Dexter Gets Under My Skin...

Only Mrs. Thoreau & Harry can tell these two apart ...

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"I would never join a club that would have someone like ME for a member." This oft-quoted axiom has been credited to wits & half-wits as diverse as Woody Allen and Alan Alda, Groucho Marx and Sigmund Freud. But I'm really smart, and I know that Thoreau beat them all to it in the 1840s. I'm so smart I can't even find the actual quote, but it's in Walden or "Civil Disobedience," somewhere, I damn well know it is, because my memory is iron-clad of my undergrad. Trust me, damn you, I said he said it, and it's on the internet, so it MUST be true. I also know that Henry David Thoreau was basically flipping off Ralph Waldo Emerson by asserting this catchy bit of paradox, albeit it in different words than the above quote. I can't stand that phony bastard Emerson, so I tell myself Henry aimed that jibe at his best friend ... besides, who trusts a guy named Ralph anyway?

So, in recent weeks I joined a club and I will not apologize to Henry or Groucho for it, because it's a club I can respect, even if it freaks out most people to know such a club exists. This club is a viewership, and it has many devotees. It meets twelve times per viewing season on the Showtime network over a four-year current series history. This club is a fanbase for Dexter/Dexter. Our colors are red, and our numbers are many, and we are some freaky humans, let me tell you.

If you are unfamiliar with this show, it debuted in 2006 on the premium cable stepchild to HBO, and it relates the mental gymnastics & physical slicings of one Dexter Morgan. Dexter is a lab analyst for Miami's police department, specializing in blood-splatter study at the many crime scenes investigated by the homicide unit there. He's white, 30-something, straight, relatively normal looking ... and a serial killer.

Now, Dexter/Dexter (both the character & the series itself - all inspired by the novels of Jeff Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter, et al) travels in dark and provocative territory for this blog's funkified Roman Catholic (that's me, by the way... ) I am a believer in law and order - so is Dexter. I believe in protecting the weak and defenseless - so does Dexter. I crave Cuban sandwiches and love the ocean - so does my kindred mythical TV anti-hero, Dexter. Yet, I believe I should be allowed to slay those who traipse haphazardly and maliciously over the landscape, killing and raping and destroying - and . . . well, you get the idea.

Dexter (played effectively and without scenery-chewing by actor Michael C. Hall) has a unique focal point for his killing - he preys on cold-blooded killers. He does not kill hookers because they are sluts, or blacks because of their color, or Democrats because they are flawed, ignorant political naybobs, or anyone for any other group for an accident of birth. He kills EXCLUSIVELY those who choose to kill without good reason; those who are uncaught, unpunished practitioners of the taking of innocent life. So, in painstaking and purposeful steps which the show chronicles quite brilliantly, Dexter researches each potential escapee of man's justice, puts together a dossier of evidence, sets up a slaughterhouse in advance, and executes visceral sentences on dozens of killers. And he takes some cool, intricate, little trophies for himself as well. Many of his victims are slain before the show's narrative begins, but flashbacks and voice-overs provide all the needed exposition for what the viewer needs to know. Dexter's genesis is addressed and the watcher becomes a passive participant in this monster's ongoing formation and double life.

Yes . . . . Dexter Morgan, forensics expert and adopted son of Harry, executes and disposes of myriad murderous human beings over the history of this 48-episode show, which will concluded its fourth season in a few weeks. I began watching Season One a few weeks ago, and quickly enough, I was hooked on this disturbing but also very funny & intelligent show. I just watched episode 24 at the conclusion of Season Two, and I'll be launching Season Three this week. I hope to have all four seasons under my belt by Christmas, not-so-appropriately observing Advent's holiness and ushering in the Christ Child's Nativity with oodles of blood-spatter, vengeance, and gallows humor. Sorry, Lord . . . You made me which means You understand, right? Could be worse - I could be doing it, instead of watching it???

And I wouldn't have it any other way ... this cat is fascinating to me, and in the truest, most Greek tragicomic way - he does on this show what I, in my darkest moments, wish I could do; avenging all the wrongs of those evil sons of bitches in this world that I know damned well got away with it. In this way, the show is cathartic in that most Greek manner. I know that Dexter is morally wrong for what he does, but I refuse to judge HIM. His actions are evil, but I'll let God judge Dexter/Dexter Himself. God can handle that task - I'm barely able to keep my bed made and my bathroom clean.

And it probably doesn't matter anyway, I hear God gets HBO/Cinemax ... I read that on the internet . . . so it MUST be true, right?

Foolishly Frank Finski