"I know you better than Harry did"
"He started showing them pictures of their victims"
"I was young and needed someone to talk to"
"People like you don't usually seek emotional connections"
A Hollywood recipe for destroying an anti-heroic character.
Ingredient one: establish and see through a worst case scenario where the character's efficacy is compromised (as seen in season 7).
Ingredient two: introduce any number of abstract explanations to fill in the blanks for why the given character's behavior doesn't make sense throughout this process (see also: "You're in love!", "There is no Dark Passenger! It was me all along!", and/or "She's right. I'm lost").
Ingredient three: bypass all precedent established by the character's story continuity through the introduction of an agent from the character's past that was never once mentioned but still considered essential to his or her previous, current, and future development (enter Vogel).
For extra flavor, make sure said agent is empowered to diagnose the character as he or she sees fit so as to shape the character however the writers desire (see also: Vogel's status as a psychologist).
This series has been rolling down a nearly-vertical hill since the beginning of season 5. And these kind of character tampering antics are exactly the reason why. I really don't understand why the writers should somehow feel obligated to the idea of making Dexter more social or human. I mean, what was the point of using a character that was already established as a sociopath in Lindsay's novels if that's what they wanted to do? It's like what Morrison, Johns, Waid, Winnick, and Didio tried to do to Batman.
It's like someone said, "This character is way too charismatic to be anti-social and violent. We'll use his tendencies for our story purposes for the time being. But we have to make him more heroic before his story ends".
And that's exactly how ridiculous this season is so far. 'Insult to injury' doesn't even begin to cover it.
