DEXTER “Get Gellar” Review

DEXTER “Get Gellar” Season 6 Episode 9 – One great perk of being a critic for this website is that we get to see screeners of some TV shows early. For instance, I’ve been able to see all of the episodes of Dexter this season at least a week and a half before the air date. This is great as it’s not only cool to see an episode before everybody else has, but it’s also helpful as it gives us enough time to write the review of the episodes so we can post them right after they air. Unfortunately, “Get Gellar” was the first installment of the season where the episode was not available before air date. This usually only happens when either the network doesn’t want any word getting out of a big finale or important episode, or if they aren’t very confident in the quality of the episode. Here’s hoping this is the case of the former.

We get right into Dexter “helping” Travis track down Gellar. You might argue that the best way to hunt down Gellar would be for Dex to turn him in and share all his evidence with Miami Metro, but whatever. Speaking of Miami Metro, they’re still plugging along the DDK case from their own angle, which involves a new lead in the form of a blog post from Gellar talking about Dexter being a false prophet. When Quinn doesn’t show up to the briefing, Batista goes looking for him and finds out that he left his gun and cell phone with a stripper he was with last night. In case you were thinking that Quinn’s downward spiral was going to resolve itself anytime soon, think again. Not only is he turning into one of the most unlikable characters on the show, but now he’s bringing Batista down with him. I was not a fan of Batista flashing his gun to Louis last week, but now that he’s rolling around in the grass punching Quinn in front of a mom walking her kid he’s getting more and more frustrating. I’ve always liked Batista, so I’m not sure why they’re turning him into an overprotective crybaby.

I’m not sure what it says about the degrading quality of Dexter that the minor story lines of the show are the ones that I’m enjoying the most, but that’s definitely the case these days. I know that Deb has never been a particularly popular character with some fans, but her ongoing therapy story is getting better and better. Many viewers predicted that her time with the therapist would lead to some realizations about Dexter that she’d never had before, and that certainly seems to be where they’re going. I hope this story gets sped up and actually has some sort of a payoff, as they’re just devoting too much time to this story to just have Deb get all upset and walk away from her sessions. I’m also enjoying that Deb is going to re-open the call girl case, and I thought it was a neat little reveal to find that Captain Matthews was the one who is trying to get it covered up. It’s an effective way to use a minor character, so we’ll see where this goes.

The other little story I quite enjoyed getting a much needed shot in the arm was that of Louis and Jamie. I’ve mostly enjoyed their courtship up to this point, except for Batista’s obnoxious gun-flash last episode, but I find them both very sweet and sincere. This made it all the more powerful when we find out that not only is Louis a pretty rich game developer, but that he actually spent some of that money in purchasing the hand from the ITK case! I really hope this goes somewhere interesting with Louis’ character, and that he doesn’t just go “Hey, I thought it’d be a cool souvenir!”

Finally, we get to the big reveal that everybody saw coming: Travis and Gellar are the same people! I really can’t think of a worst kept secret of a plot point in all of television history. There were legions of Dexter fans making this prediction from episode one, and unfortunately they were right all along. Unless we’re in for some sort of switchback in the coming episodes, where we find out that the Gellar body in the freezer is a fake or something like that, I guess we just have to come to terms with this poor story device being a reality. It looks like we have our answer to why Showtime withheld screeners of this episode! We already knew what was going to happen!

I’m not saying the whole season is ruined for me or anything, but a lot of the mystique of the DDK case has completely evaporated. Just when I was actually starting to enjoy Edward James Olmos’ performance, it looks like his role will be diminished in the weeks to come.

Random Thoughts:

- I’m not sure the name that Quinn called Batista was very well-timed, especially considering what we just found out he did last night.

- How on earth does this Casey guy keep a job teaching at a state college? I’ve had a lot of opinionated professors in my collegiate career, but I’m pretty sure you aren’t allowed to just straight up preach atheism and try to pass it off as a lesson. Kinda ridiculous.

- It’s a possibility I’m being so tough on Dexter because it was almost two years ago to the day that we got “Hungry Man”. Not only my favorite episode of Dexter of all time, but one of the best hours of television that I’ve ever seen. Go watch that episode, and then watch this, and tell me the quality hasn’t been diminishing this whole time.