Vigilantes in Love
I finished Against All Things Ending by Stephen R. Donaldson this weekend (review pending) and downloaded Savages by Don Winslow to my Kindle. I’ve been hearing other people rave about how good it was, so I decided to give it a try. I liked Dawn Patrol quite a bit, so I was willing to download it without reading any detailed reviews or even the DJ copy. When I opened it on my Kindle (it goes straight to page 1, not to the cover or the title page), I found that Chapter 1 consisted of only two words. One of them is a familiar four-letter expletive and the second is “you.” I read about 1/5 of the book yesterday afternoon while half-watching football games. I’m not much of a football fan, I couldn’t name most of the teams and only a handful of players, but I don’t mind having a game on while I’m doing other things. Sometimes I don’t even know who’s playing. However, I must say that I enjoyed the Patriots game, though it was mostly because of the snow. It didn’t look fun at first, then I figured it was probably a lot of fun for New England. Anyhow, Savages is one of those books that’s as much about tone and style as it is about plot. The first several pages are just mind blowing. It’s about two guys who grow some of the best marijuana ever. One has a degree in business and botany and the other is dangerous, a SEAL who has done several tours in Afghanistan, or Stanland as he calls it, which covers all the bases for their illicit business. The Mexican cartels are trying to take over the territory and have delivered an ultimatum: sell to us at a discount or be decapitated. Their colorful sidekick is a girl known as O (for Ophelia but also for her sexual skills). I’m trying to think who the style reminds me of. It’s the sort of minimalist book that I think people will either love or hate.
I had my final acupuncture treatment on Saturday. The practitioner tried something called cupping, in which tiny heated fishbowls are affixed to the patient’s back and held there by suction. Impressive suction. Nigh-onto-painful suction. Even today, two days later, I have a row of four circular hickeys across my back. Can’t say it did a whit of good, either. I would always have been curious about the possibilities of acupuncture if I hadn’t tried it, but I would say that, in the final analysis, I got nothing more out of it than I would have gotten if I’d stayed home, put Clannad on the CD player, hooked up my TENS unit and lay face down on the massage table for half an hour. Relaxing but ultimately ineffective.
Satisfied with the way The Amazing Race finished. All three teams were deserving of a win, though I was rooting for Team QVC simply because they seemed to be having so much fun. One bad or good taxi driver can change the outcome of the race, especially during the final leg. Looks like next season is a best-of race, with a number of non-winning teams from previous seasons duking it out. I don’t think everyone they showed in the preview will necessarily be there, but Team QVC might get a second chance.
My prediction for the finale of Dexter was close. As close as the thickness of a sheet of plastic. I was sure they were setting us up for the big moment when Deb found out what Dexter has been up to all these years. She knows about him in the books from the end of the first novel onward. But when the possible moment came, she deferred to not knowing who the vigilantes were. She compromised her beliefs to let them go, and it’s an open question as to whether she would have been able to do so if she had pulled the curtain aside. And yet I have an idea that she knows on some level. At the very end, she says to Dexter, “You must be happy, too, now that this is all over.” I can’t think of any reason for her to say that unless she figured Lumen for the 13th victim. Unusual, too, that Astrid was the only one who noticed that Lumen wasn’t at the party. Oh, and by the way, is it usual to serve alcoholic drinks at a birthday party for a 1 year old? Must be a Miami thing. LOL at Masuka for bringing a hooker-date. I guess Harry must have been wearing his ghost-seatbelt. He was dead and well at the birthday party.
As for the resolution of the Dexter-Lumen situation, I think it was the best possible way for things to work out. If she had stayed, next season could only have been the Dexter & Lumen Slaughter Evil Men season. Lumen was right—she had no reason to go on killing. The men she got rid of wounded her personally. Any other victims would fall under the Dexter rule of killing bad men beyond the reach of society. It would be too pat to say she was healed, but she was changed, for the better, and Dexter understood. He promises to keep her Dark Passenger with his, always, and since Lumen is still alive and kicking there’s always a chance she could return. He gave Lumen her life back (“a reversal of my usual role”) and she gave him back his, too. I confess that I was really nervous, though, after they dropped Jordan in the bay and headed back to Miami. Such an idyllic scene on a show like this usually presages an unexpected catastrophe.
Where does Jordan Chase fit into the pantheon of Dexter villains? Near the top, although we don’t really understand how he made the transition from overweight nerd to master manipulator of others. Why he felt the need to make others dance and not take part in the dance himself. At some point he drank his own Kool-Aid, I think. “I can’t help but think you have a kind of greatness in you,” he tells Dexter mere seconds before Dexter pins him to the floor like a butterfly to corkboard. I was seriously impressed by how quickly Dexter cleared the gun and knives off that bench. “If we’re not a first name basis, the three of us, who is?”
Then there’s Quinn, the new Doakes. As anticipated, his association with Liddy and his presence at the scene of the crime put him in a serious bind. (If he owned more than one pair of shoes, he might not have fallen under suspicion so quickly!) Dexter and Quinn know enough about each other to maintain a respectful distance, and Dexter saves Quinn’s bacon by faking the blood tests (though I agree with others who say that this was a little too pat and easy—the fact that Quinn’s name is on the requisition form should still be damning). Quinn owes him, but he did it for Deb, because she’s happy.
Funniest line of the episode, when Deb is questioning the fruit vendor who saw Jordan: I fucking swear I’m taking Spanish after this.
At last Dexter removes his wedding ring. Thematic statement: No one told them that connecting with another human being is the hardest thing in the world.