it's appropriate, since her mother presumably drowned.

As awkward as it is, I wanted a better resolution to the Dexter/Deb sexual tension. Honestly they shoulda banged or something really fucked up. More importantly, though, Hannah just isn't that good of a character and didn't really deserve to come back. This whole season has sort of felt like a holding pattern - Dexter has barely killed anyone, the brain surgeon/Vogel plot is just bland...ugh. I feel like if they had known this would be the last season before they started making it, they would've gone out with a bang. As a Dexter fan, I wanted a final season where he kills a shitload of people and has his most serious risk of being caught, or actually getting caught, or *something*.

Saxon, Vogel's son is a boring character, and with his background of faking his death and coming back after all these years he would have had a better alibi over Cassie's murder, and not left evidence for killing Zack so easily. The cops should have questioned him and Jamie better to begin with to see through his alibi. Cops always investigate the crap out of the boyfriend in murders. He also would have reached out to his mother differently than sending bits of brains to her and just freaking her out. Dexter was lazy with stalking Saxon and he never gets this lazy with his prey in previous seasons. He never would have messed up that easily, particularly with someone he knows is so dangerous. Just so lazy with the writing. All the attention seems to be on Hannah and none really on Dexter, and she just has nothing interesting about her anymore that it just falls flat. The theme of training Zack with the code was a little promising but that fell flat and now there is nothing exciting. Normally at this point in the season the race between Dexter and the cops is getting tighter and tighter. Now there is nothing.

I just don't get it. Why would Vogel's son come back to the same town his mother is in, send her parts of peoples' brains, and then just move in with her and have tea when she invites him. I just don't understand.

Cassie's boyfriend was just a non-entity/dead-end that they resurrected when they ran out of ideas for what to do with the season.

Debra going insane and trying to kill them both

Interestingly enough Breaking Bad is now basically doing what I wanted Dexter to do in conjunction with the previous spoiler.

I just didn't feel comfortable seeing Deb in such a shitty state with Dexter not really doing that much about it. I mean, if we're really supposed to buy that Deb is like the most important person in Dexter's life, I wanted to see him have a bigger reaction to her totally turning her life upside down like that. I dunno, stalk her some, and when he finds out she's turned into a cokehead and is hanging out with that criminal guy, possibly just murder him and kidnap her to keep her "safe" or something like that. I mean, shit, the whole show is about how Dexter's supposedly this empathy-less psychopath who, over time, starts getting in touch with himself and actually develops emotions, so I wanted him to have a huge emotional reaction to the situation that just didn't happen at all. He went apeshit when Rita died, by comparison.

Also...nine out of 12 episodes into the season, and Dexter has only killed what, three people? And only one of those was a normal Dexter-style murder.

Every new character introduced this season has felt forced and distracting to what should matter, and that is Dexter, nobody else. Hannah's story was wrapped up in a neat little bow as far as I'm concerned. We didn't need her this season and why does she get the honours of returning and others like Lumen or Trinity's son, whose stories were cut short and had potential, ignored. They shouldn't have put Deb in a new work place and Elway is basically a throwaway character (apart from one episode where he momentarily stops being a push over). Masuka's daughter is something I'd expect in season 5 or 6, it's simply way too late in the game to start expanding on the comic relief's life, or Jamie's for that matter. The last couple of twists have felt so far fetched (even in Dexter's implausible world) and I strongly think Zac Hamilton should have been a two episode arc at most. What we needed was a clear as day villain right from the first couple of episodes, not twist after twist, and additional characters whose stories have already been told by other characters in past seasons.