I absolutely loved the first six seasons of Dexter! I genuinely felt that it was one of the most intelligently written, expertly directed, and brilliantly acted series on TV! I found those initial seasons to be truly stimulating and engaging on suspenseful and even quasi-intellectual levels! Some like to say the Seasons Five and Six weren't as good as the first four seasons, but I think that they hold up as comparable.
The final two seasons were captained by a new show-runner behind the scenes, and well... the wheels kind of fell off the Dexter bus! I started to feel as if I was watching a soap opera, and moreover felt that many of the b-plots were truly superfluous and many of the new characters were uninspired! In particular, I felt that the final season went out of its way to set up truly contrived cliff-hangers and twists that were almost immediately resolved! The last episode was especially disappointing, and the very final scene of Dexter actually brought to mind a famous Monty Python sketch! A sad end indeed to what was once a truly phenomenal series! Prior to that final episode, I honestly felt that only story arcs that made the final season worth continuing were those that were centred upon Deborah's struggles following the Season Six finale--those arcs unto themselves managed to maintain the series' excellence!
Despite my qualms about how Dexter ended, I still fully and whole-heartedly recommend the series! Those first six seasons are some of the best suspenseful dramatic television ever aired, and the final two seasons are worth watching at least once to see how it all did indeed end! (Like many others, I'm one of those people who can't stop reading a book or watching a movie until it is finished!)
