I have this rule. Don't write dark stories if you're scared of dark implications.
The writers of Breaking Bad understood this. Writers of Bojack Horseman knew this.
The writers of Dexter did not.

Deb went through more moral dilemmas than Dexter ever did, and she suffered a lot from it.

"Why isn't Dexter allowed to be bad?"

Showtime: "We like money"

I hate how dexter learns lessons from earlier seasons then forgets them.

Dexter writters were scared of making Dexter truly bad. That's the truth. They wanted a good guy vigilante serial killer, but that's quite simply not who Dexter is, and it's not even a sensible concept

Dexter kills because of a need, and because of the code, he kills people who deserve it. But he's not a vigilante

Breaking Bad understood a guy like Walter White wouldn't do it for his family. They understood he wasn't a good person and had deeply selfish intentions

Don't forget about the time in Season 4 that he accidentally kills an innocent man and is actually deeply troubled by this...for about ten minutes of screentime, before deciding that killing Trinity is enough to "undo" this, only to ultimately spare Trinity in the end because he thinks he can learn something from him, and conveniently by then the writers have moved on from Dex feeling remorse over killing an innocent.

Truly, the biggest mistake in the series is that the code should have been:
Don't get caught.
Don't kill the innocent.
Stay away from small town cops armed with the power of google.

In all fairness, there was a moral dilemma at the end of season 7. It wasn’t Dexters though, it was Deb’s.

I agree. Dexter would have killed Doakes. Probably making the rationalization that Doakes stopping him stops him from getting rid of serial killers.

Then later him figuring out he's just a killer would let the weight of his rationalizations fall upon him. Could have made for a gorgeous scene. Especially if Deb was there for it.

Doakes was such a good character for Dexter to go against and it truly seems like Dexter was only meant to be 3-4 seasons long. I kept watching until the beginning of season 8 and it seems like Dexter is never allowed to have an end to his internal struggles. At the beginning of each season, he just starts his struggle again with no real conclusion. You're right that he never changes, and it made the show duller.

Good point! Never bail your characters out of their moral dilemmas.

10:09 Two possibly better options: One, Dexter saves Doakes from Lila and frames her as the BHB, claiming she was manipulating him/he was in deep cover planning to expose her. Doakes doesn't buy it, and keeps an even closer eye on Dexter. Two, Doakes survives the explosion and they go the route of the Jeff Linsday novels, where Doakes is heavily disfigured and can't speak. Both outcomes have Doakes as a ticking time bomb who will eventually expose Dexter, but he'll have more time on the show.

The interesting thing is that Dexter did break his code, but they never touched on it. In season 5 when he’s reeling from Rita’s murder he kills a random guy at a rest stop. Sure they made it seem like he was unsavory and possibly could’ve fit the code, but there was no way Dexter could’ve known that for sure.

Instead it’s undone by the introduction of Lumen and the code being reinvigorated in Dexter. Could you imagine if that first few episodes it showed Dexter hunting outside of his code, maybe actually targeting an innocent and then maybe that leads him to Lumen and it actually gives him a reason to use the code again.

“Why isn’t Dexter allowed to be bad, HE’S A SERIAL KILLER” I love that quote. Killing Doakes made so much narrative sense to me. He finds out in the episodes before that Harry finally saw what the code has wrought and couldn’t live with himself. Dexter should have the thought that if Harry didn’t respect the code, why should he? The rules were so vague that Harry never considered when the 2 rules became mutually exclusive. Dexter could say Doakes deserved because of his vigilante Justice toward the Haitian in S1. Hell, he killed and would kill for a lot less. But unfortunately the writers thought we would riot if the serial killer killed someone and gives Dexter a convenient out and then the chickens take 4 seasons to roost because he forgot a blood slide (something he’d never do) only to do the same song and dance again, fuck it.

Something I wished the show touched upon more, ironically, was Harry.
Rewatching the show, it's clear there's something very disturbed and wrong with Harry, he essentially grooms and abuses Dexter into being a serial killer.
It's an aspect of the character that is never really touched upon either, but you can hear it when he talks to the child Dexter, he constantly reinforces the idea that Dexter is a monster that can't change, and of course teaches him how to kill, something he shouldnt know how to do (yes they sort of retcon this in the later season but i digress). But Dexter does change, he starts caring about people and feeling feels for them "it's not fake anymore"
In my headcannon, Harry was the true evil, a serial killer that passed on his craft, which is why he is the representation of the dark passenger. Harry is the darkness that entered Dexter that day in the shipping container

This show is one of my best friend's favorites — she literally rewatches the whole thing almost every year — but she also talks about all the things it does poorly, including "They never let him face any real consequences. Everything is solved for him. Every difficult decision is made for him. And they never commit to anything actually 'bad.'" :)

You didn’t mention the ultimate moral dilemma in Poirot, where in the finale (Spoilers obviously) he is unable to prove that the killer is guilty so he kills him and then out of the guilt of becoming a murderer he doesn’t take his heart medicine so he would have a heart attack, effectively killing himself as punishment.

When I watched Dexter I always liked to think that he wasn't actually a psychopath and that he was just a disturbed child poorly raised by his disillusioned Dad. There were so many instances where he seemed to have convinced himself that he couldn't feel but he clearly could... Then they went and scanned his brain and destroyed any question

Dexter is a great show if you allow yourself to truly believe Dexter is the good guy. It's a fantastic show to binge if you turn off your brain and just think "Yay Dexter killing bad people and can never get caught"

Just watched Dexter Resurrection, Episode 9. This video is just as accurate as it was three years ago, this show is terrified of accountability, consequences and character growth and will keep recycling the same old, tired story threads.