Dexter has been going on for seven seasons and has just started on its eighth. Now I loved the first season – it was great. The second season was excellent, too, after a faltering start. Then came the Jimmy Smits season and the first sense that maybe the show was losing its edge. Season four gave us John Lithgow as Trinity, which was a much more promising affair.
All seemed to be good.
But then along came season five, with Julia Stiles as an abuse victim who turned the tables on her abusers with Dexter’s help. Despite the presence of Stiles, Chris Vance and Jonny Lee Miller, it was very Mamite-y: you either loved it or hated it. I loved it… right up until the end of the season, which had possibly the stupidest ending imaginable.
After that, things just got ridiculous, with Edward James Olmos and Colin Hanks as the Big Bads of season six, with a twist you probably saw coming, but even if you didn’t, you wondered how Dexter got so stupid the rest of the time. And then Debs decided she fancied Dexter. Ugh.
Then last year gave us season seven, the stupidest of them all, which despite a good start, gave us Dexter shagging one of his victims while she was still on his ‘table’, all the while Debs was trying to wean Dexter off this murdering thing. Before murdering someone herself.
So Dexter‘s eighth season started last night. I hear it had some good elements. Yet despite having watched seven seasons already, I find myself not wanting to watch it. At all. I just can’t see, short of Dexter being killed or stuck in prison, how they could make it interesting enough and smart enough again for me to want to watch it. Not even Charlotte Rampling can do that.
Now this isn’t the first time I’ve bailed on a show at the last moment, as a result of a show’s increasingly insipid nature. I gave up on Chuck for much the same reason. So this week’s question is:
Have you ever given up on a long-running TV show just as it’s hit its final season? If so, why?
As always, leave your answers below or on your own blog.
