Dexter: Season 4

If you pay much attention to critical acclaim and events like the Emmy Awards, you've probably already heard more than enough good things about the fourth season of Dexter, Showtime's best drama. But just in case you aren't aware of things, here's the lowdown on the season and the series in general. Michael C. Hall stars as Dexter Morgan, a bloodstain pattern analyst for Miami Homicide who moonlights as a serial killer himself. The catch is that Dexter lives and kills by a very specific creed and never takes the life of an undeserving victim. There is, of course, debate regarding the philosophy and ethics behind this vigilantism and it's just one of many things that make the series work - that make you root for a serial killer to succeed. The show is also aided by great writing, a decent cast of characters, and a mystery element that feels just important enough to hold interest and create season-long story arcs. (To be clear, this isn't CSI: Miami.) The main arc in the ballyhooed fourth season revolves around the "Trinity Killer," played to perfection by John Lithgow. Dexter and his pursuit of Trinity commanded so much of my attention, in fact, that the majority of the supporting characters who I had enjoyed for three full seasons could now barely hold my interest at all with their mundane side stories. But this is more a triumph of the main plot than a shortcoming of the B-plots. (I think.) The season, the Trinity plot, and a number of other threads all come into a shocking and powerful head in the season finale and the final scene of the season will go down as the iconic Dexter moment no matter what else happens from here on out. It was just amazing. But there was one teeny little problem with the ending of the final episode, and it's something I want to say a few words about; I knew it was coming beforehand. It had been spoiled for me. You see, the fourth season's finale first aired on December 13, 2009. I hadn't been watching Dexter at school, primarily due to my apartment's lack of premium cable networks like Showtime. When the Twittersphere erupted that night with several OMFGs and a healthy dose of "That did not just fucking happen" comments with "#Dexter" hashtags, I knew I'd have to try my best not to read about or even hear about the way the season had concluded. And I lasted all the way until just a few weeks ago when I read the spoiler, sans warning, on a website. I had made it all the way up until the DVD release of Season 4 only to have the ending ruined for me in the proverbial eleventh hour. But I wasn't upset. I wasn't even angry at the website, and had no reason to be, for in the ensuing two week period I read the spoiler twice more: once in a magazine, once on TV. We live in a world where information runs rampant without physical wires or human interactions. Given that we're still amid a great communication revolution, to expect not to hear about something that has happened is patently absurd. "Spoilers," as they're called, run amok throughout the Internet and other forms of media; it just doesn't fit with the world we inhabit today to keep things a secret. And yet, crying spoiler is all the rage these days. Along with the technology to instantly communicate and share things, we are more able than ever before to delay various forms of entertainment with technologies like DVR and, to an older extent, both home and streaming video. Ten years ago, no one cried foul when details were shared regarding a television episode from the previous night. And yet, at the same time, said details were much harder to come by than they are today. I just find it very interesting that as our ability to share details increases, our desire to hear them decreases. It's getting kind of ridiculous, if you think about it. There are people who will get angry if you give them a score update on a sports game currently in progress. "I'm taping that at home," they'll snap. "Don't tell me what's happening!" This past May, when the cult series Lost went off the air, there were actually people on the Internet the next day getting upset about all the other people on the Internet discussing the finale openly. I even heard about one case in which an author was sternly lectured by a reader for referencing the ending of The Usual Suspects, a movie from 1995, in his 2009 book. There's got to be a happy medium here. There are spoilers and then there is general after-the-fact discussion and disclosure. Those kids in that YouTube video who yelled, "Snape kills Dumbledore!" to a crowd of people eagerly awaiting the release of the sixth Harry Potter book were total dicks for doing so. But if you're upset with me for just revealing that Snape kills Dumbledore at the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, a book that came out in 2005, then maybe you're being a bit unreasonable. I'm not saying there's an acceptable or common-courtesy-dictated timeframeDexter ended its fourth season, especially since I had lasted so long without having it spoiled. But for me to be upset at the website, magazine, or television show that made reference to something from December '09? That'd just be silly. Especially in this era of texts, tweets, and pop culture references where everything's already old news just a day after it breaks. I guess that's the only point I'm trying to make here. Oh, and also that the acclaim was justified and that this is my favorite season of Dexter yet. I still can't believe Masuka was the real Trinity Killer all along.