As aggravated as I got over the television writer’s strike a few months ago, it had some positive impact. In order to have more to offer viewers than game and reality shows, one network, CBS, took the unprecedented move lately of filling its Sunday night time slot with reruns of the first season of the critically acclaimed Showtime series Dexter.
WOW!! So this is why people pay extra for Showtime and HBO. And to think, on CBS you are watching an edited version. Even so, some television watchdog groups, such as the so-called Parents Television Council, are upset over the move, complaining that Dexter is not the type of show that should air over commercial network television. They have even threatened boycotts of advertisers. I hope they shriek a little bit louder, so more people will watch the show and I can watch a few more seasons.
Their complaints are understandable, viewed strictly from their perspective. The main character, Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall), is a serial killer-quite a prolific one. Yet, he is the, shall we say, anti-hero of the show. He works for the police, as a blood spatter specialist. His sister also works as a detective, though she doesn’t have a clue that Dexter is responsible for many of the murders he is supposedly helping to investigate.
Dexter’s victims are not good people. Many of them are also serial killers. Some of them are worse than others. Dexter’s first victim, a priest, was a child killer. Another one was an alcoholic guilty of multiple counts of vehicular homicide. Yet another was a nurse who conducted mercy killings of deathbed patients.
Why does he do it? What makes him tick? Well, at the age of three, he witnessed the brutal murder of his own mother, and he and his sister was taken in and adopted by a veteran police officer. This cop realized Dexter had severe problems, but instead of arranging for therapy, he trained him to redirect his murderous impulses to target those who deserved to die.
Make no mistake, Dexter is not a conflicted individual. He has no guilt hang-ups as to the rightness or wrongness of his actions. He is as cold and calculating as any serial killer you might imagine. He is literally a man without a conscience, or for that matter, anything resembling normal human emotions or empathy. Yet, his adoptive father, the cop, trained him as well in how to portray human emotions, how to act like a “normal” human being, and how to pretend to relate to others.
He even has a girlfriend, though his feelings for her are also fake. He even set up her abusive boyfriend, resulting in a prison sentence for him, so he could move in with her and her two children. This idyllic setting provides Dexter with what he hopes is the perfect cover, but there are those who view him with a great deal of suspicion, among them one of the main detectives who work with him.
I won’t say anymore except, if you like gripping drama, you should watch this show. It’s almost made me appreciate the writer’s strike. Hell, maybe if we’re lucky they’ll have another one, then we all might get a chance to watch reruns of Deadwood, or The Wire.
It might even induce network television to start actually making more shows of this quality on their own initiative.
Speaking of which, my personal favorite, Prison Break, has just been renewed by Fox for a fourth season. Yay!
