Dexter: Bad Blood | When Is It Time to Stop Watching a TV Show?
Hi, my name is Jonathan. And I’ve watched all eight nine seasons of Dexter.
“Hi, Jonathan.”
I’m not sure how it all started. I guess back in 2006, when Dexter first premiered on the illustrious Showtime network, that type of prestige TV wasn’t as common as it is today. We were just entering the golden age of television with shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, and The Shield. But we were still a few years off from Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and a dozen other shows about angry men living secret double lives. In 2006, Dexter was still somewhat of a novelty - a premium cable network program for adults (not that I was one) about a serial killer who kills serial killers. Plus, Michael C. Hall from the incredible Six Feet Under was the lead! A novel premise and a talented star made for an intriguing watch.
The question is: Was Dexter ever actually good, or did we just not know any better at the time? Personally, I’m going to treat my memory of how things played out as valid because I refuse to go back and re-watch any of it. The show started off with a lot of promise. It was darkly funny and suspenseful. Instead of focusing on romantic relationships, the "will they/won’t they” of Dexter was “will they or won’t they find out he’s a serial killer”. The stakes were high, anti-heroes were hot, and there were enough dramatic twists and turns to make you want to keep watching from week to week. Season 2 was even better, as it starting bringing things to a head, making the risk of Dexter being found out even greater. But that was also the problem. Early into the show’s run, they had already dealt with the worst case scenario - How would Dexter handle being caught, and what would the fallout be? This was one of the central questions at the heart of the show (the other being the question of Dexter’s own humanity), and they pretty much went all out with it in spectacular fashion in only the second season.
Season 3 just couldn’t live up to that level of drama, in spite of featuring Jimmy Smits in a great guest star role. Season 4 wasn’t much better, although they once again cast a supremely entertaining foil for Dexter in the form of John Lithgow. After Season 4, showrunner Clyde Philips left, and that’s when all hope really went out the window. Seasons 5 through 8 range from mediocre to downright terrible, churning out more and more repetitive, predictable plotlines. Dexter’s shenanigans became more outlandish and less believable. Big twists were employed to try to keep things interesting, including the incredibly misguided subplot in which Dexter falls in love with his half-sister, Deb (yuck). It all culminated in the infamous and rightly maligned finale in which Dexter flees society and becomes a lumberjack. (Yes, this is actually what happens.)
Nine years later, original showrunner Clyde Philips and Michael C. Hall return to undo the damages that were done with a brand new season of of the show dubbed Dexter: New Blood. In a meta way, it attempts to atone for the sins of its past just as Dexter attempts to atone for his. Now living in a rustic, snow-covered town in upstate New York, the show follows Dexter’s exploits as he tries to stay off the grid under a new identity. (This lasts about half an episode.) I won’t go into a full review of the season, but I will say that it manages to improve upon the original season eight finale. It doesn’t even come close to the highs of the first couple of seasons, but it’s not a complete disaster either.
It’s fine.
Why did I continue to watch a show for eight seasons if it stopped being good or interesting only a few years in? I think the simple explanation comes in the form of the phrase “sunk cost fallacy”. I had put so much time into the thing already, didn’t I have to see it through? Didn’t I owe it to myself to see the ending? Or, let’s consider another question - What if it got good again? After all, plenty of shows have weak seasons but are able to recover from them later on. Friday Night Lights has a particularly troubled Season 2 (in the wake of a writers’ strike), but it bounces back strong soon after. Any TV show that goes on for more than a few years is bound to have its ups and downs. But how many downs do you have to suffer through before you decide to call it quits?
The Simpsons is an obvious example of a sitcom that fell of its pedestal and has been lying on the ground shaking and sobbing for twenty years now. For almost every Simpsons fan, there came a point where you had to sit up, take notice, and say “I’m not going to watch this anymore.” But The Simpsons is an institution at this point, like Saturday Night Live, or the news, or Tuesday. It’s not so much a TV show as it is just “a thing that occurs” whether we like it or not. For a lot of people, shows like these continue to get watched just out of habit. It becomes a ritual, something you can look forward to happening once a week for a period of weeks each year. Or, in some cases if you consider yourself a fan, it can feel like you have to watch something in order to have an opinion on it. How can you call yourself a Star Trek fan if you didn’t suffer through the first couple seasons of Next Generation in order to get to the really good stuff?
At least in the case of Dexter, one of the biggest factors for me was the phenomenon of “hatewatching”. In short, it was so bad it was good. I had fun picking apart the plot holes and complaining online with other scorned fans as to how far the show had fallen. And hey, if the show ever did miraculously manage to pick itself up again, that would just be an added bonus. The hatewatching excuse is one that feels better to admit to, because it’s self aware. It’s a way to let everyone know that I’m not so stupid that I’m watching something bad by accident… I’m doing it on purpose.
Which is better. Right?
In recent years, I’ve tried to move away from my habit of watching everything through to the end no matter what. (I finally quit The Walking Dead a few years back, after ten seasons or so!) American TV producers seem to be learning the lesson that the UK understood a long time ago, that quality should take precedence over quantity. A lot of today’s best TV comes in the form of miniseries, or at least seasons that are only 8-10 episodes long rather than 24. There’s just too much great content out there to waste a lot of time watching something that isn’t doing anything for you. We as a society need to normalize the act of stopping a show without guilt. However, it would be really helpful if a few of you kept watching, just in case it starts to get good again, so you can let the rest of us know.