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posted ago by hellohellohellohello ago by hellohellohellohello +99 / -3

Dexter now lives way upstate New York in an isolated, very rural town. Yet somehow this town is populated like the writers were playing intersectional Bingo.

There's a large Spanish speaking population somehow, and the white characters love nothing more than chatting with them in Spanish for some reason.

There's the strong BIPOC female police captain (who is also Dexter's girlfriend) who supports gun control.

She has two deputies: a strong, competent black man who everyone likes and respects, and a buffoonish white dude who plays only as comic relief.

She also has a secretary: a legless, body positive white Karen who enjoys line dancing.

And finally, there's the "lovable" fat, exceedingly gay gun and hunting supply store owner Dexter now works for.

These characters might work in Miami, but were absurd for the setting.

Despite the town's diversity, literally every "bad" character, from the town's local serial killer, to his "entitled, privileged cisgendered white son", to the various drug dealers and henchmen, to the failed school shooter, to his asshole bullies, to the rival high school toughs, were all white men somehow.

There's also the evil, white billionaire Koch brother stand-in, who the writers apparently either forgot about after the first couple of episodes, or if he was intended to be a red herring, are even more incompetent than I thought. Maybe his only purpose was to show off that our characters had the right opinions about petro-billionaires, when they attended the various protests?

Like most new shows, reboots and sequels, there wasn't a new white male character that wasn't either evil or a buffoon.

They also replaced Dexter's ghost dad with his sister, Deb, who's been morphed into a shrill, hectoring harpy. She makes Kamala seem likeable in comparison.

Dexter gives several speeches about how uncomfortable he is selling an "assault rifle" from the gun store.

The words "cisgendered, white male" and "privileged white male" are uttered unironically many times in the series.

They also try and give all of the Indian characters this absurd, unearned gravitas and nobility, which is really odd. It reminds me of the fetishization of Native culture Star Trek Voyager and The X-Files had in some of their worst episodes.

//SPOILERS\

Dexter evaded the best criminal profilers the FBI and the city of Miami had to offer for decades, but was no match for the sex-positive Asian true crime podcaster and the female, Native American police captain, who team up to bring him down in a matter of days. BIPOC GIRLPOWER!

The writers were trying to pin the real life "missing native girl" phenomenon (seen in Canada and the northern U.S.) on white male serial killers (as the Indian police captain prattles on about endlessly) but in reality this situation is almost certainly the result of the huge violence and crime problem within Native communities themselves. Yet the media keeps insinuating white people are responsible somehow, just like with the attacks on Asians over the past few years, when the perpetrators were almost entirely black.

For the sin of Dexter killing the black deputy who was trying to kill him, Dexter's son - who five minutes ago was also a serial killer - decides that he is no longer a serial killer and that Dexter must die.

Dexter also realizes that he must die, and so he dies.

The patriarch is dead... Death to the Patriarchy!

Like Bond, Han, Luke, Ironman, and Indiana Jones (next year), another white, male "superhero" character dies onscreen. If you're telling me you don't see a calculated trend here, I don't know what to tell you.

\SPOILERS//