes across as this once adorable, happy family now hates each other.
Mike, like Archie, is a bit of a hard ass, though nowhere near as hard as Archie. His conservative beliefs clash with New Kristin and Ryan’s liberalism, and the trio spend at least half of every show duking it out in a war of ideology.
Like Archie, Mike is a good provider, but he does try to foist his beliefs on his kids. Like Meathead and Gloria, New Kristin and Ryan believe their way is the best to help people, but they do come off as ungrateful brats who boinked one night in high school and now they expect their father/father-in-law to raise and pay for their kid for them but they still want to lecture him on how to do it and tell him that he’s doing a shitty job when they should be thanking him for being there for them.
All I know is I just end up missing the happy family that loved each other in season one.
Plus, the bitter political divide the country suffers from can be seen everywhere. Did we really need to see it on this show too?
Anyway. Thanks for listening to my five year old complaint, America. Bring back Alexandra Krosney.
Blah. I don’t know if I’ll even bother to keep watching it.
Hey 3.5 readers.
As an aspiring comedy writer, I have to say that on the surface, a plot in which Liz Taylor, Michael Jackson and Marlon Brando driving in a car together from New York to California after planes were shut down in the aftermath of 9/11 sounds like gold.
I’m not talking about the 9/11 part, obviously. But Elizabeth Taylor and all her husbands, Marlon Brando eating himself silly and talking gibberish in a depressed tone and Michael Jackson? Well, I suppose we don’t need to rehash his problems.
Urban Myths is a British TV show that portrays myths circulating about famous people and the casting of Fiennes, a white man, as Jackson has been talked about for a long time.
When I first heard about the casting last year, my immediate reaction was, well, normally you should not have a white man play a black man but Michael was that rare case where his skin color turned white. Thus, even though Michael was a black man it just wouldn’t make sense to have, say, Ving Rhames or Samuel L. Jackson play him.
But then I saw the result in this Inside Edition clip and, yeah, I am now going to backpedal and say the decision was terrible:
Michael Jackson, as a character on film, is a very difficult character to portray. The man had so many plastic surgeries that by the end of his life he looked like some kind of humanoid space goblin. Thus, it’s hard to make an actor look like Michael without adding some wacky prosthetics that, let’s face it, are just going to offend everyone.
They just didn’t do a good job here. The way Fiennes is made up, he looks nothing like Jackson. He just looks like a white guy with a messed up face. Cue, “Mike also looked like a white guy with a messed up face” joke here, but whereas Michael looked like a space goblin, Fiennes just looks like a white guy who went a few rounds in a boxing match and lost.
If I were making a Michael Jackson movie like this, the best option I think would probably be to cast a white guy, put a Jackson wig on him or that hat he always wore, and then put those big sunglasses he used to wear and the black bandana thing he wore over his face. He was a germophobe so it would make sense. You might cast a light skinned black man but I mean, it’d have to be a really light skinned black man.
Other than that, there’s just no real way to cast Jackson and/or make an actor look like Jackson without offending everyone.
Curious about the whole shebang, I searched for MJ impersonators on YouTube and found a whole variety of dudes of varying ethnic backgrounds who managed to pull it off far better than this show did…so it can be done.
It’s too bad. Liz, Mike and Marlon in a car together sounds like a hysterical idea, but without handling it properly, the whole thing tanks.
What say you, 3.5 readers?
A single mom, two kids and a hot eighty-five year old reboot the Norman Lear classic sitcom, exclusively on Netflix.
BQB here with a review of One Day at a Time.
As a Gen X-er (I swear we exist), I have vague memories of the original One Day at a Time. Single mom Bonnie Franklin balanced raising two daughters, a job and a friendship with a wacky landlord during a time when TV viewers were just starting to accept seeing divorced characters in lead roles on TV.
I recall the show being mildly interesting but it wasn’t, say Facts of Life or Family Ties or one of those 1980s shows that has been handed down through the ages. It was one of those shows that you’d watch while you were waiting for one of those other big shows to watch. I can’t remember much from it other than it introduced the world to Valerie Bertinelli.
The show’s been rebooted with a modern flair with a Cuban-American family. Justina Machado stars as single mother/Afghanistan war veteran/nurse Penelope. She juggles her day job, raising two kids, her “I’ve made a deal with the devil to keep looking this young” mother Rita Moreno and a friendship with wacky landlord Schneider, who has been given a hipster makeover for modern times.
It has all of the sitcom cheesiness: canned laughter, silly jokes, formulaic plots and so on. The family faces millennial problems that Bonnie Franklin couldn’t have dreamed of, i.e. daughter Isabella refuses to have a quinceanara because she thinks it is an outdated, misogynistic ritual, for example.
At any rate, the show is a good example of a reboot done right. It takes a show that was popular back in the day but didn’t really develop a long lasting, post-run fan base, capitalizes on the name and the plot formula, yet makes it fresh and new.
And besides, Schneider was a hipster before hipsters even existed.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy.
I love this show, 3.5 readers.
Season 11 just dropped on Netflix and Season 12 is underway on FXX.
Twelve seasons for a comedy show. That’s got to be a record. I feel like I just started watching this show yesterday. In a way, I feel like I grew up with these guys a bit. I’m about their age, give or take a year or two. And I guess we were all adults when it started but still, how time flies.
In Season 11, the gang parodies 1980s ski slope movies (a genre that sadly, or perhaps thankfully, lived and died by the end of that decade). They catch a leprechaun, accidentally kidnap people with a St. Patrick’s Day themed party bus, litigate the trial of the century against the disturbingly inbred McPoyle clan and go to hell after being trapped inside a cruise ship’s boat jail.
They can keep making this show forever as far as I’m concerned. Dennis, Dee, Charlie and Mac are the biggest group of scumbag scammers around and they will no doubt keep failing at their attempts to make a quick, dishonest buck so they might as well keep those seasons coming.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Available on Netflix.
It’s been a year since I began this list but I always knew I’d get back to it sooner or later.
Dexter. It raised us up so high only to bring us crashing so far down.
Needless to say, we’re talking about how the series ended, so if you haven’t watched it yet, beware of SPOILERS.
In a world of sequels to sequels and reboots of reboots, Showtime’s Dexter had a rather unique premise: a serial killer who you could actually root for.
Michael C. Hall starred as Dexter Morgan, the Miami Homicide forensic analyst who, in his spare time, feeds his twisted inner need to kill (which he refers to as his “dark passenger”) by murdering bad people.
The series starts off strong. Seasons 1 and 2 are particularly great. Season 4 Dexter meets his match in the Trinity Killer (John Lithgow) and then after that, the whole shebang just begins to unravel.
At the heart of the show was the fact that Dexter, believe it or not, was relatable. Sure, you don’t kidnap evildoers, take them to a secluded area, wrap them in plastic wrap and then stab them, but at some point in your life, maybe you’ve felt like you don’t fit in.
Dexter suffers from that same anxiety. He has a hard time making friends. He has a hard time sharing his feelings because he doesn’t have any, yet he’d like to have some. He brings a box of donuts to work everyday to use as a social crutch/ice breaker (i.e. he can’t really strike up a conversation with someone without the excuse of, ‘Hey, would you like a donut?'”)
We’ve all been there and yet, we all (hopefully) see improvement in our social circles as long as we keep trying. Over the course of the show, the Miami Homicide Division becomes Dexter’s family. The various detectives become his brothers and sisters. Hell, one of them even is his sister in the form of foul mouthed Debra (Jennifer Carpenter).
Throughout the series, we see the toll Dexter’s double life takes on him. His job is to help the police department uphold the law. Yet all too often, he uses department resources (databases, crime lab, etc.) to track down bad guys and kill them before his colleagues can collar them.
Moral issues arise. Is it right to do something evil, even if it is against someone evil? Is it wrong to be a vigilante? Doesn’t allegiance to the legal system mean that we take the good with the bad, that sometimes a bad guy gets off on a technicality in order to make sure good people aren’t railroaded?
In the beginning of the series, Dexter operates with a moral code (passed down to him by his police officer father) that serves him well. Be thorough and don’t make a mistake (i.e. don’t kill someone who didn’t do something wrong). Don’t share this secret life with others. Don’t get caught.
In the first two seasons, Dexter’s murderous craft is an art form to behold. He uses intelligence, trickery, deception, science and skill to catch his victims, kill them and make them disappear without leaving behind so much as a single trace.
Alas, in season three the writing starts to get sloppy and Dexter begins going from methodical mad man who thinks of everything to guy who wants to be everyone’s friend. Dexter shares his secret with a district attorney played by Jimmy Smitts, and from thereon, starts sharing his double life with others throughout the series.
That seemed dumb to me. I remember thinking, “Yeah right. No one can keep a secret like that for long.” The whole point of why this character was interesting is because he does so much evil in his personal life and yet still manages to show up to work everyday and beguile a group of colleagues who treat him like a member of the family, fool his sister, his girlfriend, even the step-kids that he takes on as a step-father figure.
Every TV show raises a question. Here, the question is, “Will Dexter ever get caught?”
That’s the question that kept us on the edge of our seats, season after season. Will Dexter slip up and be discovered? Will the people he works with in Miami Homicide end up looking like and feeling like fools when it comes out that one of their own was a murderer? Will one of the detectives end up taking Dexter in? Will Debra and Dexter square off?
Alas, the show jumps the shark when Debra discover Dexter’s secret life. Despite her character being presented as a strong law woman, she goes nuts, quits the force and starts helping Dexter cover up his shit. Just never seemed like something she would ever do.
Personally, I was waiting for years for that moment when Debra makes a difficult choice to haul her own brother in but I never got it.
The show sort of redeems itself when Deb, faced with the decision of whether or not to back up Detective LaGuerta (Lauren Luna Velez) or side with her brother, chooses her brother and shoots LaGuerta. Not really an outcome I was rooting for but OK, I get it. Family bonds are strong and sometimes people do shitty things they don’t want to do in the name of saving a family member’s hide.
To me, the obvious storyline would have been for Sgt. Angel Bautista (David Zayas) to end up in some kind of showdown vs. Dexter and Deb. Bautista and LaGuerta were married and though divorced, he still loved her. He looked at Dexter and Deb as his own brother and sister, even including Dexter in on his bowling league. Surely he could have discovered this and felt betrayed and there could have been some awesome final season long manhunt where he tracks him down but no…nope…Bautista just remains a clueless dummy to the end.
Where was I?
Right. The finale sucked not just because it sucked because it was just one long arc of suck that began in season five and culminated in the disastrous finale.
Deb dies off screen. We don’t see it. We’re just told it as a side note, as if it is an afterthought.
Dexter motors his boat to the hospital and pulls up to a ramp and you’re supposed to just nod like an asshole and be like, “OK. I guess hospitals have boat ramps.”
Dexter then picks his dead sister up out of her hospital bed and walks out the front door with her, past nurses and doctors and security and yeah, I get that they were all dealing with the complications of a hurricane but still, someone would have noticed this.
Dexter then leaves with Debra, again from the hospital boat ramp, and deposits her in a watery grave in a part of the bay where he dumped all of his chopped up victims.
For a brief second you think this is interesting symbolism. Dexter feels like shit that his double life caused his sister so much pain that it essentially killed her so he dispatches her as if she’s one last victim.
But then you just end up thinking that Dexter is a sack of shit and maybe his sister deserved a nice police department funeral with the flag draped over the casket and the twenty one gun salute and a head stone for people to put flowers on but no, he drops her carcass off in a part of the ocean filled with chopped up bodies.
Dexter, you asshole.
Oh, so then Dexter leaves his young son to be raised by Hannah McKay (Yvonne Strahovski), a murderous wench that he hasn’t even known for that long.
I always felt the writers missed out a potentially awesome story line. There really should have been a season where Dexter and Hannah get married, go to jobs by day, then serially kill together at night. Showtime really should have hired me.
So then Dexter points his boat at the hurricane and sails towards it. And you’re like, “OK…well this is all shit but at least there’s a resolution. There’s an answer. Dexter finally feels like such a shit heel for his life of crime that he kills himself.”
But nope. The writers wouldn’t commit. In one last brief scene, Dexter has taken a job in the great Northwest as a lumberjack.
So that’s pretty much it. We watched this show for years only to find out that he becomes a chopper of wood in the end.
Truly, one of the worst TV show finales ever.
If you haven’t seen it yet, you shouldn’t have read any of this. But at any rate, seasons one through four are great and then it probably should have just stopped at four if the writers weren’t going to take it seriously.
That showdown where Dexter’s friends/family finally take him down…or that big final case where Dexter beats all the odds and walks away a free man one last time never materializes. It just fizzles out and then leaves you with a promise that one day a show might be developed about a murderous lumberjack that, let’s face it, you won’t really want to see.
Bookshelf Battle 