I wish the actress playing Deb was a lot more talented. She had some pretty great moments in Season 4, but overall she's just a horrible actress.
I dunno, Rita could be pretty strong. I think she knew that people could make mistakes - I mean, she's lied to Dexter, too (her mysterious first marriage, which Dexter decided would be dumb to even confront her about, considering all his horrible secrets), and she came totally clean about the kiss with her neighbor, and she refused to deal with Dexter until he went to AA meetings, etc. I don't think fluttery sweet emotionality = doormat.
Plus, what makes this difficult is that we rarely see anything that's not through Dexter's eyes. He's an unreliable narrator simply because he's so broken and inhuman, you know? We're seeing Rita as a lot more sickly sweet than she probably actually is. I mean, think about it: the scene with her and Miguel she was very similarly sugary sweet fragile, a doll for Miguel to fool. But when she was hanging out with Syl, Miguel's wife, she was pretty down to Earth. It's very subtle, what the show does, but we do see people being filtered differently when Dexter is around (or other psychos are around and we're being shunted into the story via their POV).
I think that they definitely telegraphed her ending (even though I didn't guess she'd die) by making their weekend getaway lead-up as schmaltzy as possible, but I totally took this as being through Dexter's eyes, which explains the glowing sunlight earlier in the day when the kids go off to Disney World and Rita's getting in this happy bright yellow cab, etc., and the shot of the moon and skyline all sparkling and stuff when he's dumping Trinity in the Gulf Stream. He's trying to find movie perfection in order to survive.
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Date: 2009-12-29 02:47 am (UTC)I dunno, Rita could be pretty strong. I think she knew that people could make mistakes - I mean, she's lied to Dexter, too (her mysterious first marriage, which Dexter decided would be dumb to even confront her about, considering all his horrible secrets), and she came totally clean about the kiss with her neighbor, and she refused to deal with Dexter until he went to AA meetings, etc. I don't think fluttery sweet emotionality = doormat.
Plus, what makes this difficult is that we rarely see anything that's not through Dexter's eyes. He's an unreliable narrator simply because he's so broken and inhuman, you know? We're seeing Rita as a lot more sickly sweet than she probably actually is. I mean, think about it: the scene with her and Miguel she was very similarly sugary sweet fragile, a doll for Miguel to fool. But when she was hanging out with Syl, Miguel's wife, she was pretty down to Earth. It's very subtle, what the show does, but we do see people being filtered differently when Dexter is around (or other psychos are around and we're being shunted into the story via their POV).
I think that they definitely telegraphed her ending (even though I didn't guess she'd die) by making their weekend getaway lead-up as schmaltzy as possible, but I totally took this as being through Dexter's eyes, which explains the glowing sunlight earlier in the day when the kids go off to Disney World and Rita's getting in this happy bright yellow cab, etc., and the shot of the moon and skyline all sparkling and stuff when he's dumping Trinity in the Gulf Stream. He's trying to find movie perfection in order to survive.