Dexter season 8 episode 9 review: Make Your Own Kind Of Music
As Dexter nears its ultimate finale, Billy thinks we're being taken for a ride. Here's his review of Make Your Own Music...
This review contains spoilers.
8.9 Make Your Own Kind Of Music
With so few episodes to go now, when I’m watching Dexter, my concentration is split between what’s happening at that moment, and where this is ultimately going. It’s the second part that’s a major concern now.
The over arching theme we’ve been given this season is the idea of stability followed by destruction, as each time things calm down, that tranquillity isn’t allowed to stand. Vogel doesn’t believe that Dexter can stand with a foot in each world, and as such, he’s destined to fail as a human being. Is it just me who’s getting confused about her definition of a ‘perfect psychopath’? Surely, it’s Dexter’s human side that’s helped him remain free until now, and someone entirely without redemption wouldn’t have the empathy to remain hidden indefinitely? By her new definition, her son would have been ‘perfect’, and she put him in a mental institution. Not sure of the sense in any of that.
The show’s writers keep hinting at a happy ending in Argentina, but we all know that’s never going to happen, even if it’s held out as a possibility. In an attempt to emulate the season four ending, it will all appear to go right, to suddenly go horribly wrong.
Make Your Own Kind Of Music also has a theme of sorts other than the Mama Cass one, about wanting to turn back the clock to better times.Frankly, all the stuff with Debra wanting to go back into uniform, and Joey wanting to date her again did nothing for this viewer. It was all rather depressing, and the signal that the Vince subplot is done and dusted, only made me wonder why they bothered.
However, the episode wasn’t entirely without merit, as Dexter began to unravel the mystery of the Brain Surgeon. Or did he just think that’s what he was doing? It was at the point Dexter started into indentifying Oliver, I started to smell a big fat rat. The picture of Daniel Vogel that Dexter is given has 79 on it, presumably the year the picture was taken. And, Dexter tells us that he’s in his mid-forties when he does the face comparison. But the actor who plays Oliver, Darri Ingolfsson isn’t even close to that age, he’s 33. That’s either a massive mess up by the casting department, or it’s a clue that Oliver isn’t Daniel. On the Cassie investigation sheet it puts his date of birth as December 1968, making him 44. Yet, when Dexter opens his driving license, it lists his birth date as 12-22-1979, which for the curious is actually the real birth date of Darri Ingolfsson.
So what other evidence have we that he’s Daniel, the DNA? Well, hang on, he’s highly intelligent, why would he leave the garbage for Dexter or the cops to find? He even put an envelope on top with his name, so they didn’t mistake his trash for anyone else’s, and the soda can doesn’t require any digging on Dexter’s part. The missed evidence in Zach’s hangout, it’s all a little too easy, and patently staged.
Abuse me all you like in the talk-back, but there’s a reasonable amount of evidence here that Vogel is the one being played here, by someone with the correct age to be her son, possibly Elway. The alternative answer is that the end of the show is coming, and those responsible for continuity just didn’t give a rats any more. What do you think?
Read Billy’s review of the previous episode, Are We There Yet?, here.
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