Dexter - Season 7 (with Spoilers)

[Guy Gardener]

Unless Debs Bullet/Gun fucked everything up, Dexter staged a double murder which he has nothing to do with, so Maria hasn't disappeared. That old biker got her while she was trying to set Dexter up.

[Joe Washington]

The season finale made me realize how much Dexter and Deb's bond has turned into a toxic relationship. In the beginning of the series, Deb served as one of Dexter's few main connections to his humanity. But, now because of that connection, Dexter finds himself moved to do certain things to protect her, things that go aganist the code, and, because of her love for Dexter, Deb finds herself crossing moral lines that go aganist who she is as a cop. Their love is poisoning them and all I can see is a tragic ending for the both of them.

I don't know how Deb is going to handle killing LaGuerta. I foresee an alcohol-fueled downward spiral, a mental breakdown, or a suicide attempt. Either way, I see Dexter becoming the one who will keep Deb grounded instead of the other way around.

I hope Hannah comes back.

[Brendan Moody]

Right, yeah, I was forgetting the details of the plan. But the point is the same: despite Dexter's belief that he can stab his problems away, killing LaGuerta doesn't really improve the situation. Regardless of how convincingly the scene is staged (and "Dexter is a forensic expert" is a cheap plot device to keep relying on), there's no way LaGuerta and Estrada dying within days of her arrest of Dexter doesn't make someone immediately suspicious... unless the writers ignore basic dramatic logic to produce their desired outcome. To an extent they already are, and this interview with the showrunner suggests they may continue to, at least in the short term. And they probably have to, to stretch things out over another twelve episodes. Which is part of why telling this story over two seasons was probably not the best idea.

[Guy Gardener]

For this to work, LaGeurta had to have stolen Debra's gun, and they had to leave it in Maria's hand when they left.

LaGuerta was completely fucked unless the Morgan's were psychos,

This was her hail Mary to save the day in the minutes but she fumbled.

It's a pattern.

A downward spiral but certainly a pattern.

Good Lord, she stole 20 year old evidence from the locker and planted it in Dexter's car which was refuted in minutes... Maria is way less smart and competent than she thinks she is which means that further more glorious fuck ups are par for the course.

A psychotic fixation on Dexter that will not quit.

[Brendan Moody]

I'm sure that's how the writers will try to sell nobody being particularly suspicious of Dexter and Debra, both being allowed to participate in the investigation, etc. But it's still deeply implausible that no one would consider the timing of the murders, think, "Well, maybe..." and start looking closely at the Morgans' recent behavior. (And I'm sure that's what will happen eventually... at just the pace necessary to balance whatever thematically-relevant filler has been devised for season 8.) The murder of a cop is not exactly the kind of case that gets treated lightly. In another interview, showrunner Scott Buck claims that this story showed LaGuerta was "a much smarter detective than anyone had imagined." If that were the case, she would have left records of her investigation that even super-genius Dexter couldn't sweep away, and never mind "there is no record of a warrant at this point." But then, if that were the case, she wouldn't have gone alone to the shipping yards, or been knocked out so easily on entering the container. Variable intelligence as a function of narrative contingency.

[Mister Fandango]

What? It's all completely plausible right now thanks to Dexter's manipulations. Everyone already suspects that she was trying to frame him, so Debra showing up and finding her killing whatshisface to cover her tracks, leaving Debra having to defender herself as LaGuerta turns the gun on her is pretty reasonable.

At least as far as that scene goes.

As for LaGuerta's investigations, she was clearly doing it all off the books. Sure, there might be some stuff left at her home, but a lot of it is already tainted by the faked evidence of her trying to frame Dexter. Plus we already know that most of the homicide department is lazy and likes to shuffle things away as quickly as possible, especially once they have an idea in their head already, so even that's not really that big of a hurdle.

[Joe Washington]

If Season 7 was condensed into the first half of a season, then the main storylines would have been LaGuerta’s pursuit of the Bay Harbor Butcher, Deb’s emotional/moral struggle with Dexter’s secret, and the conflict between Dexter and Louis. There wouldn’t have been any room for the Urkanian mob storyline, Hannah, or the Phantom Arsonist. LaGuerta would have suspected Dexter to be the Bay Harbor Butcher earlier than she did, maybe with some help from a vengeful Louis. Mid-season would have been LaGuerta's death.

[ToddKent]

Brendan Moody wrote:

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But then, if that were the case, she wouldn't have gone alone to the shipping yards....

Yeah that bugged me. After she got that call why would she go out there by herself? Even if she were in a hurry she could have called for backup to meet her out there.

[Captrek]

ToddKent wrote:

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Yeah that bugged me. After she got that call why would she go out there by herself? Even if she were in a hurry she could have called for backup to meet her out there.

Backup for what? All Estrada told him was that he was alive and needed her help. Not that he was in mortal danger and needed the police, but that he needed her. She didn’t know what kind of help he was talking about, and probably expected that it wasn’t necessarily something legitimate.

If she called for backup, what was she supposed to tell dispatch? Everybody’s getting sick of her and her investigation into Dexter. She fears backlash if she calls for backup for reasons that are vague at best, gets there, doesn’t find any evidence implicating Dexter in anything, and ends up strengthening everybody’s belief that she is obsessed and nuts.

Knowing Dexter’s propensity for setups, she probably should have been smarter than to walk into one of his traps, but I can see why she was reluctant to call for backup.

I’m quite bugged by Dexter’s treatment of Hannah and his statement that “If there had been any other way, I would have found it.” He didn’t even try to look for another way. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to use the pen for blackmail than to lock her up? “I have the pen. Anything happens to Deb or me and it goes to the police.”

I still think it was Deb who put the meds in the bottle. When Dexter told Hannah “You poisoned Deb,” she froze for several seconds before telling him “She was trying to keep us apart.” It looked like she needed a few seconds to figure out how to respond to it. It makes me think it was affected. I don’t know why she copped to a deed she didn’t do, but I think she did.

The hair was too obviously planted — Hannah’s smarter than that. She specializes in poisons that don’t leave traces, but there was obvious forensic evidence in this one. There’s no indication of an injection point on the bottle, so she would likely have to have opened the bottle and hoped Deb didn’t notice the broken safety seal. It’s too convenient that Deb happened to be behind the wheel of a car when the meds kicked in and knocked her out — how could Hannah have arranged for that when (according to the hair) she tampered with a bottle in Deb’s house? In a modern automobile, why would she even expect blacking out behind the wheel to be fatal? Too much doesn’t add up. You burgle somebody’s home and lace a water bottle with Xanax, the probability of it killing her are close to zero. There’s no way Hanna is behind such an inept murder attempt, unless failure was part of the plan.

The supposed motive doesn’t even make sense. She genuinely cares about Dexter, and I can’t see her doing something that would devastate him like Deb’s death for such a silly reason as “She was trying to keep us apart.” Maybe she was trying, but she had no prospect of success — until the accident. Deb’s the only obvious beneficiary of the incident, and it seems unlikely that anyone else was behind it.

The only way Deb’s innocent is if it was a double set-up. Dexter will soon figure out that Deb framed Hannah for trying to kill her, but maybe Deb will deny it and then it will finally turn out that Hannah framed Deb for framing Hannah for trying to kill Deb. She was trying to drive a wedge between Dex and Deb, not to kill her. It would be the same tactic that Dexter used against LaGuerta with the t-shirt and wallet. If it is what Hannah was up to, it's all the proof I need that these two belong together.

By the way, how did LaGuerta's fingerprint get on the wallet?

[Guy Gardener]

If you have the right tools, it's easy to leave other peoples prints.

Dexter has the tools, and her prints are on file.

[davejames]

Magus on a Star Trek wrote:

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I’m quite bugged by Dexter’s treatment of Hannah and his statement that “If there had been any other way, I would have found it.” He didn’t even try to look for another way. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to use the pen for blackmail than to lock her up? “I have the pen. Anything happens to Deb or me and it goes to the police.”

If he tried that, he almost certainly would have been the NEXT one on her list. Hannah might truly love Dexter, but she's still got some major issues and it probably wouldn't take much for her to go into self-preservation mode and start offing those around her.

As Dexter says, you can never fully trust a poisoner.

And I think people are reaching when it comes to the water bottle thing. The only reason Hannah froze before admitting the truth was for dramatic effect. And no matter how much you over analyze the events, it just doesn't make any sense for her to accept the blame if she had nothing to do with it.

[Guy Gardener]

"You poisoned Deborah."

"And you filleted my dad. We're not even close to even. That was my real father, and you were only adopted to that woman."

[Captrek]

davejames wrote:

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If he tried that, he almost certainly would have been the NEXT one on her list.

Like I said, he arranges that if anything happens to him, the pen goes to the police. That should be very dissuasive.

And I think people are reaching when it comes to the water bottle thing. The only reason Hannah froze before admitting the truth was for dramatic effect. And no matter how much you over analyze the events, it just doesn't make any sense for her to accept the blame if she had nothing to do with it.

I'm not over-analyzing, just analyzing. It makes no dramatic sense for Hannah to try to kill Deb at this point, and it's completely out of character for her to be so clumsy about it. Either the writers had her act irrationally and out of character just so they could tie off the story arc, or there's a lot going on under the surface. I suspect, and certainly hope, that the latter is the case.

[davejames]

Well she had to rely on an overdose of xanax, which is not her usual method of killing. Using poison would have been more effective, but the lack of anything in Deb's system would have alerted Dexter immediately.

And Hannah knew her psych ward friend was almost certainly going to give her up (to prevent losing her kids), so she clearly had to act when she did.

Yeah, maybe the writers didn't account for EVERY little issue, but when has this show ever been completely iron-tight like that?

[LitmusDragon]

I couldn't really buy Debra shooting LaGuerta. Too crazy. Seems like Dexter would have turned himself in to prevent that happening.

Also it would have been a whole lot more interesting if Debra had poisoned herself to make Dexter suspect Lumen. I mean, Hannah.

Not really crazy about the Hannah character. They kept driving home the point that he'd never been in love before, but what about Rita?