Dexter: Dear Daddy Dexter

So another season of Dexter has come to a close. I never really thought about covering it as it was going on because I was forced to watch in short, sporadic bursts. I didn't even see the first episode until six had already aired. I don't get Showtime, so I would have to go back to my parents' house to watch when I had time throughout the semester. With the first semester done, I took a short trip to finish the last three episodes of the season today, and while this was not the best season of the show, there were certainly some great moments. There were also a few things I wish had been cleared up and a few things I wished had happened, but what oh well.

This season was about two things: first, Dexter had to learn to reaccept his father after losing faith in Harry in Season 2. Dexter also had to discover why he would always be alone. These two ideas were certainly intertwined, but I believe they can be viewed separately. Last year, Dexter's perfect father turned out to be not-so-perfect after all when Dexter learned that Harry was having an affair with Dexter's biological mother, which may have led to her death. Dex also learned that Harry committed suicide when he accidentally walked in on Dexter carving up one of his victims. In response to this, Dexter vowed to recreate Harry's code to be more in line with what Dexter thought it should be, not what a dead dishonest man believed it should be. The early episodes saw Dexter strangle a child molester without any preparation and consider killing a defense attorney who had never killed anyone herself, but was responsible for keeping killers out of jail. But the biggest change in his life was when he accidentally killed someone in the heat of the moment. When Dexter went to kill a murderous drug dealer, he found that someone else was there. The drug dealer got away, and Dexter had to kill in order to avoid being killed himself. This event put Dexter on his other path of the season, in which he learned (again) why he will always be alone.

The man Dexter killed was the brother of Assistant District Attorney Miguel Prado, a rising star with a reputation for being tough on crime (little did anyone know just how tough he really was...). During the investigation into Prado's brother's death, Prado and Dexter became friends, even though Dexter couldn't quite understand why. People like Angel and Masouka have considered Dexter a friend throughout the series, but Dexter always tolerated them. He feigned friendship, but there was nothing more to the way Dexter felt about them. But with Prado, Dexter actually found himself liking his company. It didn't hurt that when Prado discovered Dexter after he succeeded in killing the drug dealer, Prado THANKED Dexter for killing the man Prado believed was responsible for his brother's death. The two of them eventually became partners in vigliante justice, and Dexter taught Prado the tricks of the trade and the code. And the whole time, Prado was all too eager to learn.

Sadly, Dexter was forced to remember lesson he learned with his brother, the Ice Truck Killer, and Lilah. His brother, Lilah, and Prado all accepted Dexter for the monster he was, but that was because they themselves were monstrous. The Ice Truck Killer had a compulsion to kill, and he took the lives of innocents, something Dexter does not accept. Lilah was obsessive, and would do anything to keep Dexter, even if it meant ruining the lives of some and ending the lives of others. And Prado wanted to do what Dexter did out of a deranged sense of justice. Dexter kills to satisfy an urge, and makes himself feel better by rationalizing that his victims deserve it. Prado kills people he believes are guilty, and guilt doesn't necessarily mean that his victims fit Harry's code.

There are still a few things I am confused about. For one thing, why did Prado take the effort to earn Dexter's trust through the shirt (you'll know what I mean when you watch the season) only to give Dex a shirt with cow's blood. First of all, why did Prado feel the need to con Dexter? How could he know that Dexter would teach him his secrets (or that he even had such secrets)? And he knew that Dexter is a blood spatter analyst! How could he not figure that if something were to go wrong, Dexter would see through the ruse? And why didn't Prado ever suspect that Dexter was the Bay Harbor Butcher? He clearly knew about the case and knew that the Butcher was in Dexter's department, based on comments he made to LaGuerta, and he likely knew that there were a few things in the case that didn't add up. Speaking of the Butcher, I was really hoping that LaGuerta was going to be conducting an off-the-books investigation into who the Butcher really was because she had proof that it clearly wasn't Doakes. Anyway, this was still an entertaining season.

Up next: Another TV update...

The List: #13 Dexter

#13
Number of Seasons (To Date): 2
Years Active: 2006 - Present
Network: Showtime

I think that this show was the one that proved to me that I should start paying attention to series on premium cable. Yes, I'd seen Entourage and Weeds before this, but they were almost like an escape from the normal. They were opportunities to push the envelope on certain issues farther than was possible on networks where (to paraphrase a friend) adults are unable to speak or act the way adults truly do in real life. Weeds began to show me what could be achieved by shows without boundaries, but it was Dexter that showed me just how powerful and high-quality these shows that I was practically ignoring actually were (since watching Dexter, I've since started watching Six Feet Under, which can be found on this list, Deadwood, and The L Word, which I started after beginning this list, but I can assure you are worth checking out).

Dexter asks us to take a huge leap of faith; it asks us to root for a serial killer. Granted, Dexter Morgan hunts and kills only people who have themselves killed innocents, but I think it's safe to say that Dexter's form of "justice" isn't exactly moral (especially since he does it not for moral reasons but for compulsory ones). By day, Dexter is a mild-mannered blood spatter analyst for the Miami police.

The series examines what it means to be human; Dexter believes himself to be an incomplete person, one who lacks a soul. He claims he has little to no interest in the affairs of others, but he engages in relationships in order to "pass" as human. And yet, he seems to fit in a little too well for someone so convinced that he is a misanthrope (one of my favorite lines has to do with him wondering how his relationship with one of the detectives progressed into "friendship").

Dexter combines elements of mystery, drama, and procedural shows (shudder) and the result is nothing short of fantastic.

Up next: #12...

Dexter: The Soul Of A Killer

When the series begins, Dexter is of the impression that he was simply born "wrong". His urge to kill is due to random chance; if one in 1,000,000,000 children are born with the urge to kill (that statistic is total bullshit, by the way), Dexter was the one. However, as Dexter soon learns, Harry wasn't entirely truthful about Dexter's life before he was a member of the Morgan family. A traumatic event in Dexter's childhood (the memory of which has been deeply repressed) is responsible for his unique mindset (also, that is why I amended my comparison of Dexter to Sweeney Todd, since outside influences affected both men; however, Todd kills BECAUSE he remembers the event, while Dexter seems to kill because he doesn't remember it... until he does).

But regardless of the reason why Dexter does what he does, the average person cannot commit premeditated homicide once and retain such a sense of calm, so the fact that Dexter does it multiple times definitely suggests that Dexter is not an "average" human. As I said, Dexter repeatedly tells the audience (through inner-monologue voice-overs) that he doesn't have a soul, or that his is broken, or that he doesn't really care about people, he only pretends to keep up a facade of normality. However, when as my friend and I watched the first season, we each came to the same conclusion about these voice-overs: Dexter isn't explaining himself to the audience, he is trying to convince himself that what he's saying is true. After all, it must be hard to kill people, even people who "deserve it" if you fully understand the value of human life.

There are a few examples where it is clear that Dexter sees his work as more than just something to fulfill his own needs. At the end of the first season, he has a twisted fantasy wherein he wishes that he could tell people about what he does, and that the reaction would be overwhelming praise. In his fantasy, a crowd holds up signs with fan slogans (like the ones you see people holding at sporting events), women cheer him and profess their love for him, while his fellow cops commend him on his efficiency in "taking out the trash". This fantasy shows that Dexter believes that what he does is inherently right (Harry taught him that killing killers would be leagues ahead of killing innocents, and it could help protect the innocent, but I doubt he ever thought that it was right), and that, if people could see things from his point of view, he would be seen as a hero, and not a killer. This fantasy hints at a desire for approval from the very people he claims to feel nothing but apathy for. Half a season later, when his victims are discovered by a pair of treasure hunters, a cult following begins to develop around the "Bay Harbor Butcher" when it is discovered that all of the victims were killers themselves. When Dexter discovers that a local comic book shop created a Batman-like character in his honor, he is flattered.

But even more important, he risks his own life, on multiple occasions, to save the people closest to him. The first example is when he prevents the "Ice Truck Killer" from killing his sister. The Ice Truck Killer was a serial killer whose method of carving up bodies without ever leaving a drop of blood at the scene of the crime both perplexed and awed Dexter throughout the first season, and Dexter was nearly obsessed with finding out the Killer's identity so that he could learn from them. Instead, when he had to choose between someone he only "pretended" to care about and someone who understood him, and could offer him so much, Dexter chose Debra. He also let her live with him for most of the second season, due to her being so traumatized by those events; this arrangement certainly causes problems with his ability to satisfy his urges, and yet, he stands by Debra in her time of crisis (though he did once jokingly [I think] recite, "I will not kill my sister" to himself).

Even more bewildering is the fact that Dexter nearly died saving Rita's kids from an insane pyromaniac with a grudge against Dex. With Debra, if people ever found out that he had an opportunity to help her and he didn't, it would lead to some questions that would be very hard to answer. But with Rita's kids, he sought them out to help them. That's going pretty far for the children of a woman he is only using to appear normal; this goes far above and beyond keeping up appearances.

Speaking of the children, named Astor and Cody, their path in the books is much darker than what we have seen in the series so far. Due to their memories of their violent father, they are showing the same signs of sociopathy that Dexter did when he was a kid, and Dexter takes it upon himself to teach them the "Code of Harry". My friend and I are hoping that this is the direction the show takes in the third season; the second season tested the strength of Dexter and Rita's relationship as well as Dexter's ability to stay one step ahead of the law. it would be very interesting to see Dexter, who seems to be much more comfortable with who and what he is, to begin the process of passing on his craft. And though this may be construed as too much of a retread, we also think that LaGuerta should pick up Doake's trail towards the identity of the real Bay Harbor Butcher. She has never been that interesting of a character (she was sadly involved in the worst Dexter plotline ever at the beginning of Season 2; let's just say that it played out like an exceptionally bad after school special), and this would give her character purpose.

So there you have it. This post was much more spoilerific than the first, but that's the rundown on Dexter up to this point. As you can see, it finds a way to give us weekly stories about a serial killer that we can not only tolerate, but even cheer on (to a point).

Up next: Going to Canada...

Dexter: Dearly Devoted To Death

Dexter is not the first world that I've covered with a serial killer as the lead character. Sweeney Todd and Angel were both about men who did their share of killing, but Dexter is fundamentally different than these other two examples. Todd was a man driven to kill after a lifetime of injustice, and while he went overboard, it is unlikely the demon barber would have made all the meat pies if Judge Turpin hadn't interfered. And on Angel, the murderous Angelus only showed up in a handful of episodes (and most of these appearances were in flashback), and in this case, Angelus killed because he was a soulless vampire. Dexter Morgan, however, is completely human, and he has a compulsive NEED to kill (hmm... it's possible that Todd eventually suffers from a similar compulsion, and that both of them were, to an extent, driven to the compulsion, but for the sake of my analysis, I am drawing a distinction).

Dexter would probably not be a very likable protagonist if he killed an innocent person every week, no matter how complex the character is. After a while, we as an audience would want him to get some sort of comeuppance. Fortunately, one of Dexter's complexities is that he only kills people who are killers themselves. He has a painstaking method that he uses to make sure that he never takes the life of someone who hasn't taken the life of an (or many) innocent(s).

Dexter's foster father, Harry, was a cop, and recognized that there was a darkness in his young son. But instead of making young Dex see professional help, Harry decided to train Dexter to do "good works" and make sure he wouldn't get caught. Harry was pretty vocal about his frustration with the fact that the legal system allows so many guilty murderers to go free, and reasons that Dexter would be doing good works while simultaneously satisfying his dark urges.

As an adult, Dexter has taken a job at the Miami Metro Police Department as a blood spatter analyst in the forensics department. This job serves multiple functions; his obsession with blood is put to practical use, murderers are brought to him as part of his work routine, and he will be the first to know if one of his own victims is ever found, and can stay ahead of the investigation. He notes how ironic it is that most people at the station find him to be such a likable guy. His sister, Debra, often comes to him for advice, since he seems to have good "intuition" about killers, while Lt. LaGuerta, Dexter's superior, seems to have a bit of a crush on the killer. Det. Batista is the closest thing he has to a best friend (this relationship perplexes Dex, since he doesn't think that he has done anything to warrant someone wanting him as a friend). The only exception is Sgt. Doakes, a tense ex-special forces soldier, who gets a bad vibe from Dexter, and will stop at nothing to expose whatever dark secret he believes Dexter harbors.

In the interest of keeping up appearances, Dexter has a girlfriend, despite the fact that he has little interest in companionship or sex. To Dexter, relationships with other humans are problematic and tedious, while sex is... messy. To compensate for this, he deliberately chose Rita, a woman who was the victim of domestic abuse. Her jailed husband beat and raped Rita to the point where the thought of touching another human makes her regress to a state of near-paralyzed fear. At first, it seems very off-putting that our hero is merely using this poor woman for his own sick ends, but as the series goes on, we begin to see that Dexter is providing Rita with something she needs; a man who is kind to her and won't pressure her. Of course, if Rita were ever to find out about Dexter's dark secret, she may go catatonic. Also, even though Dexter claims that he doesn't care for anyone, it is even hard for him to deny that he feels nothing for Rita's two children. He plays with them, brings them breakfast, and even makes them laugh. Not bad for someone who denies that he has a soul.

And that is one of the series' main themes: the presence or absence of Dexter's soul. Dexter continually reminds us that he is "different", and he puts up with people in order to stay out of jail. If he had his way, he would withdraw from human society and only emerge to fulfill his need to kill. Or so he says. When the people he "pretends" to care about are in trouble, he is willing put his own life on the line in order to protect them.

Up next: More about Dexter's soul, and what the future may hold...