The writers can make Arthur’s family go away. The cops seem convinced the family knows nothing, so they’ll probably just move – far away, where nobody’s heard of Trinity. It’d be nice if they could be told that Arthur’s dead, but Dexter can’t risk it. Would they believe an anonymous note? Maybe. There was a lot of denial in that family. What’s the opposite of denial? Optimism? False hope? Magical thinking? So maybe a note would be enough for them.
As for the family not seeing Dexter in that pink shirt – people being loaded into police cars usually keep their heads down. So it’s plausible they didn’t notice him.
If they talk about Kyle Butler, well, the cops have a dead Kyle Butler. He didn’t fit the Trinity style but the cops will assume Arthur killed Kyle because Kyle found out what Arthur was doing. We just have to hope the cops don’t show them a photo of the dead Kyle.
On the other hand, Melissa Rosenberg, the lead writer for Dexter, is the woman who wrote the Twilight screenplays. From what I’ve heard about those movies, narrative continuity isn’t a strong point.
Heck, this show is full of convenient conversational omissions. Debra told Christine the name of the trucker, when the cops assumed he was Trinity (and Christine’s father), and Christine just sorta nodded instead of a more plausible “What are you talking about? That’s not my father. My father’s name is…”
I guess it leaves open the (incredibly remote) possibility that Christine never actually knew her own father’s name.
I guess she would have been. One could say he didn’t hear the “beep” of a new message if it showed up an hour or two later, as my phone sometimes does.
On the phone note, if Dexter did have his phone on it might be possible to get an alibi off the cell phone towers he connected to. Explaining where he was is a different story.
Dexter has been so committed to the code. He slipped up this season with an accident, but didn’t get caught or feel too terribly bad. I wonder after this, er, setback, if maybe next season he’ll be reckless and abandon the code.
I dunno, maybe because she’d already decided to blow her brains out? There didn’t even seem to be a normal moment of confusion when she hears the unfamiliar name. I’d’a thought a furrowed forehead for half a second would be the minimum.
Maybe, I thought I saw a flicker, but I could’ve been projecting.
It’s all in the performance really. But also, people who are falling into the abyss, which often happens to depressives, and depression is the common state just before suicide, tend to simply stop reacting to external stimuli. When I was a kid my relationship with my parents was horrible, and I mastered a stone-cold face and would use it against them, not reacting to any of the threats that were levelled at me. Inside I was enraged and seething, so really the lack of reaction was an expression of my enmity, it was the only way to hurt them when I was threatened.
Not to say that’s the case, I don’t think Christine had any malice toward Deb, but there is just a place you can go inside where you can short-circuit your emotional responses from showing outwardly. I think that happens to people in despair unintentionally.
D: Christine u can stop protecting him. (pause) We have his name.
Christine looks up suddenly into Deb’s eyes. (probably to see if she’s not bullshitting her)
C: That’s bullshit.
D: we know he’s stan beaudrie.
Christine gives a slight sigh of relief (an exhale of breath that’s not a normal breath), then gives a slight giggle and sigh.
with another exhaled breath the following words come out in instant succession
C: oh wow
slight pause with Christine looking somewhat relieved to hear this name.
D: just tell me where he is
C: I tried to be a good daughter
… then we get the whole forgive thing, then the blown brains, then quinn running to room to see a pool of blood and christine dead.
on the subject of my dream ending, I think the impact of the scene would be totally diminished with having Deb walk with Harrison in her arms due to having Dexter do it here in this finale. Writers probably would not use this as a series finale due to the emotional impact has been used already.
So they’ll find Trinity’s car on the side of the road and launch a massive manhunt. Still not sure why they didn’t launch a massive manhunt when they thought the other dude was the Trinity killer.
So they knew that Trinity’s cycle started with the kidnapping of a 10 year old boy. It would be very convenient for Dexter if Rita’s murder happened 5 days afterward. (Anyone count?) The only trouble is that Rita was the mother of three and not two.
I do think that next season Deb is going to put everything together, possibly with the help of Quinn.
Who flies to the Keys from Miami? Isn’t it like a 2 hour car ride?
I thought it was odd that Dexter was able to make love to his wife while a homocidal maniac, who knows his name and has shown that he can and will break into people’s homes, was on the loose. I’d have made up any excuse to get out of there, even set a fire if I had to, in order to get my family out of there. I said to my husband, “Wouldn’t you at least bring the baby into the room with you?” Very sloppy writing, IMO.
Speaking of sloppy writing, I don’t know one police officer who isn’t unlisted.
I’m not sure I like having Dexter’s life “reset.” He was actually showing character growth, which I think is essential for a good story.
Dexter isn’t a police officer, and the “D. Morgan” did refer to Dexter - it’s just that Debrah happened to be living there at the time, and it was a coincidence that they had the same first letter of their first names. The house would’ve been under Rita’s name. It was a plausible way for Trinity to try to find Dexter but fail.
I don’t know how he did eventually find their house, though.
I think we need to assume that Trinity did something similar to what he did with the Kyle Butler search. The timeline of him getting killed and him searching Dexter’s old place (where Deb currently resides). He probably went home to sleep after searching Deb’s place. He wakes up really early probably to get financial things in order to pay off the body shop and begins his search for other D Morgans listed in a phone book or online search engines. We can assume his next destination was in fact Dexter real residence. At this point Rita heads home for whatever she forgot and Trinity was inside doing a search for proof of Dexter’s home. He sees the pictures of the family and lies in wait for something and Rita walks in, he does his bathtub staged suicide murder. He’s all overjoyed by this kill that he’s all giddy like we see him in the mustang leaving town. All this while Dexter was doing the Trinity family run-in with SWAT. He heads to the autobody shop steals the cap and hides in the trunk after seeing the broken windshield in the garage. Now comes Trinity to pay off the mechanic and takes off with Dexter in the trunk all giddy with the cap in his hand, waiting for the car to break down. Dexter kills Trinity and dumps the body. Heads home and sees the Rita message. Phone is at home? wtf! hears harrison crying heads up to see the staged suicide. Harrison was probably with Rita the whole time. So he was crying in a pool of blood for more than half a day. Does this sound all that plausible? I think so.
Count me in among those who liked the ending – I don’t think the writing was sloppy at all, it was set up so as for Dex (and the audience) to think that there was absolutely no possible way for anybody of his family to be in any danger, magnifying the shock in a way that wouldn’t have worked if there had been too much hinting previously (and Trinity did try to get to Dexter, so that was well established; that he eventually succeeded is not that unlikely).
The only thing I’m somewhat surprised by is how in stride, ultimately, the show took Dexter killing an innocent man; it’s clear that this was done to show that Dexter really isn’t a ‘good guy’ after all (which he’d become a little too much), he’s an insane homicidal sociopath, but I would have thought that there ought to have been some kind of consequences. On the other hand, I liked that they didn’t retroactively soften that blow by having evidence come to light that the photographer was an accomplice in the killings after all.
I thought Trinity HAD to kill victims with specific traits that matched his dead family - it was a compulsion thing? It’s a minor thing and I know he had plenty of motive to kill Rita anyway, but it still bugged me. And what was his motive for not killing Harrison? If he was going off script in the name of revenge he might as well have killed both Rita and the kid.
Doesn’t Rita make mention in her last phone message to Dexter how beautiful the moon is and how she hoped he was watching the same one? So unless Dexter took 24 hours to make it back to his house, Rita was killed in the nighttime. And Arthur picked up his car in daylight.
IIRC, Dexter is the one who wonders whether he and Rita are watching the same moon. In the message Rita says that she hears the moon is going to be beautiful tonight and she hopes Dexter takes a moment to enjoy it.