As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
Recently the Lame Cherry posted an incomplete review of the Showtime series Dexter, a series about a trained hunter of serial murderers, and in that by God's Grace, we were able to review the last two seasons and provide a complete critique.
Lame Cherry: The Incomplete Review of Showtimes Dexter
As another Lame Cherry exclusive ... little girl detective as sister to Dexter pretty good, ... and good writers. Dexter had pretty good casting, ...lamecherry.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-incomplete-review-of-
After watching the series, TL and I both had different rankings for seasons, and in many ways the same. TL liked season 1 in being the first TL watched, and as I watched them out of sequence, the order is a bit different.
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TL's review rankings
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LC's review rankings
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I was not expecting a great deal in the finale, because season 6 was absolutely horrid. 6 degraded to the typical Christian fanatics and the need to smear them, with the absolute series killer bad actors of Edward James Olmos and Collin Hanks.
6 was not helped because Johnny Lee Miller failed miserably and Julia Styles was not a good fit at all. The reason I liked season 5 was the character Dexter grew which is impossible for a true psycho or sociopath. It made good entertainment though.
Season 1 Stupid Brother Rudy (Christian Camargo)
Season 2 Doakes (Eric King) and Rita (Julie Benz)
Season 3 Jimmy Smits
Season 4 John Lithgow
Season 5 Johnny Lee Miller, Julia Styles, Peter Weller RoboCop
Season 6 Edward James Olmos and Colin Hanks
I still rank Jimmy Smits in season 3 as just overpowering creepy. He honestly played a wonderfully perfect psychotic.
Season 7 Wonderful performance by Yvonn Strahovski and Ray Stevenson
Season 8 Spectacular performance by Charlotte Rampling
Season 7 introduced the very good fit in the Australian Polish actress, Yvonn Sharhovski. I have not watched her in anything else, but she was the perfect heart string and danger for the season, matched perfectly with Ray Stevenson as a Ukrainian mafia boss for the perfect danger.
I hate the sodomite garbage introduced into every series now, and that is the problem with 7 to degrade it and make it weaker. 7 though was a very good season though, and it honestly was one of the best written of the series. It is in that I could not understand the online comments ragging on about seasons 7 and 8 in being poorly written. They were the best the writers turned out, and in honesty only season 5 in Masuka's hilarious scene reenacting a murder was all 7 and 8 missed.
Yvonne Strahovski
Season 8 had a few weak spots in the script, but they were trying to wrap things up, so people did make mistakes they normally would not make. 8' shining star was Charlotte Rampling who plays a forensic psychologist and she overpowers most of the scenes.
Like all the series the weak parts are Dexter's sister in Jennifer Carpenter who is making cow bellowing sounds in emotional meltdown and dominating the show too much as she gets in the way of the story line. As an actress she is B quality at best and she adds little, and honestly one remembers season one when Dexter's brother almost murdered her, and you think that would not have been such a bad thing.
Charlotte Rampling
As a nice surprise, British actor Sam Underwood appeared as a creepy psychopath that one actually begins to enjoy on screen, as the writers play with the character. It is hard to be a minor role and have a major presence, but Sam Underwood did passively, like Peter Weller did aggressively in Season 5.
Sam Underwood
I will not do a spoiler in stating how the series ended. I was though pleased compared to how all other series usually destroy series. I will state that the last scene is unnecessary and should have ended with the next to last, but each scene does allow the viewer to create their own ending whether it is happy or not.
I always prefer a happy ending and was set to write a series ending to correct the writer's mistakes, but while I could tweak it, I would change their writing, but am thinking about writing a reunion, as you just know if someone resurrects or revisits the series, it will be something awful in some new emotional scar.
Season 5 and 6 the casting blew it completely. The series would have been so much better if Liev Schrieber replaced Colin Hanks with Jon Voight replacing Edward James Olmos.
We were thinking of having a woman replace Johnny Lee Miller, because that would be a stepped up bizarre interaction. The choice would be Kristen Bell. I think she could pull off the mesmerizing effect of a creepy young boy who has other boys rape girls, sex changing to be a female.
Yes in retrospect it would have been enjoyable to have been hired as an adviser with input to writers to really ramp up the story lines in forensic psychology, but the series is what it is, and it ended well.
I though am ready for more My Three Sons as there is only so much of this anyone can take as working with it all the time in forensic psychology is 24 hours too much of it.
Nuff Said
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