I agree after the trinity killer season it was pretty bad.

I agree with a lot of your points on season 8, but I thought season 7 was pretty good. I also think season 6 is the unquestionable low point for the series.The idea of Dexter concerning himself with religion combined with the terrible villain, ridiculously bad twist, and Deb's cringe-worthy turn towards borderline incest were far worse than anything in the last two seasons.

I liked that that show a lot. Really liked it..... But for some reason I totally lost interest after the third season or so (still watched a couple more)...

I think you're overestimating some of those older seasons. Both 5 and 6 were pretty bad if you ask me. the girl in 5 and the whole doomsday killer were so poorly written. On the other hand I loved season 7, it's up there with the first 2 for me. I actually really enjoyed Debs struggle with Dexter after finding out the truth.

But yeah the last season is complete hot garbage and the ending was some real bullshit.

The AV Club reviews of the series basically nailed my problem with the show: The writers fell in love with their own character. Dexter was no longer a fucked up monster carrying out unspeakable acts, he was a wounded little hero who needed protecting, and all of his actions were understandable and justified because the world just didn't love him enough. Every opportunity to build up tension and potentially have consequences on the character unfailingly fizzled and it just became boring.

I thought season 7 was among the best the series had been post-2. Season 8 is a scrambled mess to the point where calling it a scrambled mess is an insult to all scrambled messes. I was so frustrated with it that I took a break from the story I was working on and instead opted to rewrite the entire 8th season. Then I ritually burned it. Fuck season 8.

The last few seasons of Dexter were soooooo bad. I couldn't even watch the last 2/3 of the last season. I gave up on that show.

Add to that the constant reset button. In a show like Breaking Bad - hell, even Sons of Anarchy, which isn't even that good - the writers don't shy away from messing up the status quo every season.

It's not that the reset button is a bad thing, because it can work. In a show like Justified, it makes more sense since it shows how stuck in a loop both Raylan and Boyd are until one of them shoot each other, but in Dexter it meant the writers doing away with elements of the show that were too hard to write around.

Agreed. Season 7 breathed new life into the show and seemed to set up some really interesting potential scenarios for the final season. And they chose none of those.

@ghostiet: I'd still say while justified resets a little it doesn't just seem to forget about consequence (hell this final season seems to be about the consequences of all the seasons leading to it). Dexters big problem was hero worship though. When the show started he was basically just Patrick Bateman, a truly inhuman monster who just happened to kill the "right" people, by the end he was just a normal 9-5 guy with a kid, a love interest and the standard TV hero abilities at being great at everything.

I really dont understand peoples obsession with Yvonne Strahovski. Everything i've seen her in (excluding Mass Effect) she seems like a really one dimensional character who fucks everything up and then tries to steal their show.

Dexter: Indirectly gets Debra killed due to incompetence. 24: Indirectly gets Audrey killed due to incompetence. (still a good season though)

And people talk about her getting her own spin off for both shows? What the flying fuck? I'm not faulting her talents as an actress but whatever role she's given, she could not be a more unlikeable and uninteresting character.

Oh, and I agree with the OP the last two seasons were pretty abysmal. But personally I would blame that on the lack of a decent antagonist. Sure the characters started acting strangely, especially Dexter (the whole love sub plot kind of came out of nowhere) But each season is defined by it's antagonist (for me) and I cant even remember 7 & 8's.

Dexter went to shit after the Trinity killer. That was such a great moment for him at the funeral, but then they string him along and milk the shit outta him. The only good part about that show going forwards was Deb.

I did really like the ending though. Deb's death was disturbingly undramatic for a drama, and Dexter sailing into the storm was such a punch of madness for the calm and calculated character. It's incredibly bleak and despairing.

The cruel reveal that instead of dying he survived, but his new "life" is a hollow, solitary one. A self-imposed exile. It's a fuckin bummer of an ending. Goddamn.

I thought season 7 was fantastic. 6 wasn't great, so after that it felt like a return to form. Things looked good heading into the end.

But 8 was so god damn boring. I could go weeks before catching up on episodes. Maybe it would've been a decent mid-series season, but as a finale? It sure as hell felt like it was just spinning its wheels. It just didn't take the risky endgame moves I expected from each episode.

The fact that Showtime had a say in how it ends made it feel like more of a product than a creative tour de force like the end of Breaking Bad.

Suprised to see someone else enjoyed the last episode. Dexter pays the highest price for his darkness, right after deciding to leave it. Just when he's ready to be happy, he realizes that not only he can't, he has to willingly isolate himself from everything else he loves. Its awesome bleakness felt totally out of place with the rest of the latter seasons (read: after Trinity) and killing him in a beautiful sacrifice would be the most obvious, boring and thematically least interesting ending people were expecting. It was like the writers decided "Hey, let's pretend Dexter is still good story".

In my opinion though, even when it was at its best, Dexter was a fun, tight show, but not that special. I always find it a bummer that most people will associate Michael C. Hall with Dexter Morgan rather than with David Fisher.

@heycalvero: "I always find it a bummer that most people will associate Michael C. Hall with Dexter Morgan rather than with David Fisher." Me too, David is a far better character.

As for Dexter I felt like the show only needed one more season after 4 to feel complete but they dragged things out so much and it was bad and boring with little tension to speak of. Season 6 especially was a slog.

8 is absolute garbage.

But 7 is easily top 3 seasons on the show.

Eh I tend to disagree with what you said about season 7, season 8 was hard to watch though and it ends awfully, one of the worst series finalies in my opinion. For me the show was up and down through a lot of the seasons. 1 2 and 4 are incredibly with 3 being nothing more than good. 5 I being good but ultimately forgettable and 6 was pretty awful I thought until the final episode with the big reveal.

All in all I did like the show but man, season 2. They really should have saved that for a latwr season, the pursuit of the Bay Harbor Butcher sounds more like a series ending season rather than its sophomore year.

Completely and 100% agree with this whole thing.

To speak for myself though, seasons 1-4 were great, 5 was bad, 6 was TERRIBLE, 7 was very good, 8 was a steaming pile of diarrhea passing itself off as a final season.

@heycalvero: Talk about bummers. Six Feet Under...Jesus fucking christ. What a depressing show. I'll probably associate him more with Dexter because while David was great, the guy who played Nate totally stole the show for me.

I'm surprised to see so many people loved season 7. I actually had to look up what it was, I guess it was ok, but completely forgettable apparently.

I stuck with it until the very end. I regret that decision. My friend who's an even bigger Dexter fan than me still hasn't watched the final episode (but still wants to), and I've been telling him to never watch it.

The character development in Dexter, compared to Breaking Bad, is just downright jarring. This has been one of the main issues I've had with the show. I'm currently halfway through season 5, and I don't know... I guess after season 2, the series has become mediocre. The first two season were only decent, but they were more darkly comical and exciting, I think.

I read somewhere that the writers were changed or something in the last two seasons or something.

It was alright, but not as good as the rest of the show up until that point and the very last episode of the show is downright the worst thing ever written for an otherwise fantastic show.

It's a real shame, too, as the season with Lithgow (season 4 or 5, I forget) is one of the best things ever written for a TV show.

Actually season 5-8 are horrible. Should have ended with The Trinity Killer.

5 was really good and I was into it, and then in the last 5 minutes they make the entire season pointless. Everything that happened; nothing changes. I could never watch Dexter again and maybe I'm better off for it.

1, 2, and 4 though...

The show started off strong. But went nuts after season 4. The books however are still going strong. I highly recommend them to any one who is a fan of the show.