The fifth season of "Dexter" belonged to Jennifer Carpenter.
Following a fourth season that brought a supporting actor win for John Lithgow and a nomination for star Michael C. Hall (Carpenter's former husband), Season 5 focused more on Carpenter's Deborah and her refusal to realize her brother is a serial killer. An Emmy nod this year would be Carpenter's first.
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Carpenter carried all of last season's angst about the search for a team of men who murder women – and the vigilante duo killing the killers. She tracked down the duo – Dexter and an avenging victim (Julia Stiles), but decided to let them go without seeing their faces. Her decision narrowly prevented her, yet again, from finding out the truth about Dexter.
The decision to let the pair go, Carpenter says, felt "out of character." But she justified it by remembering that Deb had been abducted herself, and had seen video of the men's crimes.
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"We all act out of character from time to time," she told TheWrap. "And grow from it, hopefully."
One thing she may not be able to justify much longer? Deb's not figuring out Dex. Carpenter told us that realization is "due" – maybe in the upcoming sixth season, which features rapper Mos Def, Colin Hanks, Edward James Olmos, and a plot involving religion.
Do you feel like your character is the moral center of the show?
That's a heavy burden I guess… but I certainly feel like she's the heart of it, and adds a lot of balance and adds a lot of insight into just how dysfunctional Dexter is, considering that they came from the same family.
She certainly holds tight to her morals. She's a cop and feels like she has a great understanding of what's right and wrong, and by honoring that she's honoring the legacy of her father, which seems to matter most to her.
Deb may be the smartest person on the show, yet she can't see what her brother is doing. Do you ever go to the writers and say, "My character is too intelligent to not figure this out?"
I have a tool that helps me justify her not knowing and it's worked for me up to this point. I feel like it's due. But I feel like because Dexter is her only connection to her past she doesn’t look too closely. And it's always the wife or the parents with the son living in the basement -- the people who were closest to the person doing the horrible things -- who are in the dark.
There are plenty of distractions going on in that [police] office to keep me focused on something else. I think she has all the pieces but she wouldn’t dare put them together.
