It's ALL about the accents

[beautifulduckweed]

Dear Dexter,

So I'm happily immersed in Season 3, but one thing is bothering me, and bothering me enough that I feel the need to poke at it. Why does Assistant DA Miguel Prado speak with a heavy Cuban accent when he immigrated to the U.S. when he was 5? Lt. Laguerta and Detective Sgt. Batista are both Cuban and speak with light-to-indiscernible accents. And I know for a fact that the accent isn't Jimmy Smits's natural speaking voice. This inexplicable artistic decision adds nothing to the show and pushes Prado into caricature territory. (By the way: although I loved Season 2, screw you and the way you handled Lila's character arc. She had the potential to be a really amazing, human villain, and you turned her into a cartoon. And not even a good one. One of those shitty Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning cartoons from the early 80s involving superheroes with obscure powers.) And speaking of Lila: I'm noticing that the last person who saw and accepted Dexter for who he was before becoming psychotically obsessed with him also had an accent. What the fuck is up with that? Why are you resorting to to shitty, lazy shorthand involving stupid accents? It's enough to make this girl cut a bitch. You are much better than this. You can make somebody scary without throwing on some kind of look-at-that-furriner schtick on top.

Love,

Candy

p.s. Baby, you know I love you truly. Just...stop it with the accents. Seriously.

Comments

[davethegreat.livejournal.com]

Dude's a politician in a Cuban district. The accent could be simple window dressing to get votes, though I do know people who are born in the USA but retain accents from their parents (Latino, N. European Jewish and Finnish seem to be the most common).

Worry not; next season you get an astoundingly good villain.