As the fourth season ended, Dexter had opened the bathroom door to find Rita’s lifeless body soaking in a bathtub filled with her own watered down blood, while their infant son looks on, howling in a pool of blood. The fifth season begins where the previous season’s finale left off, with Dexter surrounded by police. Dexter realizes he’s indirectly responsible for his wife’s death. After All, he had several opportunities to stop the Trinity Killer, but he was fascinated by the killer’s ability to ply at his trade for decades, while maintaining a career and family. Dexter wanted to watch the Trinity Killer and learn how he did it all. Unfortunately, his curiosity left Rita dead, her two children from a previous marriage orphans and Dexter’s own son is without a mother.
Rita’s death affects everything Dexter does this season. Given his wife’s death, he’s far from the top of his game. He’s surprisingly sloppy and impulsive, going as far as bludgeoning a random jerk in to death in a dingy bathroom. Gone, is the cold, calculating killer who would carefully blanket his kill room in plastic sheeting and plunge a knife into his immobile victim. Dexter is clearly moving into darker territory.
Some dribbles of blood in a moving van leads Dexter to a group of people in Miami who set its sights on pretty young blondes. In their homemade dungeon, they rape, torture, and torment these girls, videotaping the entire time. Once they’ve had their fun, what’s left of their victim is shoved in a barrel drum and left to bob around in a backwater pond. Dexter doesn’t know the details of the group when he has killer Boyd Fowler (Shawn Hatosy) on his table. As Dexter is about to plunge the knife into Boyd’s chest, he hears someone behind him. Apparently, Fowler hadn’t yet disposed of his latest victim. Dexter has a problem: Fowler has left behind has left behind both a survivor and a witness to one of Dexter’s murders.
He could kill this young blood woman, but cooler heads prevail. Naturally, Lumen (Julia Stiles) was freaked out at the sight of Dexter murdering the man who defiled and dehumanized her. But alas, watching Fowler killed has made her want revenge. Lumen wants Dexter to help her hunt and kill every last one of her tormentors. Suddenly, Dexter has an apprentice, and he feels responsible for her safety.
Michael C. Hall’s skills on Dexter have been well documented and rightfully rewarded. The surprise during the fifth season is the work of Julia Stiles. She is excellent here. Her interesting dynamic with Dexter—she’s a killer driven by vengeance while he is a cold methodical killer—is almost as interesting as the Trinity Killer storyline of the fourth season. Also of note: Peter Weller turns up as a sleazy, disgraced narcotics cop who’s set his sights on Dexter.
If there’s a weak point to season five, it’s the use of the supporting cast. Dexter is barely at the Miami P.D. anymore, but nonetheless they try to do something with his co-workers. Unfortunately, none of it is very interesting. And while last year’s finale changed everything, this year…not so much. Dexter is living in his old apartment, a single dad with an Irish nanny. That’s it. Even though season five ended with a whimper, the season as a whole offers some interesting insights into Dexter, and an impressive performance from Julia Stiles.
We get a standard 16:9 presentation. But the picture looks great for DVD, and the brightness of the sunny Miami city-scape are nicely contrasted with Dexter’s dark world of plastic-wrap and murder. The presence of “light” plays a big role on a series like Dexter as it can reveal both reveal the truth or conceal one’s true nature in a cover of darkness. Impressive.
The Dolby 5.1 sounds great, and all the sounds of Dexter’s knives and the crinkles of the plastic kill-room floor comes through ultra-clear, as does the dialogue. There’s also an English 5.1 Surround channel, Spanish and French Mono tracks.
There are no subtitles, but there is Closed Captioning.
As far as special features, we get the first two installments of The Borgias and Episodes. Showtime uses PC-user only E-Bridge technology to provide cast interviews, a look back at season five by Julia Stiles, episodes 1 & 2, season 4 of Californication.
