1. The Babysitter
The best thing to ever happen to Dexter Morgan wasn't his dad inserting his code on him, nor was it his love of Rita or the pursuit of Hannah. The greatest thing to ever walk into Dexter's life could walk all over any value Deb brings and stomp all over whatever closure Dr. Vogel wrought, for the single best thing in Dexter's life isn't a friend, a caregiver, a homemaker, or a mom, it's all of these things. Enter Jamie. The "babysitter" of young Harrison and Batista's sister, Jamie was the all-too convenient crutch the series relied on to explain how Dexter could do his late night lung-cutting. Deprived of what would have been any semblance of a personal life, Jamie must have lived her life on-call to Dexter, waiting for the phone to ring at all hours of the night to jump into her car to care for a child that was not hers and who ultimately was taken right out from under her after the years of her care and love and stowed away to a foreign land with a virtual stranger. Jamie may be the most tragic character of Dexter, having spent so much time caring for a family who disregarded her for greener pastures, left with her brother and unrequited by her ex-boyfriend, it is also Jamie who was so poorly written and used, she became a point of satire throughout the series but especially in the final eighth season. At least Jamie was a friendly and nice crutch for the series writers to put all of their creative weight upon, she was always beaming and positive when being knuckle-deep in dirty diapers and drowned in spit-up after being woken from a beautiful dream at four in the morning. Jamie could more than bear the weight despite straining assumed logic, unlike Vogel who buckled and collapsed at the slightest application of common sense to her character motivations. Breaking points fracture however with Jamie's go-to attitude to drop her life the second her incoming call reads "Dexter", became laughable and perhaps the biggest reason that by Dexter's eighth season, I wanted to roll my own body up in a burrito of bubble wrap and off myself atop a table if only to spare myself from having to hear poor Jamie put off living her life another second to remain tethered to the abnormally jubilant if not slightly disturbed Harrison. Fly little bird, you're free now, Jamie. And so are we. I'll be in cellophane at the bottom of the sea. Happy.