Dexter: Another Brilliant Premium Show

Dexter: Another Brilliant Premium Show by Roxanne McDonald

Creative generosity, acute acting skills, and more exacting performances by the great Michael C. Hall make Dexter the next addictive Showtime feature.

The opening offers us Dexter’s neck, close up and in warm shadow. What light there is focuses on the razor (which one can hear in replete scraping splendor) as it travels down along the throat, cuts, and sends drops of vibrant red blood to the next shot—in the sink, where the credits too begin to roll and roil. The close-up tissue soaks the blood at Dexter’s neck. To make a slick and sensitive shot of human soup of sorts. An odd knife (a grapefruit knife? A filet knife?) cuts through tender raw meat cum packaging. Dexter’s wide grin cuts teeth through cooked pork or veal (likely pork, as he mentions it enough, later); and an egg bleeds into the hot and greasy depths of the fry pan Dexter wields with the precision he extends to his work: as a blood spatter analyst for Homicide.

Dexter is a sick boy, a mental maniac,

with a reverence for serial killing that is only thwarted or kept at the fringes of his consciousness by his upbringing

by an adoptive father (also in police work) who knew and who groomed Dex away from the “wrong side of the law.

The dialogue is sharp and tight, and laced with mocking, sardonic humor (Another fine day in Miami. Murder, dead bodies, and a chance of late rain…. ). The character interaction sees Dexter against the so-depicted “normies” in his stoic internal struggle to tolerate such attitudes as that of a colleague, a fat bastard (Detective Angel Batista, played by the unsung celebrity status performer, David Zayas) who boasts that the way to get off best is to do her doggie style and just as you near climax yell out another woman’s name so she bucks like a bronco trying to pull away.

The awareness of his penchant for the artfulness of serial murder not only makes him perfect as homicide analyst (the dick gets into the criminal’s head to catch him theory) but pristine as one who covets the habits and lifestyle of the most aberrant of sociopaths.

And always, the script returns to the now passed on father, whom Dexter recalls in crisp backstory which tells on his derailed development as a madman and murderer.

Other actors complete the hour, Erik King bringing an acute and barely contained rage

(amplifying the subplot conflicts in each episode) to the character Sergeant Doakes, James Remar keeping a passionate stability to Dexter’s errant thinking, by way of the dead Dad, Harry Morgan, and the double-edged sword who is the less than likeable Lieutenant Maria La Guerta, bringing the maddening subtleties of command and criticism as played by the salacious Lauren Velez.

The crowning achievement (if one has to choose) of Dexter is the sound quality: from the quiet keening of a personal razor to the mellifluous and hypnotic voiceover narration of the main character (of Hall), the show is not only a pleasure to partake of but a promise viewers ache to have fulfilled each week.

Absolutely brilliant—writing, acting, visuals—brilliant.

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