Sometimes when a successful movie franchise begins to go downhill in its sequels, it's because the crew tends to get too comfortable in knowing they have a loyal audience, resulting in less effort and a lot of failed attempts to make hammy inside jokes for the viewer's sake. This is what the sixth season premiere of Dexter was like. It had almost a fan-fiction feel to it, like I was constantly being winked at and force-fed a series of moments the producers thought I wanted to see. Luckily the rest of the season was not as cringe-worthy, but that one lapse in an otherwise solid show was definitely concerning; it was the first time I'd ever watched Dexter and thought "Wow, that episode was just bad."
The one thing that did remain awful for the rest of the season, though, was guest star Colin Hanks' acting. Or maybe it wasn't specifically his acting that was to blame, but more that he was completely and totally wrong for the role. He's just not believable as a creepy, disturbed serial killer (I recall that he pretty much only had one facial expression through most of the season). The innocent man-child aspect of his character is more fitting for him. In a situation like that, you can try to overlook it and pretend the character is more than the actor, but it's still going to be distracting. Furthermore, I wasn't really into the concept of a religious serial killer creating Biblical tableaux and hiding out in an abandoned church, because most of the time anything too religion-heavy automatically bores me. I wasn't literally bored, but one of the best things about Dexter is how each season has that one main villain, the really dangerous but fascinating one who takes a whole season for Dexter to catch, and this time around I never felt that sense of danger or fascination. In other words, a huge part of the season was ruined by a poor choice of villain and an even poorer choice of actor to play him.
Aside from those things, I did find the rest of the season to be adequate. As one of my least favourite characters on television, I appreciated that LaGuerta's role in the show seemed to be downsized somewhat, although it didn't stop her from being more annoying than ever. This season also includes an interesting plot twist that I didn't see coming, and a cliffhanger that I did - even before starting the season, I had guessed how it was going to end because it felt like the only logical next step after season five had pushed the show in that direction. Apparently there are only two more seasons left, and I do intend to watch both of those, but this one was the weakest so far and I'm really hoping it doesn't get worse from here.
Best episode: I'm going with "Get Gellar", because with a slightly lowered bar after the first two thirds of the season, that episode threw out an unexpected plot twist that raised it back up.
