Anybody watch Dexter?

There's a Showtime series Dexter, was on for 8 seasons. I never watched it.

But the other day, I was looking for some late night TV, and I noticed that it was all available On Demand, so I started in right at the beginning with season 1.

It's good. It doesn't overly rely on the usual cable hooks (nudity and bad language), it does have an interesting premise, and some interesting story: it does keep long-range story arcs and crime-of-the-week stories going pretty well. So I finished up doing a sort of mini-binge, two or three episodes a night for several nights in a row. And fortunately, there are still plenty of episodes left.

I watched a half dozen episodes, but I could not get into it. I was a big fan of Six Feet Under, and couldn't shake the sunny heroic image of Michael C. Hall from that show.

The Dexter episodes I watched left me with a queasy feeling. The moral ambiguity -- the almost celebration of what Dexter did because of who his victims were -- I could not separate my viewing from the horror I felt. I was, I guess, and still am repulsed by the whole premise.

One of the episodes I watched -- I think it was in a later season, so you may not have gotten to it yet -- Dexter teams up with a long-lost brother and the two of them start working together. Until Dexter decides that his brother cannot live, that his brother is a terrible person and so must die. Not making the connection that he, himself, was exactly like his brother.

I dunno. The shudder factor was just too much for me.

I quite enjoyed Dexter. It was not the same disney-esque crap that television floods the airwaves with.
I don't have to like any characters in a program in order to enjoy it. Give me something a little different, with characters that haven;t come from a xerox machine, and there's a good chance I will like it.

NoCoPilot wrote:

The Dexter episodes I watched left me with a queasy feeling.  The moral ambiguity -- the almost celebration of what Dexter did because of who his victims were -- I could not separate my viewing from the horror I felt.

Yeah. That's kind of what they were going for.

The moral ambiguity thread extends to most of the sub-plots, too. His detective friend who wants to reconcile with his wife, but still has a wandering eye. The police captain and lieutenant who focus on office politics as much (or more) than chasing the serial killer they know is out there.

As the saying goes, nobody's perfect.

Well:
I enjoyed season 1
I thought season 2 was brilliant
I enjoyed season 3
I was less happy with season 4, and hated the ending
I couldn't get into season 5, and stopped watching.

I then got curious about the books it was based on. I found one at the library, which seemed to be in the territory that was season 2-3, so I had some reference for it.

It was different (not a surprise). Dexter was (to me) less sympathetic, and more scary, than the TV character. His murder process or ritual seemed to be much less well-defined and less clinical than the TV portrayal, and his urge to kill was more present and demanding (and sort of primal) than the TV seemed to make it. And his interaction with the girlfriend (eventually wife) and kids was (conversely) much more clinical and impersonal than the TV show made it appear. I didn't enjoy the book as much as the show, so I stopped with that, too.

Probably the author didn't get a fair shake on that. I almost always find the book first before watching the show. Doing it the other way round doesn't seem to work as well, probably because the book is always more complex and subtle than the show, in my experience. It's easier, I think, to appreciate the simplifications that have been made, once you are already familiar with the complex version, rather than trying to set aside the simplistic version to fully appreciate the more complex. Or maybe that's just me.

I watched Dexter and thoroughly enjoyed it, although it did begin to drag in the last seasons. But American television - and movies - seem to always have to have - if not a happy ending, and least a justification for the bad guy's actions. Bunch of pussies.

I found this amusing.

Michael C. Hall is still threatening to make more Dexter