Still seething over how Dexter wrapped up? Just remind yourself: It’s not healthy to hold a grudge against a television show. Never lose sight of the fact that there are bigger, more meaningful things to stress over in life. Keep thinking positive thoughts about TV. Like, Matthew Weiner and those two genius Game of Thrones show-runners are still working in the medium. Nic Pizzolatto is now one of their peers. Tatiana Maslany is almost back in action. New shows like Silicon Valley and Halt and Catch Fire look really damn good so far. Aubrey Plaza exists.
Reality is unavoidable, of course, and it’s impossible not to still feel salty about that unbelievably terrible Dexter series finale. You know, the anticlimactic final hour that resolved the traditionally uneven Showtime serial killer drama’s frustrating and half-assed last season. The episode that will forever be remembered as the one where Dexter Morgan, the once-superb antihero played by Michael C. Hall, becomes a lumberjack. And, despite Monty Python’s best efforts to make chopping wood seem like good fun, he’s not OK.
People who stuck with Dexter from its impressive October 2006 beginning through to its disastrous September 2013 conclusion, myself included, can’t help but feel like they wasted seven years’ worth of TV dedication. In hindsight, those 96 hours spent getting to know noble murderer Dexter, his potty-mouthed sister, Deb (Jennifer Carpenter), and, begrudgingly, their uninteresting Miami Metro Police Department colleagues were for naught. If only we’d get the chance to confront Michael C. Hall and Dexter’s producers and let them have it.
Well, many Dexter viewers have, in fact, done just that. In an interview with Zap2it, Hall discussed how many of the show’s unhappy fans approach him with their anti-lumberjack agendas. “"They'll ask me about the ending," says Hall, "and tell me why they found it troubling or unsatisfying, or on the other hand, they want to distinguish themselves by saying they liked the ending.” [Writer’s note: Those people are either full of shit or braindead.] “I think it would be really foolish or naive to think a stranger is coming up to me because they want to talk about the weather.”
By saying that, Hall is basically acknowledging that Dexter’s finale was the worst. Right? Not only is he a terrific actor, the guy seems like a smart, cool dude. He has to realize that he and his Showtime collaborators dropped the proverbial ball figuratively off the top of the Burj Khalifa.
Yes, it is possible to eventually forgive and move on from Lumberjack Morgan. For me, that won’t happen until I see Hall play the lead in the new film from one of my favorite genre filmmakers, Jim Mickle (Stake Land, We are What We Are)—the film is titled Cold in July, is based on a novel by the great ‘dark noir’ author Joe R. Lansdale, and will open theatrically and on VOD May 23). Word out of January’s Sundance Film Festival suggests that Hall is dynamite in it. I believe the hype.
And after Cold in July, I will, at last, have pleasant things to one day talk to Michael C. Hall about other than, say, the weather.
[via Zap2iT]
[GIF via Gamestop]
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