Dexter

When the last episode of Dexter was over, a friend I was watching it with turned to me and said, “That was just a single hour?” Yes, it did seem longer, not because it was tedious, but because so much action and emotion was packed into a single episode. Suddenly Doakes is more than a glowering menace, Dexter more a conflicted monster than a focused hero, Harry something of a twisted lunatic, and Lila …

One of the interesting things about humans is how incredibly stupid even the smartest ones can be. In the Nov. 18 episode, it was Doakes’ turn to be an idiot — in his case due to pride and anger. Walking out of a meeting with FBI Agent Lundy. Breaking into Dexter’s home and, instead of calling 911 when he finds the mother lode of incriminating evidence, he steals it instead. And puts it in his CAR for the FBI to discover. So now he is suspect numero uno but that still didn’t stop him from putting a bullet in Dexter’s […]

Dexter has always been something of an innocent when it comes to understanding the non-homicidal urges of the human species. In episode 7, he falls into clinging Lila’s trap completely. Matter of fact, he was so obviously clueless that it was depressing to just sit down and write about how completely she had him wrapped around her pale and beautiful little finger, torching her apartment so he have to leave Rita and the kids and go and hold her scrawny smoke-covered body. So depressing, as a matter of fact, that I couldn’t write about it. But what a difference a […]

For a man who claims that he does not understand sex, our hero gets plenty of it in Episode 6 — aptly titled “Dex, Lies and Videotape.” Dex has been lying to Rita, having not told her that he took a road trip with his sexy sponsor. He’s been lying to Lila, not telling her what he is really addicted to. AND, he’s apparently been deluding himself by believing that the voyage into the darkness of his soul would not affect his facade.

At the end of episode 5 our hero is on his docked boat in the middle of the night using a UV light to find all the incriminating bloodstains so he can scrub them away, while somewhere above him a security camera is recording his every move. Are the writers really so dense that they don’t realize that Dexter is way smarter than that? OR, is his lapse of intelligence due to what happened to him earlier in the episode, when he began a journey of twisted self-exploration that ended with him confronting the man who helped kill his mother? […]

One of the measures of a series’ success comes when it begins attracting stars in cameo roles. This season, we’ve already seen Keith Carradine as Special Agent Lundy. Now JoBeth Williams joins the cast as Rita’s surreptitiously toxic mom, who sizes up Dexter and says, “That man is hiding something.” He warms up to her when she tells him that if the Bay Harbor Butcher is only killing evil people, Miami ought to give him a medal. Some in the city, and a lot of the BHB’s victims, agree. Unfortunately, Lundy is not one of them, and as the hunt […]

Posted by Elaine B. Our hero, a.k.a. the “Bay Harbor Butcher,” now finds himself in hot water with the suddenly cold Rita. She can deal with her boyfriend’s role in her husband’s death but not with living with an addict. So, in what has to be the funniest moment this season, Dexter attends his first open meeting of NA, where, as people discuss their addiction, he contemplates the state of his knives and stock of duck tape. It’s all very boring until Lila, the dark and hot and vaguely gothic beauty a few rows in front of him, takes him […]

Posted by Elaine B. (Warning: contains spoilers) Like every Dexter fan, I anxiously awaited the moment when our good-guy killer would return and say “Tonight’s the night.” Unfortunately, this season that means bowling, bowling and more bowling and, in spite of the team shirts that proclaim “Bowl till you bleed,” there is a world of difference between a split and a slice. Knowing how long it has been to the minute since he last killed (his brother), Dex is getting hinkey. The only severed body part he has to play with is the Barbie doll head his brother left as […]

Posted by: Elaine B When last we saw our favorite antihero, Dexter was absorbed in the fantasy of being hailed as a hero by the citizens of Miami for dispatching the Ice Truck Killer. This season takes up where the last left off, with Dexter in a funk and missing his brother who, with no adherence to the Code of Harry, might have been the ideal person to dispatch Dexter’s ongoing headache, Sergeant Doakes, who is stuck on Dex like a duck on a junebug. We can surmise that, in the case of Doakes, it takes a killer to see […]