What’s this show called … Dexter?

I’ve always found cable series to be a particularly enjoyable breed. Not all of them are for me, but the quality of programming seems to usually be ratcheted up when you’re talking about networks that only air a handful of original series every year.

Which is why I generally give any new shows that come from the premiere cable shops a try. In 2006 that list included a little show called Dexter.

All I remember about it now is that the pilot had something to do with a refrigerated truck … or was that scenes from episode two? Either way, nothing about the series, or the titular character, gripped me, so I moved on. But now I’ve returned to see what I’ve been missing.

From what I’ve heard and read, I know that a lot of people would tell me this is a bad time to be joining the show. With John Lithgow’s arc over, some viewers have said the show’s lost its edge. But I was actually mildly intrigued when I read that season five would guest star Julia Stiles, so jumping in at the beginning of her arc seemed like as good a place as any to start.

I do find it interesting that Dexter (Michael C. Hall) only kills other killers. He won’t abide by the death of innocents (certainly not since his wife’s murder at the hands of the Trinity killer — I don’t know about before). Which kind of makes me wonder, then, how he can be so unemotional. I have a vague recollection from the pilot of James Remar’s Harry Morgan, and the conscience he provides for his son, so I do recall that Harry trained his psychopathic son to only kill bad people. But if Dexter was then reared with that mindset, he would have developed some amount of empathy, at least enough to appreciate what “innocent victim” means.

I got the impression that the voice-over was meant to help establish the cold, unfeeling manner with which Dexter observes the world. Maybe if I was more familiar with him I would appreciate some amount of humor in his mental responses to people’s questions, but as a new viewer it quickly turned me off. The impression I got was, if they still need to use that tool, Dexter must not have been developed very well as a character in four plus seasons.

I also remembered that sister Debra (Jennifer Carpenter) was a cop, which poses a threat to Dexter’s extracurricular activities while providing him with gainful employment as a crime scene consultant. I imagine that she provides a certain amount of grounding and dimension to Dexter, but in the episode I saw I found her to be overly crude and rather one-dimensional herself. I was left wondering if Rita (Julie Benz) did a better job of humanizing Dexter.

Harrison the baby doesn’t do a good job of that either. He seemed like just another prop, something that Dexter maybe had to work into his life, but not a real part of his life. I know that was one of the big questions when the show added the wife and kid — how would a family affect this killer. But Harrison looked like little more than an accoutrement to me.

I was not loving the episode. At least, I didn’t see what had earned it the buzz and awards that I know it receives. And cinematically it looks like an old ’80s-era TV show, like The Incredible Hulk or Quantum Leap. Why would a modern series use an old look?

But then 39 minutes in I got jolted to attention. Lumen (Stiles) made a run for it, and from there Dexter took her to see the bodies Boyd Fowler (Shawn Hatosy) had killed and embalmed in canisters. It was exciting, and seeing Stiles do something was enjoyable.

And then she told Dexter that Fowler wasn’t the only one who’d taken her (at first I thought she meant over the course of her lifetime, which would mean she had some crazy bad luck) and I kind of lost interest again. I thought Stiles was coming on the show in a “humanizing Dexter” role; she might get there eventually, but right now she looks to be someone who’ll drive Dexter to the edge of what he considers within the realm of who he punishes. That might be great for longtime fans, but it wasn’t what I thought she was coming to do. Maybe that side of her will help explain why her fingerprints were in the system when she had no record, something that made no sense to me at the time unless she has a government job or works in financial services.

Anyway, not the point. The point is, I finished the episode with the same opinion I originally had — there’s nothing about the show that I found compelling. And honestly, I think it was because I couldn’t make any connection with Dexter at all. Maybe that’s part of what people enjoy about the series, but for me, it just kept me unable to engage.

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Oct 25, 2010 @ 15:02 EST5EDT