  Joey Quinn, left, (played by Desmond Harrington) have been a pain in the butt for his police partner Angel Batista (played by David Zayas) during the sixth season of Dexter, which wraps up Sunday on The Movie Network and Movie Central. |
It has been a hairy season for Desmond Harrington on Dexter.
And we mean hairy in both the literal and figurative senses.
Heading into the sixth-season finale of Dexter this Sunday, Dec. 18, on The Movie Network and Movie Central, Harrington’s character, Joey Quinn, still has a chance at some professional and personal redemption. This is TV, after all.
But as Quinn has descended into a depression-fuelled sex and alcohol bender, his hair really has taken a beating.
It used to be so perfect. Now it’s always messed up, the poor bastard.
“(Quinn) has gone a bit wild, that’s the best way I can put it,” Harrington said. “I know it’s only one word, but it’s a good word.”
Your hair always is the first to know.
(Spoiler alert: Some plot points regarding the sixth season of Dexter are discussed in the following paragraphs.)
Quinn began his downward spiral after his awkward and unsuccessful marriage proposal to Debra Morgan (played by Jennifer Carpenter). Debra’s subsequent promotion to being Quinn’s boss made the situation even worse.
The character paying the most direct price for Quinn’s extended “lost weekend” has been his police partner, Angel Batista (played by David Zayas).
Quinn’s unreliability almost cost Batista his life in the most recent episode to air. And while Quinn came through and saved Batista at the last moment, the whole scenario prompted Batista to seethe at Quinn, “This is a job of trust. And I can’t have a partner I can’t trust.”
It’s interesting that in previous seasons of Dexter, Quinn was installed as a nemesis of the title character, played by Michael C. Hall. But after Quinn bucked the odds and survived - enemies of Dexter don’t tend to do so - Quinn ironically has spent the past season battling himself.
“We basically get the scripts as they’re delivered, so we don’t have any idea of what’s going to happen with the characters long-term,” Harrington said. “So no, when I signed up for the show, I had idea that the part would grow to become what it has.”
So why does Harrington think Quinn has managed to stay alive, first dodging Dexter, and now dodging his own worst behaviour?
“My winning smile?” Harrington asked, hopefully.
Sure, why not.
“Quinn, as we’ve definitely seen, has his own demons,” Harrington added. “So in a certain sense, he’s more similar to Dexter than some of the other characters, because he has his own secrets.
“Quinn is very much a troubled cop, a cop in some of the best ways, and troubled in some of the worst ways.
“There always needs to be a Quinn. But outside of that, I’m not sure exactly why I’m alive.”
Well, we’ll see what happens Sunday, right? This is Dexter, after all, so no character is safe other than the main man himself.
Honestly, this season of Dexter hasn’t quite clicked overall in the way that past seasons have. There was the plot twist with Professor Geller, played by Edward James Olmos, but when your “big reveal” occurs two-thirds of the way through a season, the crescendo of tension is interrupted and it gives the campaign a bit of a jerky rhythm.
Hey, something could happen on Sunday that puts an entirely new spin on the whole season, right? Fans of Boardwalk Empire who saw the second-season finale of that show last weekend on HBO Canada certainly know what we’re talking about.
As for poor, lost, dishevelled Joey Quinn, we have but one wish:
Find a comb.
