I’d love to see what Doper’s have to say about one of my fave TV characters ever!
Any links, anyone?
Here’s the only long thread I could find.
Since the last post in that thread was from March, I’ll reply here that I LOVE Dexter! I watched it on CBS first, not knowing what the real, unedited Showtime characters were like, and found it to be excellent. Then I recently rented the 1st season from Netflix and loved it 100X more! Aside from the language, there were other character- and story-enriching scenes/bits that had to be cut to allow room for commercials on CBS. I may just add Showtime to my cable lineup so that I can be front/center for Season 2.
I loved Michael C. Hall in Six Feet Under, and he is SO perfect as Dexter.
Probably my favorite show right now.
Season 2 is over and done with! You’ll have to get the DVDs from Netflix (they release in August I think) because Season 3 starts on Showtime on September 28.
Wha??!?
<drooling>
Thank you for this delightful news!
Yeah, I watched all of the first season in a week off of DVD, and now I’ve been waiting for the second season to hit my video store…
I actually watched series 1 and 2 while it was on ninja_ .com, in the space of a weekend, before it came onto our terrestrial TV. (Although I know it had been aired on one of the digital channels.)
At the moment, series 2 is about to start on terrestrial TV and I will be reacquainting myself with everybody’s…or should that be “bodies”? … number one serial killer!
I’d hate to give away anything to those who have yet to see any of this wonderful series, and so I am a little reluctant to discuss the show without knowing how much fellow Dopers have actually watched.
best show on television. the writing is spectacular! one of the very few times i can say the show is way better than the books.
Not a fan. It bothers me a lot that the writers construct such a pretzel of illogic–um, aren’t sociopathy and social conscience mutually exclusive?–whose ONLY goal is to manipulate the audience into rooting for a serial killer. Cheap and immoral. Not amoral; immoral. Deeply disturbing to me. End-times disturbing.
**
Deeply Disturbing Dexter**!!! Is that another book in the offing? Oh, I do hope so!
I have argued repeatedly that Dexter is not truly a sociopath. I believe that he was deeply disturbed by the events in his early childhood (and who wouldn’t be?) and that he was acting out by killing animals. Harry recognized that as one of the supposed signs of a budding serial killer and, rather than making any attempt to get Dexter any sort of psychological help, damaged him further by training him how to get away with murder. But the initial act that brought Dexter’s issues to Harry’s attention, the killing of the neighbor’s dog, was motivated by a sense of compassion and caring. He killed the dog because it barked all night and kept his mother awake. I think Harry of the series has a lot to answer for.
In the books, Dexter is much more correctly drawn as a sociopath, but even there he isn’t completely devoid of human response. He likes Rita’s kids, for example, and (spoilers for the books) when he discovers that they are themselves potential “Dark Passenger” carriers he takes it upon himself to protect them and teach them the way Harry taught him.
As for the notion of being manipulated into rooting for a serial killer, what is your opinion of the Hannibal Lecter films, or Psycho?
Dexter strikes me as just another example of American culture’s bloodthirstiness: it’s a show about capital punishment, IMO, only it seeks to romanticized it and make an entertainment out of it. It seems to me to suggest that some people need killing so badly that our current system of justice is just not adequate to how badly these people need to be killed. Not just killed, but tortured. It’s not a heap different, to my mind, from youtube videos of terrorists beheading journalists. Only, it’s been structured so that we feel ourselves to be on the side of the beheader, not the victim.
It depresses me.
Silence of the Lambs is a great movie, but you’re not rooting for the killer in that one. Hannibal is an abomination.
And I can’t see Psycho as rooting for the killer either.
In any case, you’re speaking as if I’m trying to codify some kind of general critical law; I’m not. I’m simply trying to describe my own reaction to this one particular piece.
In a rare instance, I’m 100% behind lissener on this one. I could not agree more.
The character of Dexter is simply too pat, too cliched and too unbelievable. He defies my suspension of disbelief every moment he’s on screen. The series is purely a revenge fantasy; we’re gonna serve up serial killers every week, tortured and sliced up for your justice-related amusement!
It doesn’t help that the supporting characters are mostly cardboard, except Dexter’s sister, who’s made of pipe cleaners.
I’ve honestly tried to enjoy it and just can’t.
The most disturbing aspect of the series overall, is that Dexter grows on you the more you watch him. Of course you are rooting for him to put the bad men( and women) out of commission, but no more so than you would root for Harry Callaghan, or John McClane to wipe out the bad guys. Dexter just does it all with much more pizzazz!
Getting into GD territory, but you have to admit that Dexter’s version works better in the long run than the Batman version where every other week the Joker has escaped from jail and killed twenty more people. Murderous Dexter may be, but Batman could easily be shown to be significantly greater a murderer.
And ultimately pretty much all fiction (and even Tim Burton’s Batman) has the good guy slaying the evil bad guys. Dexter is just more honest about the process. So really you’re just blaming him for being the only non-hypocritical hero in fiction.
And when it comes to killing, wouldn’t it be preferable to have a psycho with morals doing the job, rather than having someone who is doing it merely as a duty, and who could suffer from subconscious guilt complexes? As long as your man doesn’t go rogue, the law could allow him to take out the rubbish without anyone even knowingit was being done, and we’d remove all those negative trials and news reports from the press.
Batman doesn’t kill people, AFAIK. Certainly not as the specific goal; there may be some delf-defense corpses along the way. Your comparison would be apt if, every time Batman caught an evildoer, he took him back to his cave, tied him to a table, and cut him into little pieces. Otherwise, the comparison doesn’t work.
In any case, Batman is clearly far more fantasy based than Dexter is; Dexter is framed in an explicitly real-world setting. Most versions of Batman are not.
I am ever-so-eagerly anticipating Season 2 coming out on DVD in August. Dexter is one of my favorite book-to-TV translations ever. I can’t say that it’s flawless (nothing is), but it’s tasty enough to make me hopeful that Season 2 will not disappoint.
I agree with Otto, though, that Dexter is not (as written or played) a sociopath, at least not in any clinical sense. Schizoid, sure, no sweat. Sociopathic? Hardly. He has far too much of an ingrained sense of right and wrong (public safety, children, affection/loyalty to Deb) that obviously effects him emotionally, even if he fails to process or express it in a normal way. I think the depth and breadth of the gap between him and the rest of humanity is much different between the book and the series (particularly by the time you get to the third book), but in neither medium could one reasonably call him a sociopath, even though that’s the word that he uses for himself. (The first time I read it, I thought “This reads like a sane person writing like he thinks a crazy person would think. It’s close, but not quite on.” That’s one of the reasons I really enjoy the TV series - because the impression of Dexter as genuinely disturbed comes across more convincingly.)
I think it’s hilarious. I’ve always assumed it’s a black comedy. If it’s supposed to be a serious drama (which I’m sure it isn’t) then it’s even funnier.
His sister, though, has to be one of the most annoying people on television.