I spent the last 3 hours catching up with the most recent 2 episodes of Lost, and finished the evening off with 2 episodes of Season 3 of Dexter to get the rancid taste out of my mouth. As usual this season, Lost continued along its path of predictable horse shit where the characters are concerned, with the promise of hope in Sayid’s shooting of young Ben quickly snuffed out by the ever-stupid Kate hurrying off to help save the little future genocidal maniac and manipulator. After all, no child deserves to die, even if you have factual knowledge that in the not too distant future he’s going to murder all of your friends and a bunch of egocentric but otherwise rather harmless Dharma initiative clowns (and does anybody REALLY buy these quacks as Scientists?) before telling a massive series of lies to manipulate you and said friends into being trapped–again–on a bizarro island that just so happens to also be a fucking time machine.

Lost, I am sad to say, has long since jumped the shark. Of course, that much was obvious the minute the writers decided it’d be fun to move the island. Through time. But only some of its occupants actually do the time travelling, not all of them. The show is an interesting mishmash of brilliance and epic stupidity. On the one hand, the depth of character history (not to be confused with character development) is just phenomenal, with all the show’s major cast members enjoying what might be the biggest backlog of info that any single series has ever assembled for its ensemble. The acting is also consistently top notch from all corners (at least, once they got rid of the annoying Michael, Walt’s father, who was never anything but a waste of space). The problem is that beyond the late season 3 deliverance into ultra-bizarro land, in which a seemingly endless mess of mystical crap is piled on top of the character and island mythology so as to confuse the hell out of the average viewer, the show has simply devolved into a morass of unpredictable events and utterly predictable character responses to said events.

As evidence of this, I was earlier this very day discussing the show with a friend who is also a fan of the show (much more than I am, but then, I’m starting to feel about Lost as I do about Heroes: sick of the bullshit), and mentioned I’d be catching up with the most recent episodes later on. I commented that my hopes and expectations were twofold: first, I wanted Sayid to kill Young Ben (and indeed, he shot the little bastard, but in typical Lost style he failed to finish the job properly), and second I wanted Jack to refuse to save the little twerp. I theorized though that even if Sayid were to attempt killing YB, the ever-stupid Kate would either interfere with the attempt or would otherwise act to save him if indeed someone managed to make the attempt on his life.

And that, my friends, is exactly what happened. Which brings me back around to our sleek and sexy title: Can Dexter please kill Kate? My God, that woman has got to be the most stupid female character on television, disguised as the “strong” female when she’s in fact anything but. What she is, plainly enough, is a weak-willed whiner who can never make a rational choice, forever relying on the blind wailings of her emotional state of the moment as if she were an uneducated child or a rabid animal. Enough is truly enough-kill this character off soon.

Dexter, as I proceed into Season 3, continues to be brilliant. In a break with the typical pattern of television, where some episodes are good while others are less so, every single episode from the first of season 1 to the second of season 3 has been superb. Lost fans, you only wish your show had the complexity, intelligence and cleverness of Dexter. Whereas the former show asks endless meaningless questions, Dexter asks serious questions about the nature of life, of good and evil and of man’s relationship to all three. And it provides  answers that are, if not conclusive, at least, satisfying. They fit well within the context of our characters and are conveyed smartly and effectively by what is truly the finest ensemble cast on television.