There were a couple of key casting announcements of Dexter today. First up, Deadline is reporting that Sean Patrick Flanery has been cast as Jacob Elroy, “the ex-cop owner of a private investigation company in Miami.” I’m not exactly sure what that could mean, but I hope that it means that Dexter is hiring a private investigator to track down Hannah (Yvonne Strahovski). The other casting announcement, from EW, is the addition of Charlotte Rampling, a British actress, who has been cast “as a neuro-psychiatrist who specializes in working with young psychopaths and profiling criminals in unorthodox ways.” Ummmm, so does that mean she will be providing therapy for Harrison, or does it mean that next year’s Big Bad will be a kid, or does it mean both: That Harrison becomes friends with a serial killer child?
Hmmm.
More frustrating is the a statement from David Nevins, the entertainment president of Showtime, which seems to suggest some backing away from the planned end of Dexter next season. From Deadline:
“We’re not making any announcements today about when Dexter will end,” he said, adding, “I think I will clarify before Dexter goes on this season (in June). We have clear end game in place, I can’t talk about it just yet.” Just how important Dexter has been to Showtime? “Dexter to Showtime is what Batman is to Warner Bros., it is a cornerstone franchise,” Nevins said.
That’s not the talking point we used to receive, which was: Dexter will end after the eighth season. Period. But with ratings reaching all-time highs, and with the show being used this summer to launch their new series, Ray Donovan, Showtime may (in fact, probably will) reconsider and keep it around another season to launch more new series. Shows just don’t go out after record-high ratings. It’s practically unheard of (even Friends, Cheers and Seinfeld, which were still very popular when they finished their runs, were off from their record seasons). In other words, expect to be dragged through another season of stasis. Yes, there is an end game in place, but I’m sure they can wait a year or two or three to execute it. Blah.
