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shadowkatHurrican Hannah has hit NY with drenching rain, so I decided to stay indoors and finish Season 2 of Dexter courtesy of Netflix. Just finished watching it and was incredibly impressed. Season 1 was pretty good, but also slow in places. Season 2 on the other hand is flawless, perhaps the best season of a series that I have seen since Season 1, BattleStar Galatica (the new version). Everything worked. All the characters evolved and were interacted in the plotline.
The series also played with a couple of rather complicated issues, such as the Death Penalty, in fact I'd have to say this was the most complex take I've seen on the Death Penalty, leaving the audience to make up its own mind. Usually, tv shows that tackle the Death Penalty either preach against or for it, and leave the viewer feeling a tad bored or hollow at the end. This one leaves you feeling itchy and uncertain.
It ends with a wonderful line quoted by the lead character, a serial killer who murders serial killers: "I have stopped asking myself if I am good or evil, because does anyone ever know for certain? Aren't we all a little of both?"
Worth contemplating I think. I remember sitting in a social psychology course a while back, discussing an experiment in which volunteers were asked to inflict pain on others as part of a teaching scenario. They were told that if the person answered the question wrong on repeated occassions, to administer an small electric shock, which would increase in intensity depending on how many answers the test-taker got wrong. In reality no shocks were being administered, but the volunteers did not know that. The experiment had surprising results.
90% of the people who volunteered from retired schoolteachers to longshormen, administered the shocks when they were calmly ordered to do so by the advisor. Why? Because they were told it helped the test-taker, that it would teach them to learn, that not administering the shocks would damage the experiment. A similar study was conducted several years later - where two groups of men were sequestered in an university basement, one group played the prisoners, one played the guards. The study was supposed to take place for a month, but was discontinued, because the guards got a bit too into their roles, frightening the social psychologists conducting the study. In my class, the teacher asked us what we thought. People had a variety of reactions. Most of us insisted that we would not do such a thing. But, the teacher, stated, in the study - it was made clear the volunteers stated much the same thing.
When they discovered they were wrong, several of the volunteers had nervous breakdowns and future studies were not permitted. She said - that this was proof that human beings need to feel good about themselves, we do not want to admit that we are capable of horrible things and we do committ horrible acts - we justify and rationalize them in order to stay sane and feel "good" about ourselves.
In Dexter - they say more or less the same things. Sergeant Doakes looks at Dexter Morgan and is understandly creeped out. As he states at one point, he looks at Dexter and sees the monster that he works hard to keep buried in himself. Dexter is in Doakes view his own monster unleashed. Then there is Debbie Morgan, Dexter's sister - who looks at the Bay Harbor Butcher - the serial killer (Dexter) who kills other serial killers - and wants him dead, because he is a killer. As Dexter tells Doakes at one point - how are we different? We are both killers. You just get paid for it. Doakes kills may be cleaner - a bullet or in self-defense after he's pushed the criminal to the wall - but he still has killed another human being. Is there a difference between shooting a man and chopping him up? Is there a difference between sentencing a man to death in a court of law and watching him electrocute or die by fatal injection and what Dexter does - tranquilizing them and killing them with a knife? In both cases the man or woman was a cold blooded killer, a serial killer, who had numerous people and would kill even more if Dexter hadn't put an end to them. If they were tried and sentenced they could get the same fate - except inflicted by the Federal Government.
How is this different from what Dexter is doing? It's a question Dexter himself asks.
The Death Penalty is an odd issue. Most of the people that I've discussed it with, don't know very much about it or for that matter our justice system outside of what they have read in books or seen on tv and the movies. Those who have done jury duty may have a bit of an idea.
I know more about the subject than I want to and it is in some respects one of the many reasons I decided not to practice law or at the very least not be a criminal attorney, even though I was pretty good at it in law school and most of my internships were related to it.
What people do not know about the death penalty is that it is seldom used on serial killers or individuals that are sociopathic or psychopathic and true dangers to society. In most cases it is used against people who are occused of felony murder (robbery murder) or killed a cop. Charles Manson for example is never going to get the death penalty. Ted Bunday sort of begged for it - they weren't planning on giving it to him. Also in most cases, the death penalty takes years to happen, people just wile away on death row, waiting - this is one of the reasons countries that enforce the death penalty are on Amnesty International's list of crimes against humanity or human rights infractions. Because sitting on death row, in solitary confinement, knowing any day someone may execute you somewhat painfully is like it or not torture. We justify the torture with the view that they deserve it. Even though many of the people on death row have been found to be innocent - their convictions overturned or they were falsely accused. Having gone to law school, participated in the litigation process and done jury duty, not to mention seen first hand how the police investigate a crime, this does not suprise me. I watched a jury give over 2 million dollars to man who had faked his injury and lied to the court two years ago. (I know it was fake, because he swore he had a bad hip and leg, yet opted to walk down five flights of steps on a 90 degree day as opposed to waiting for the elevator. I watched him do it, after he limped to a witness stand and pretended to be in pain. I was not allowed to mention what I saw to anyone because what jurors see outside the courtroom is inadmissible and because I was an alternate. I kept my mouth shut, hoping the other two jurors who witnessed it would make sure he didn't win.)
So yes, I know for a fact that innocent men are sentenced to death every day in this country and we not only allow it to happen, we deny it is true, or tell ourselves, well for every innocent, there are several horrible killers who get it too - so it is justified.
I remember discussing the topic with friends. Like abortion, this is not a topic that one can discuss rationally with people. Their argument, like all the pro-death penalty arguments I've heard is a very human one, and also evidence that there is a monster alive and well inside us all. We all have a Dexter Morgan living inside us, I think. Recently, I had a violently emotional discussion with a close friend about the same topic - she was insisting that there was nothing wrong with her using a gun or any means necessary to defend herself or her loved ones or me against a killer. "Wouldn't you rather I killed the person attacking and torturing you?" Of course. But that doesn't mean it is necessarily right. You are still taking a life.
On the senate floor in Kansas - people were quoting old testament verse and stating that God certainly told us that it was okay to kill those who harm us - an eye for an eye and all that. Or my friends who asked me - if I killed and raped your loved ones, wouldn't you want me dead? Again, of course I would. I'd want you tortured and in pain, hurting like I am. But that doesn't mean it's okay. And it doesn't mean that I should do it. The fact that I want to is troubling enough.
The death penalty accomplishes two things - one: it assuages our fears, we have killed the nasty spider that is giving us nightmares so we can be safe now, and two:retribution - we have killed the nasty spider that has hurt us, made them pay, so now we can go to sleep and not feel traumatized. If only it were that simple. In my opinion killing someone does not pay them back for hurting you - forcing them to face the fact that they did it on a daily basis works a lot better. On the other hand - I have to admit, I would feel more safe if Osama Bin Laden, Charles Manson and their ilk were dead and six feet in the ground.
Season 2 of Dexter plays with these desires, and asks difficult questions. There's a sort of cathartic thrill watching Dex kill his victims, evil people who torture him. Yet, as we watch those hunting him down, we can't help but root for them as well - to stop Dexter. We feel what Sgt. Doakes and Dexter's father Harry feels as they stumble upon Dexter's crimes, a sort of sick despair. It's so clinical, so cold, so like the death chair that Dexter himself both fears and to a degree may crave. Dexter struggles with what he does as well, noting that yes he has a conscience, a sliver of one, but his code manages to keep at bay, he feels justified in what he is doing. He does not kill innocents, until of course Doakes investigates him and in doing so puts himself in the line of fire. Now, Dex has a dilemma, does he kill Doaks and set Doaks up for his crimes or does he turn himself in? Doakes realizes the struggle, discovering that Dex has a conscience and can't kill him. Dex goes so far as to rescue Doakes from drug dealers who would have killed him and solved Dex's dilemma.
The other dilemma, Dex has is Lilah, who Dex sees as his own twisted creation. Although I think that's a tad egocentric. Lila was a sociopathic murderer way before Dex met her, burning down people's homes with them inside, and haunting recovery groups to find emotion. She and Dexter remind me a bit of the two addicts in David Finch's Fight Club, Helena Boheme Carter and Ed Norton who circle each other in their own somewhat twisted relationship. Lilah - Dex meets at an Addicts Recovery Group - which he is forced to attend by Rita, his girlfriend, who mistakenly assumes Dex's addiction is drugs. Dex is addicted to something alright but it ain't narcotics. He's bright enough not to tell Rita that. Lila appeals to Dex, she sees the dark side, the monster, flirts with it, and falls a little in love with it - not quite taking his warnings to stay away seriously. To his credit he tells her what he is.
That she should stay away from him. That she should not bring out the monster. But she in a way is just like him. Which he realizes, almost too late.
Lila and Doakes from the beginning of the season are on a collision course. When they met, the good and bad side of Dexter - the cop with a conscience and the soulful killer without one, things flare up. And Dex is no longer lost. He reverts in a way to his old self, yet at the same time is changed. He decides there is nothing wrong with him and is able to renew his romance with Rita, and get rid of Lila once and for all. Lila burns up Doakes metaphorically burning up the part of Dex that was beginning to question his path and what he was/is. Doakes has lost. Lila has won. Both are dead. Lila for killing Doakes and attempting to kill Rita's kids in a fiery inferno.
It's a chilling yet at the same time satisfying and sort of fun ending. Leaving us with the question - Are we good or evil, does any one of us ever know for certain? Or is this a daily battle that we fight with ourselves...until we are dead?
The series also played with a couple of rather complicated issues, such as the Death Penalty, in fact I'd have to say this was the most complex take I've seen on the Death Penalty, leaving the audience to make up its own mind. Usually, tv shows that tackle the Death Penalty either preach against or for it, and leave the viewer feeling a tad bored or hollow at the end. This one leaves you feeling itchy and uncertain.
It ends with a wonderful line quoted by the lead character, a serial killer who murders serial killers: "I have stopped asking myself if I am good or evil, because does anyone ever know for certain? Aren't we all a little of both?"
Worth contemplating I think. I remember sitting in a social psychology course a while back, discussing an experiment in which volunteers were asked to inflict pain on others as part of a teaching scenario. They were told that if the person answered the question wrong on repeated occassions, to administer an small electric shock, which would increase in intensity depending on how many answers the test-taker got wrong. In reality no shocks were being administered, but the volunteers did not know that. The experiment had surprising results.
90% of the people who volunteered from retired schoolteachers to longshormen, administered the shocks when they were calmly ordered to do so by the advisor. Why? Because they were told it helped the test-taker, that it would teach them to learn, that not administering the shocks would damage the experiment. A similar study was conducted several years later - where two groups of men were sequestered in an university basement, one group played the prisoners, one played the guards. The study was supposed to take place for a month, but was discontinued, because the guards got a bit too into their roles, frightening the social psychologists conducting the study. In my class, the teacher asked us what we thought. People had a variety of reactions. Most of us insisted that we would not do such a thing. But, the teacher, stated, in the study - it was made clear the volunteers stated much the same thing.
When they discovered they were wrong, several of the volunteers had nervous breakdowns and future studies were not permitted. She said - that this was proof that human beings need to feel good about themselves, we do not want to admit that we are capable of horrible things and we do committ horrible acts - we justify and rationalize them in order to stay sane and feel "good" about ourselves.
In Dexter - they say more or less the same things. Sergeant Doakes looks at Dexter Morgan and is understandly creeped out. As he states at one point, he looks at Dexter and sees the monster that he works hard to keep buried in himself. Dexter is in Doakes view his own monster unleashed. Then there is Debbie Morgan, Dexter's sister - who looks at the Bay Harbor Butcher - the serial killer (Dexter) who kills other serial killers - and wants him dead, because he is a killer. As Dexter tells Doakes at one point - how are we different? We are both killers. You just get paid for it. Doakes kills may be cleaner - a bullet or in self-defense after he's pushed the criminal to the wall - but he still has killed another human being. Is there a difference between shooting a man and chopping him up? Is there a difference between sentencing a man to death in a court of law and watching him electrocute or die by fatal injection and what Dexter does - tranquilizing them and killing them with a knife? In both cases the man or woman was a cold blooded killer, a serial killer, who had numerous people and would kill even more if Dexter hadn't put an end to them. If they were tried and sentenced they could get the same fate - except inflicted by the Federal Government.
How is this different from what Dexter is doing? It's a question Dexter himself asks.
The Death Penalty is an odd issue. Most of the people that I've discussed it with, don't know very much about it or for that matter our justice system outside of what they have read in books or seen on tv and the movies. Those who have done jury duty may have a bit of an idea.
I know more about the subject than I want to and it is in some respects one of the many reasons I decided not to practice law or at the very least not be a criminal attorney, even though I was pretty good at it in law school and most of my internships were related to it.
What people do not know about the death penalty is that it is seldom used on serial killers or individuals that are sociopathic or psychopathic and true dangers to society. In most cases it is used against people who are occused of felony murder (robbery murder) or killed a cop. Charles Manson for example is never going to get the death penalty. Ted Bunday sort of begged for it - they weren't planning on giving it to him. Also in most cases, the death penalty takes years to happen, people just wile away on death row, waiting - this is one of the reasons countries that enforce the death penalty are on Amnesty International's list of crimes against humanity or human rights infractions. Because sitting on death row, in solitary confinement, knowing any day someone may execute you somewhat painfully is like it or not torture. We justify the torture with the view that they deserve it. Even though many of the people on death row have been found to be innocent - their convictions overturned or they were falsely accused. Having gone to law school, participated in the litigation process and done jury duty, not to mention seen first hand how the police investigate a crime, this does not suprise me. I watched a jury give over 2 million dollars to man who had faked his injury and lied to the court two years ago. (I know it was fake, because he swore he had a bad hip and leg, yet opted to walk down five flights of steps on a 90 degree day as opposed to waiting for the elevator. I watched him do it, after he limped to a witness stand and pretended to be in pain. I was not allowed to mention what I saw to anyone because what jurors see outside the courtroom is inadmissible and because I was an alternate. I kept my mouth shut, hoping the other two jurors who witnessed it would make sure he didn't win.)
So yes, I know for a fact that innocent men are sentenced to death every day in this country and we not only allow it to happen, we deny it is true, or tell ourselves, well for every innocent, there are several horrible killers who get it too - so it is justified.
I remember discussing the topic with friends. Like abortion, this is not a topic that one can discuss rationally with people. Their argument, like all the pro-death penalty arguments I've heard is a very human one, and also evidence that there is a monster alive and well inside us all. We all have a Dexter Morgan living inside us, I think. Recently, I had a violently emotional discussion with a close friend about the same topic - she was insisting that there was nothing wrong with her using a gun or any means necessary to defend herself or her loved ones or me against a killer. "Wouldn't you rather I killed the person attacking and torturing you?" Of course. But that doesn't mean it is necessarily right. You are still taking a life.
On the senate floor in Kansas - people were quoting old testament verse and stating that God certainly told us that it was okay to kill those who harm us - an eye for an eye and all that. Or my friends who asked me - if I killed and raped your loved ones, wouldn't you want me dead? Again, of course I would. I'd want you tortured and in pain, hurting like I am. But that doesn't mean it's okay. And it doesn't mean that I should do it. The fact that I want to is troubling enough.
The death penalty accomplishes two things - one: it assuages our fears, we have killed the nasty spider that is giving us nightmares so we can be safe now, and two:retribution - we have killed the nasty spider that has hurt us, made them pay, so now we can go to sleep and not feel traumatized. If only it were that simple. In my opinion killing someone does not pay them back for hurting you - forcing them to face the fact that they did it on a daily basis works a lot better. On the other hand - I have to admit, I would feel more safe if Osama Bin Laden, Charles Manson and their ilk were dead and six feet in the ground.
Season 2 of Dexter plays with these desires, and asks difficult questions. There's a sort of cathartic thrill watching Dex kill his victims, evil people who torture him. Yet, as we watch those hunting him down, we can't help but root for them as well - to stop Dexter. We feel what Sgt. Doakes and Dexter's father Harry feels as they stumble upon Dexter's crimes, a sort of sick despair. It's so clinical, so cold, so like the death chair that Dexter himself both fears and to a degree may crave. Dexter struggles with what he does as well, noting that yes he has a conscience, a sliver of one, but his code manages to keep at bay, he feels justified in what he is doing. He does not kill innocents, until of course Doakes investigates him and in doing so puts himself in the line of fire. Now, Dex has a dilemma, does he kill Doaks and set Doaks up for his crimes or does he turn himself in? Doakes realizes the struggle, discovering that Dex has a conscience and can't kill him. Dex goes so far as to rescue Doakes from drug dealers who would have killed him and solved Dex's dilemma.
The other dilemma, Dex has is Lilah, who Dex sees as his own twisted creation. Although I think that's a tad egocentric. Lila was a sociopathic murderer way before Dex met her, burning down people's homes with them inside, and haunting recovery groups to find emotion. She and Dexter remind me a bit of the two addicts in David Finch's Fight Club, Helena Boheme Carter and Ed Norton who circle each other in their own somewhat twisted relationship. Lilah - Dex meets at an Addicts Recovery Group - which he is forced to attend by Rita, his girlfriend, who mistakenly assumes Dex's addiction is drugs. Dex is addicted to something alright but it ain't narcotics. He's bright enough not to tell Rita that. Lila appeals to Dex, she sees the dark side, the monster, flirts with it, and falls a little in love with it - not quite taking his warnings to stay away seriously. To his credit he tells her what he is.
That she should stay away from him. That she should not bring out the monster. But she in a way is just like him. Which he realizes, almost too late.
Lila and Doakes from the beginning of the season are on a collision course. When they met, the good and bad side of Dexter - the cop with a conscience and the soulful killer without one, things flare up. And Dex is no longer lost. He reverts in a way to his old self, yet at the same time is changed. He decides there is nothing wrong with him and is able to renew his romance with Rita, and get rid of Lila once and for all. Lila burns up Doakes metaphorically burning up the part of Dex that was beginning to question his path and what he was/is. Doakes has lost. Lila has won. Both are dead. Lila for killing Doakes and attempting to kill Rita's kids in a fiery inferno.
It's a chilling yet at the same time satisfying and sort of fun ending. Leaving us with the question - Are we good or evil, does any one of us ever know for certain? Or is this a daily battle that we fight with ourselves...until we are dead?
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no subject
Date: 2008-09-07 12:22 am (UTC)One of the things I love the most about Dexter is because all the areas are kept very gray... there is never any clear and easy right and wrong. I think it is the first episode of the 2nd season we see Doakes chase after a man and shoot him down under the over pass, but the police force drops the inquiry when they learn what a monster the victim really was (they didn't want to know if Doakes' shooting wasn't "clean"). The Super heroes we admire all commit a lot of violence and kill a lot (of course they are always VERY confident they are killing 'bad guys'). It is easy to be sure who is the bad guy when they have names like 'the Joker', but in the real world the whole gray area thing is hard to avoid....
I think I would be capable of killing. I don't think I'm capable of ever owning any weapons or planning on killing. But there are times I really do see red (I should mention that I have never ever hit people, only objects... I've broken lots of objects in my life).
no subject
Date: 2008-09-07 12:49 am (UTC)The death penalty is often used as a bargaining chip or negotiation tatic to get a serial killer to either confess or reveal where the bodies are buried. Mostly the second. Once he does, the prosecution agrees to remove the death penalty from the table and give life instead. So few serial killers actually get it. Jeffrey Dalmer didn't get it.
I could be wrong about that - but I'm pretty certain he didn't.
And I agree - serial killers like Manson, like Dalhmer, people who are more or less past the point of redeemption - should probably get it. Unfortunately it's rarely the case. Few do.
And, yes, I think I could probably kill someone. This week I saw the monster inside me poke its head out and do a nice lively little dance. Sarah Palin's speechs, rhetoric and views and those of people who push similar racist, fascist, and intolerant rhetoric tend to bring the monster out in me.
I have to force myself to realize it is not the person I hate it is their world view. And hurting the person, inflicting harm on them does little to change or eradicate that world view - all it does is reinforce it. But it is bloody hard to remember that sometimes. Also I readily admit when someone hurts people I love - I want to hurt them back, I do not like that part of myself and am not proud of it. And I will never own a gun, because I can't see a reason for owning one that does not result in killing or harming another creature. It is the one right that I sort of wish I could stop and am somewhat intolerant of. Because no good comes from guns as far as I can see. (Know I'm preaching to the choir here.)
Oh - Doakes gunned the guy down under the underpass towards the end of Season 1 - Season 1 had a lot of loose subplots that clearly were put there for pick-up in S2, which made one sort of choppy in places. To appreciate one, you need to see two and vice versa. At the beginning of S2, Doakes kills another guy - an old chum of his, who he corners on a boat. The second kill is what gets him in trouble and is the reason Maria tells him to see a counselor. The Maria/Doakes relationship is ironic, because Doakes sees right through Dexter, while Maria doesn't see it at all.
What I love about Dexter is how gray the story is. The story reminds me a lot of what they were trying to do with Angel, but didn't quite pull off. Michael C Hall is amazingly accomplished and good actor - he brings a complexity to the role that really came out this season. His Dexter is sexy, creepy, vulnerable, demented, and human.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-07 12:57 am (UTC)Yes, Michael C. Hall brings all kinds of layers to the role, even a dry humor Dexter shares with the audience, mocking us for letting him get away with murder.... I really never expected to love this show as much as I do! I've rewatched it all twice and I bought the DVDs because I realized I would love to rewatch again and again.
embers_log is right
Date: 2008-09-07 07:50 am (UTC)Dexter. I have a few problems with this season that I hope are fixed with s3. I think it was a mistake to kill of Doakes who could have been a wonderful foil to Dexter. It was a waste of a character. I hated Fight Club Lila, hated her. This is where the character departed from the one in the book in regards to women. I understand why they have to do it but the wrong character got offed. I also object to Dexter planting evidence to incriminate Doakes. No matter what a jerk Doakes could be that is shitting on your own doorstep and that always comes back to bite you. The whole framing of Doakes was sloppy. I guess they had to to something cause heaven only knows what they would have done with where the character goes in the books. Book four is out early next year.
Capital punishment. Knowing how f/u the justice system is I don't think state killing is the way to go. Obama is right to point out that it's a way to get a killer to cough up some bodies but in Canada we just give them cash. The idea that the state can kill an innocent person because it's the law is scary and wrong.
Oh and when Doakes kills his former friend/soldier he does it because he can't compromise when it's the law. He has a code just like Dexter does and his won't allow hunting someone down and carving them up because you like the feeling. I wonder if we will see a ghost Doakes mouthing off to Dexter about ruining his reputation and leaving his family to suffer so Dexter can continue on carving. (that's not a spoiler I just wrote btw, in case it's true)
Rufus
Books vs. TV
Date: 2008-09-07 01:55 pm (UTC)How does just giving them cash, work? In the US - they'd laugh at you for that - because it doesn't really work that way here. You must have a different system than we do. It's important to note that not all states in the US have the death penalty. Some do and some don't. Which a lot of people don't know.
Kansas had done away with it for about twenty years or thereabouts. It reinstated the death penalty in 1992. I know, because I was literally standing in the State Legislature next to a Senator listening to them debate it on the floor and heard the vote as it passed.
At any rate, I agree with you it is wrong and should not be used.
I disagree about Dexter. But I haven't read any of the books and have no interest in them. I wonder if that may have an effect? I know it did with the Dresden Files. My enjoyment of the series was lessened by the fact that I wanted to see what I'd read in the books onscreen - it was difficult for me to see the two as completely separate and enjoy them as separate entities, without wishing to impose my interpretation of what I'd read onto the screen. The series Dexter, from what I can tell, is not supposed to follow the books so much as just take ideas from them. But having not read any of the books - I don't know if that's the case. I have read reviews in which the critics prefer the series to the books, but none in the opposite direction.
I think they sort of had to kill off Doakes. Because there's no way Doakes would realistically stay quiet about Dexter. Doakes was written into a corner...with no way out. I knew he was dead meat the moment he found the slides. As for a good foil - that's not hard to come up with. We still have Maria out there, not to mention Lundy, and well, next season Jimmy Smits - who appears to be taking over both the Doakes and Lundy roles as well as being a friend to Dexter. No, they had no where they could go with Doakes. And I wouldn't give up those cage conversations for anything - I adored those - they did what seldom happens on tv shows that feel this need to keep the same characters forever and ever and ever - which is provide a bit of closure. We finally got Doakes and Dexter to have it out. To talk. That of course meant one had to go and since the show is called Dexter - goodbye Doakes.
I also liked Lila a lot better than you did. She was a great mirror to Dexter. The fantasy girl. His perfect woman - as he tells his sister. Can't stand the light, likes the monster, is manipulative, lies...also a noir femme fatal - the counterpart to Rita. Which I found amusing since Julie Benze played the femme fatal on Angel and the mother (ie. both roles). I do, however, agree that she was a bit cliche at times - to be real. But I loved their relationship all the same. Through Lila, we got to see Dexter's anger, his monster, and the fact that he does have emotions. Both Doakes and Lila more or less call him on it - acting in a way as his mirrors. Both have to die of course - because they are metaphors for Dexter's internal battle - if they lived, Dexter metaphorically stays in conflict.
More..because I'm verbose and can't seem to write short responses
Date: 2008-09-07 01:57 pm (UTC)I did have one small problem with Doakes - his stupidity. Every person he comes across in the cabin who isn't Dexter - he automatically assumes is a good person and will help him. Hello, you are in a drug dealer's cabin, being held by a serial killer of bad guys, in the Ever-Glades. I'd wait before I told folks I was a cop...if I were you. While it made sense with Lila, not so much with the guys on the boat.
I think you are right about the fight between Dex and Doakes - they have similar but conflicting codes. When Doakes figures that out, he thinks he may have a chance. He even states it - "I figured you out - you've got a conscience, you can't kill me." Yes, but. It's a bit like Doakes and the guy on the boat. Doakes thinks the guy on the boat will turn himself in, will let Doakes take him to prison - instead the guy lifts his gun to shoot Doakes and Doakes has no choice but to kill him. If it came down to Dex or Doakes, Dex would take Doakes out.
What do you mean the wrong character died? Lila and Doakes? Doakes couldn't kill Lila - Dex had to. And Dex couldn't kill Doaks - Lila had to. Lila's killing of Doaks and Dex's killing of Lila - free's Dex, it reinforces Dex's code. He decides that God obviously wants him to continue doing this or he'd have been caught and wouldn't have been miraculously saved. And he salves his guilt towards Doakes and Rita, by killing Lila or the part of himself that did it.
As for how women are portrayed? I agree, its annoying. (The book's better on this score?? Because I figured that's just this genre and goes with the territory...)