Dexter 3.02 and Sarah Jane Adventures 2.03
Oct. 7th, 2008 03:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakReviewing shows about serial killers and British children's tv totally makes sense, you know. At least in the train it does. The serial killer comes first, due to order of watching.
I figured we'd get Harry flashbacks again once Dexter contemplates fatherhood, which didn't turn out exactly true; we get Head!Harry instead, so Dexter can seethe and argue with him. Works for me. (And keeps James Remar on the show.) Dexter musing that the reason he gets along with children so well is that at the end of the day, he can leave and they're not his responsibility is Dexter kidding himself, imo; last season while being split up with Rita and at his most irresponsible with Lila he still wasn't able to ignore the emotional responsibility he felt for Cody and Aster. On the other hand, I can believe he thinks that; and that the idea of a biological child inevitably carries the fear of said child inheriting his dysfunctions in a way Cody and Aster do not. In the end, though, the decision to have the child, or not, is Rita's, not his. Since I know this is a very volatile issue in the U.S., I thought the script by Melissa Rosenberg did a great job of letting Rita arrive at the decision she makes for her own understandable reasons, not because she would never consider abortion.
Other than Bennetts and Morgans, the show highlighted this season's family, the Prados. And we got our first direct Doakes reference when Miguel Prado flung him into Maria LaGuerta's face, though he apologized immediately after. LaGuerta's reaction - saying that she was too close, too emotionally involved in the Bay Harbor Butcher case and that's why she distances herself now - rings true, and means she has accepted the Doakes-as-the-Butcher claim. (Though it occured to me before the cliffhanger that if Freebo is found with cheek cuts and plastic wrappings, that would make mincemeat of the Bay Harbor Butcher identification, but presumably Dexter was planning on burying his remains in a way that wouldn't allow for such trademarks to be recognized.) She's also visibly determined not to let Miguel Prado go down the same road as Doakes, which makes for tragic irony because if I had to speculate, I'd say he knew before she told him his conviction of what's his name was wrong. Note the lack of genuine surprise. Also, he didn't tell her about brother Ramon's lead any more than Dexter told her (and the rest of the office) that Teegan was Freebo's girlfriend. Add the ending, and I suspect LaGuerta will find herself with another old friend and former lover turning out to be dishonest and going vigilante. Which hurts me on her behalf, so I hope in compensation she'll at least find out Doakes was innocent before the season ends.
Mind you, I don't think Miguel Prado will turn out to be a psychopath/murderer in disguise. They already did that with Lila last season, plus then he'd be no problem for Dexter, who could kill him after unearthing some of Prado's buddies. I rather think this plot will connect with Dexter's ongoing Harry issues, and that Miguel Prado, now that he's caught Dexter killing someone, is going to come to a similar conclusion the late Harry Morgan did all those years ago: solve his frustrations with the system letting types like Freebo go free now and then by having his very own avenging vigilante killer go after them. (Re: the earlier conviction which I suspect he knew to be flawed, I think he pushed it through because they couldn't get the criminal in question for what he really did.) Only, unlike Harry, he won't commit suicide once he sees the results. It's what is going to make him different from Rudy/Brian and Lila; the confidant who isn't another serial killer but a lawman gone sour, like the father Dexter thinks he turned his back to but still argues with in his head.
From Miami, Florida, to Ealing, London:
Firstly, woo hoo on using the Pied Piper legend. Though I wonder whether they'll strip it of the motive; the Piper, after all, took the children of Hameln because their parents were too cheap to keep their bargain when he had helped them with the rats and didn't pay him. But connecting that to everyone's fear of scary clowns was brilliant.
Secondly, everyone's reactions to the departure of Maria are very in character. Luke, being the one least socially conditioned and literary the youngest, is open about missing her. Sarah Jane is resolved to move on and be stoic, but her determination not to get close to the new neighbours and especially the new girl is a comment in itself. Clyde admits to missing Maria but already in the process of moving on; he's following his basic optimistic nature.
Regarding the newbies: let's start by celebrating a break from a certain pattern. Jackie and Pete, Francine and Clive, Sylvia and Wilf, Alan and Chrissie: notice what they all have in common? But here, the male parent figure (grandparent figure, in Wilf's case) isn't the easy going one, and the female parent, while anything but a doormat, is not the complaining one either, and is all too happy at the prospect of sending her little girl over to the interesting new neighbour. It feels refreshing.
I thought it was blatantly obvious Mr. Chandra was Rani's father, so I was surprised it took Clyde that long to figure it out, but other than that, I loved all the interactions. Rani came across as her own person, not Maria II (if anything, she reminded me more of a younger Sarah Jane), and it amuses me she's taller than either of the boys. I'm looking forward to seeing her each week.
Lastly, is it me or do we have more interaction between Sarah Jane and either of the boys this season than at any given episode last season?
I figured we'd get Harry flashbacks again once Dexter contemplates fatherhood, which didn't turn out exactly true; we get Head!Harry instead, so Dexter can seethe and argue with him. Works for me. (And keeps James Remar on the show.) Dexter musing that the reason he gets along with children so well is that at the end of the day, he can leave and they're not his responsibility is Dexter kidding himself, imo; last season while being split up with Rita and at his most irresponsible with Lila he still wasn't able to ignore the emotional responsibility he felt for Cody and Aster. On the other hand, I can believe he thinks that; and that the idea of a biological child inevitably carries the fear of said child inheriting his dysfunctions in a way Cody and Aster do not. In the end, though, the decision to have the child, or not, is Rita's, not his. Since I know this is a very volatile issue in the U.S., I thought the script by Melissa Rosenberg did a great job of letting Rita arrive at the decision she makes for her own understandable reasons, not because she would never consider abortion.
Other than Bennetts and Morgans, the show highlighted this season's family, the Prados. And we got our first direct Doakes reference when Miguel Prado flung him into Maria LaGuerta's face, though he apologized immediately after. LaGuerta's reaction - saying that she was too close, too emotionally involved in the Bay Harbor Butcher case and that's why she distances herself now - rings true, and means she has accepted the Doakes-as-the-Butcher claim. (Though it occured to me before the cliffhanger that if Freebo is found with cheek cuts and plastic wrappings, that would make mincemeat of the Bay Harbor Butcher identification, but presumably Dexter was planning on burying his remains in a way that wouldn't allow for such trademarks to be recognized.) She's also visibly determined not to let Miguel Prado go down the same road as Doakes, which makes for tragic irony because if I had to speculate, I'd say he knew before she told him his conviction of what's his name was wrong. Note the lack of genuine surprise. Also, he didn't tell her about brother Ramon's lead any more than Dexter told her (and the rest of the office) that Teegan was Freebo's girlfriend. Add the ending, and I suspect LaGuerta will find herself with another old friend and former lover turning out to be dishonest and going vigilante. Which hurts me on her behalf, so I hope in compensation she'll at least find out Doakes was innocent before the season ends.
Mind you, I don't think Miguel Prado will turn out to be a psychopath/murderer in disguise. They already did that with Lila last season, plus then he'd be no problem for Dexter, who could kill him after unearthing some of Prado's buddies. I rather think this plot will connect with Dexter's ongoing Harry issues, and that Miguel Prado, now that he's caught Dexter killing someone, is going to come to a similar conclusion the late Harry Morgan did all those years ago: solve his frustrations with the system letting types like Freebo go free now and then by having his very own avenging vigilante killer go after them. (Re: the earlier conviction which I suspect he knew to be flawed, I think he pushed it through because they couldn't get the criminal in question for what he really did.) Only, unlike Harry, he won't commit suicide once he sees the results. It's what is going to make him different from Rudy/Brian and Lila; the confidant who isn't another serial killer but a lawman gone sour, like the father Dexter thinks he turned his back to but still argues with in his head.
From Miami, Florida, to Ealing, London:
Firstly, woo hoo on using the Pied Piper legend. Though I wonder whether they'll strip it of the motive; the Piper, after all, took the children of Hameln because their parents were too cheap to keep their bargain when he had helped them with the rats and didn't pay him. But connecting that to everyone's fear of scary clowns was brilliant.
Secondly, everyone's reactions to the departure of Maria are very in character. Luke, being the one least socially conditioned and literary the youngest, is open about missing her. Sarah Jane is resolved to move on and be stoic, but her determination not to get close to the new neighbours and especially the new girl is a comment in itself. Clyde admits to missing Maria but already in the process of moving on; he's following his basic optimistic nature.
Regarding the newbies: let's start by celebrating a break from a certain pattern. Jackie and Pete, Francine and Clive, Sylvia and Wilf, Alan and Chrissie: notice what they all have in common? But here, the male parent figure (grandparent figure, in Wilf's case) isn't the easy going one, and the female parent, while anything but a doormat, is not the complaining one either, and is all too happy at the prospect of sending her little girl over to the interesting new neighbour. It feels refreshing.
I thought it was blatantly obvious Mr. Chandra was Rani's father, so I was surprised it took Clyde that long to figure it out, but other than that, I loved all the interactions. Rani came across as her own person, not Maria II (if anything, she reminded me more of a younger Sarah Jane), and it amuses me she's taller than either of the boys. I'm looking forward to seeing her each week.
Lastly, is it me or do we have more interaction between Sarah Jane and either of the boys this season than at any given episode last season?
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Date: 2008-10-07 01:18 pm (UTC)Heh, you're not wrong - it was noticeable last season that they tended to divide up into teams along the gender-lines - Maria and Sarah Jane investigated the case while Luke and Clyde accidentally blundered into it - was the common way things happened last season. I thought it was quite noticeable in the last episode how they really did mix things up - it was exactly that in the first episode, but then they rotated about it - we got to see everybody teaming up with everyone else. And then again, in this episode, we had Clyde teaming up with Sarah Jane again... it really did hardly ever happen last season.
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Date: 2008-10-10 03:11 pm (UTC)I thought about this some more last night, and one way to get around retreading the Doakes story would be for Miguel to go down for murders he *did* commit. If this season is about Dexter becoming his own man, and given that that transformation is being couched in the terms of fatherhood, then couldn't he be headed towards playing Harry's role in his relationship with Miguel?