Paul is just a piece of shit. He’s a bad guy; a normal human who fails his most basic obligations. He’s not wired differently. He’s not tough enough to be a monster. He needs two promotions just to get in the monster training program.

Dex and Dokes are to the rest of us as the lion is to the zebra.

Dokes and Deb may fall for each other. That would drive a lot of plot. That would be three monsters for Deb.

Yep, and the babydaddy of Dex’s girlfriend. I also think Dokes has something for Dex’s sister.

I agree though, they have got to move away from their urge to humanize the sociopath. Merely finding out about his own “birth” story, as it were, wouldn’t take a true sociopath suddenly into a realm of so-called normal conscience.

And isn’t the opening sequence brilliant?

Ooh, I’m stoked I have a fellow fan.

I’m totally hooked. With the new revelations about his family, I can’t wait for next season. However, they are humanizing him too much now. They need to really keep the writers in line on the sociopathy issue. He may have a fondness for his sister and some other people, but for the most part he will remain unable to think of other people as anything other than pieces on his personal chass board. By the later episodes, they were giving in to the temptation to humanize him too much.

I really want to know what was up with his bio-dad at the time of his mother’s death. There’s a story there.

Also, I LOVE Dokes. The opposition between him and Dexter was what got me to watch the pilot — Dexter’s observation that, with all the cops around him who supposedly had a keen insight into the human psyche, Dokes was the only one who he gave the creeps. Dokes is a dark, dark creature. Like Dex, he is a killer, and he killed at least one very bad person in cold blood and got away with it. He’s ex Spec Ops or CIA or something — a “ghoul,” a black-ops bad guy. He’s a monster who lives by a code, like Dex. He’s a trained fighter and assassin, like Dex. He is capable of killing without the intermediation of conscience, like Dex. Dex is that way because of one event that he was young enough to block out, while it looks like Dokes became a monster on purpose, through rigorous training. It is because of, not in spite of, their similarities that Dokes sees Dexter for what he is. As they say, “the devil knows his own.”

If you are talking about feeling like you have wasted your LIFE and and you are a POS, then I would suggest 1) Forcibly stop yourself from thinking bum-Out thoughts about yourself BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. Turn of the self-castigating or envious tape in your mind and

read
exercise
do something, FORCE YOURSELF, something creative if you can, or something that makes you feel better (like cleaning)(I mean if having things clean makes you feel good) FORCED ACTIVITY!! It does something to the brain chemistry.

If you are feeling SUICIDAL, watching movies and TV are better than KILLING YOURSELF, but as a boost to just feeling emotionally crappy, they can bring you down in the long run.

Also, and again this is fairly banal, but talking things out can help. Not only can people point out that you’re being unrealistic about things, but I think a lot of the pressure from certain problems comes from keeping them in your own head.

I do find that trying to get clarity about what exactly is bothering me and why helps. Ofterntimes I find that I’m depressed about some vague thing that seems unlikely to happen or to happen again, but if I think about it, I’ll realize that whatever I hope to get from that thing can be gotten in other ways (and would not, in fact, necessarily follow from whatever luminous object or event I had been pining away for). I hope that’s not too convulted and abstract. I don’t want to speculate about what may be bothering you, but I hope this helps at least somewhat. I hope you’re feeling better.