Liberal Values Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought

There’s major changes this season for three TV dads: Dexter Morgan, Donald Draper, and Ted Mosby. Some hints as to how Rita’s murder has affected Dexter can be seen in the trailer above which was first released at San Diego Comic Con. Warning, the trailer and this post contain spoilers.

The upcoming season takes place immediately after the events of the last season. Rita’s murder is bound to affect how Dexter takes action against other murderers and there are reports that Julie Benz  will be appearing next season. I don’t know if this will be in flash backs, scenes of a dead Rita talking with Dexter as Dexter speaks with his dead father, or if she will be used in some other way.

There are reports that there will not be a new romantic interest for Dexter so soon after Rita’s death. There will also not be a single major villain for Dexter to cope with and instead there will be a number of story lines. Nobody could compete with John Lithgow’s portrayal of Trinity, and it might be best to not even try to compete with that this soon.

As can be seen in the trailer, Quinn is suspicious of Dexter, and he gets Deb to look at him differently. In the books Deb found out about Dexter’s secret hobby. Dexter seems to confess to Rita’s murder in the trailer, but from the rest of the information available this is clearly misleading. Rumor also has it that the police have another suspect in mind–Kyle Butler!

The new season of Mad Men has already begun (full episode on line here), and the story has jumped ahead one year after Don has both lost Betty and is involved in starting up a new advertising company. Personally Don is doing far worse than I’d have predicted. Instead of having lots of girl friends a year later, he is resorting to  hiring a prostitute. Perhaps Don is capable of easily getting involved in purely sexual affairs while married, but is having difficulty getting involved in a true relationship now that he is single. It probably has not helped Don’s ego that he lost Betty after she found out about his unimpressive background.

In some ways the prostitute seemed more normal than Don as she spoke of having to leave early to spend Thanksgiving with her family. Even stranger, Don was paying her to hit him. Maybe he’d be happier with Madeline Zima’s character on Californication who is into such things.

Instead of renting a fancy bachelor pad in midtown, Don has moved to an apartment Greenwich Village which does not appear to be of the quality that would be expected from a successful advertising executive. Perhaps it is where Don thinks that Dick Whitman belongs. Professionally Don seemed down at the start but has made a come back by the end of the episode, as seen with the differences between his two interviews.

Beyond the changes to Don, the episode had Peggy and Joey repeatedly referring to John and Marsha. I previously discussed the meaning of these scenes here.

Ted Mosley will be moving towards the eventual conclusion of series on How I Met Your Mother. Rachel Bilson, who we know is the room mate of the eventual mother of Ted’s children, will be returning but I suspect we will not actually see the room mate until a later date. We should be moving towards finding out her eventual identity, and reportedly next season puts an end to the game of having every female Ted meets be a suspect for his eventual wife.

Things might also not be entirely over for Ted and Robin. I even wonder at times if they are playing an elaborate game with the viewers. The first episode was written to give the impression that Robin was Ted’s eventual wife, but the episode concluded with Ted telling his children that it was the story of how he met “Aunt Robin.” Since then to recurring question is whether every girl he meets is the actual one with Robin supposedly not being fated to be Ted’s wife.

Ted did date Robin for a while and the two eventually broke up. I’ve wondered, however, if Robin doesn’t eventually become Ted’s wife in that future we’ve seen very limited scenes of. There are several ways, such as death or divorce, in which Ted could have been married to someone else, have the children, and still wind up married to Robin at the time Ted is talking to  his kids. An even more bizarre situation would be if Robin is the mother but some reason is developed to have them claim that someone else is the mother.

A recurring story line will involve having Ted working on a project involving the Goliath National Bank building. A new character will be opposing the development. Is there any doubt that if a new female character is brought in to be Ted’s new nemesis he will also try to date her?

In other developments during the season, Barney meets his father–and it is not Bob Barker. Marshall and Lily proceed with plans to have a child, but there will be complications along the way.