Worst Episode Ever # 1 ‘Dexter’

By Fred Topel

When I launched Best Episode Ever, I always had it in mind that I would occasionally do a Worst Episode Ever to change things up. Not too often, because at a certain point it’s not cute anymore and you’re just being mean, but from time to time it’s all in good fun to point out the missteps of an otherwise strong show. 

Season Six was a rocky one for “Dexter.” Debra (Jennifer Carpenter) became lieutenant, LaGuerta (Lauren Valez) became a bad guy to her and lots of people said they saw the Edward James Olmos thing coming. I didn’t predict it, but I can see how the attentive viewer caught on quickly. 

No misstep was worse than the horribly misguided storyline in which Deb realizes she has feelings for Dexter (Michael C. Hall). Not like strong fondness for an important person in her life, like romantic feelings for her adopted brother. No. Just no. This was not okay. Ask anybody who’s been adopted or had adopted siblings in their family. They’re still family. You don’t hook up with your adopted siblings. 

So where to pinpoint the worst example of this adoption incest? Was it the first time Deb brought up the subject, introducing the subplot before it even snowballed? That might be letting them off too easy. It could easily have been when her therapist Dr. Ross (Rya Kihlstedt) encouraged her to express this to Dexter. Wow, is that bad advice! However, there was a moment in between that was just the grossest thing on television, and this is a show about serial killers and blood analysts. 

“Talk to the Hand” is the episode of “Dexter” in which Deb not only had a full on sex dream about Dexter, but it turns out Dr. Ross pretty much incepted her with this idea. Deb has a breakthrough in their session about how Dexter is the only reliable man in her life, considering her boyfriends, breakups and absent father. That’s actually a pretty healthy observation, but Ross plants the seeds of romance here. 

Ross starts confronting Debra about how she makes bad choices so she can go back to Dexter, and how no man can measure up to Dexter and she should really be exploring her feelings for Dexter because they’re not biological siblings. Deb, to her credit, rejects Dr. Ross. In trademark Deb way, she tells her off. 

What kind of a licensed health care professional tells their patient it’s okay to have romantic feelings for her sibling? I mean, have we really gotten that lenient? “Well, they’re not biological, so….” No! If you’re treating a pedophile, you don’t say, “Let’s talk about your feelings and work them out.” You just tell them they can’t rape kids! And don’t try to date your brother, even if he’s adopted. 

Yet, later in the episode, in what thankfully turns out to only be a dream, Dexter moves in for a kiss and they probably would have done it on the couch if Deb hadn’t woken up. Now it’s okay for the actors, Hall and Carpenter are not actually related so they didn’t do anything naughty. But this is the character Debra dreaming about making out with her actual brother. 

I am convinced this only happened because Dr. Ross pressed her. If she hadn’t seen this therapist, Deb would have just gone on with some anger management issues, but definitely would not have projected her vulnerabilities into a romance with her sibling. What’s more troubling is that the writers of “Dexter” thought this was an acceptable storyline, that viewers would all be on Dr. Ross’s side of “Hey, he’s only adopted.” This shouldn’t have ever made it to air. 

You know, when Hall and Carpenter got married, everyone made jokes about being brother and sister. That actually wasn’t the weird part. Two actors can be romantically involved and play brother and sister. It’s the reverse that’s weird, if two siblings played lovers in a film or TV show. The only thing gross about “Talk to the Hand” is that the characters in question actually are related, philosophically, for all intents and purposes, biological or not. 

The subsequent episode,“This Is The Way the World Ends” is the one where the therapist actually tells Deb to express her feelings to Dexter himself. She had to mean, “Tell your brother this so you can hear him tell you no, that’s messed up, because it will be healthy for you to hear him tell you on his own that this is unreasonable.” Right? No, it doesn’t even make sense in that context. This is one of those things you nip in the bud. Worst. Therapist. Ever.

Now ultimately we know that this love story was just a vehicle to get Deb to catch Dexter in mid-kill. They weren’t really going to fulfill the romance, thank God. But still there are other ways to get Debra to the church where Dexter set up his kill table. How about she just coincidentally got a call to the area and, you know, didn’t try to date her brother? 

They would pay a little lip service to Deb’s therapy sessions in later seasons. One time she confessed her true love to Dexter, but by then they were so far gone into making her an accomplice that there wasn’t a risk of consummating anything. Maybe that was one last nod to acknowledging that this storyline happened and moving past it for good. 

I tried to confront Showtime and the “Dexter” producers on this wildly misguided miscalculation of a storyline. They pretty much insisted Dr. Ross was not encouraging them to date and I was overreacting. I’m not the only one though, am I? I asked Showtime President of Entertainment David Nevins what he thought when he got the scripts or saw the episodes where the therapist encouraged Deb to date her brother. 

“I don’t know that she was encouraging them to date,” Nevins said. “She was encouraging Debra to confront it. I’m aware that there’s a certain taboo, despite the fact that they’re not genetically related. Absolutely. But it’s something that has been building for a number of years, I think. And if you go back and you look at the last couple seasons, it’s an idea that has informed how they’ve done the show for a long time. And I definitely dispute that she was encouraging them to date, but she did want Debra to start to deal with it, confront it, and that led to the big reveal at the end of the season.”

Another time, producer Manny Coto also emphasized that Dr. Ross was just about exploring feelings. “Some of the therapists I’ve worked with are all for pursuing where your feelings go,” Coto said. “These are adults. These aren’t teenagers living with mom and dad. Once you’re an adult and you have these feelings, you have to at least explore them in some way. I don’t know many therapists who would say, ‘You’ve got to block that out. Forget that.’”

True, but I don’t know many therapists who would say, “Go for it!” either. At least I hope not. “By the way, because it’s appalling and maybe disturbing, this is ‘Dexter,’” Coto said. “We felt that it’d be interesting to pursue this particular storyline even if it is appalling and disturbing to some people. This is not ABC Family. This is Showtime and the show is constantly trying to go forward into places that you didn’t expect.”

I also asked Melissa Rosenberg, who left the show after the fourth season because she was writing Twilight movies full time, if she would have ever allowed them to pursue this storyline. She laughed and said she couldn’t comment. 

We’ll be back next week with something more positive with the usual Best Episode Ever. 

 

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Fred Topel
Fred Topel

Fred Topel is a veteran journalist since 1999 and has written for CraveOnline since 2006. See Fred on the ground at Sundance, SXSW, Telluride or in Los Angeles and follow him on Twitter @FredTopel, Instagram @Ftopel.

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