Dexter: Blood on the Wall

I have to admit: I was apprehensive about Dexter. For one, the premise—a serial killer who works as a police blood spatter analyst—seemed far too consciously offbeat and pleased with itself. And while I loved the satirical amorality of American Psycho as much as the next yuppie-hater, and am quite fond of Seven and Silence of the Lambs, I’m suspicious of any “entertainment” that looks positioned to add to the mythic grandeur of the American serial killer—especially when, like Dexter, it appears ready to ask you not just to give the killer respect, but sympathy. [Mild spoilers ahead]

And in some respects, I was right to be suspicious. Dexter takes the American Psycho route of presenting a fit, attractive, totally affectless serial killer as its protagonist. But instead of allowing us to feel revulsion at such a despicable human being, it asks us to relate, to empathize. And, just as American Psycho conflated disgust between serial killing with our natural antipathy toward the solipsistic materialism of urban yuppie culture, Dexter pulls a similar bait and switch by playing on our natural sympathy for cops, guys with girlfriends and sisters, and vigilantes (crime fighters) who bring the bad guys to justice. Dexter is someone who, by the usual rules of TV narrative, ought to be a good guy; he’s a serial killer, yes, but the deck is stacked in his favor. Occasionally the show gets nervous and backs off, trying to frame its central idea as a question—it is possible to have sympathy for such a cold blooded killer?—but mostly it simply tells us that we should, that it’s okay to look kindly on such a man, that it’s wrong to merely judge him a monster.

This is a dangerous route to go, because it essentially instructs people to ignore their moral sense and to refuse to cast judgment. Dexter’s murderous habit, we’re to understand, isn’t his fault—it’s simply the way he’s wired. The show takes pains never to get too graphic with his murders, never to dig too deep into his rituals and fetishes, never to have him murder an innocent by mistake. It’s a kindler, gentler portrait of a serial killer, one you can take home to meet the folks (or at least the kids—he’s got an attractive, divorced girlfriend, after all). The Sopranos may have humanized its murderous thugs for us, but it never let us forget for too long that Tony and his associates may have been lovable in some respects, but they were also violent gangsters who committed despicable acts. Dexter glosses over its protagonist's gory predilections, making them safe and easy to condone.

That said, the show is often quite captivating. Sure, the shifts in tone we occasionally awkward; early episodes, especially, contained numerous disjointed lurches from light, goody satire to dark, brooding thriller. And, as Alan Sepinwall points out, some of the subplots didn’t work—especially those involving police department infighting—but the primary story was played rather well. The arcs that mattered most (those dealing with Dexter’s father, sister, and the ice truck killer) came through. The revelations about the ice truck killer, I think, were handled particularly well, and in the final few episodes he made an incredibly fascinating, spooky villain. My biggest complaint is that ITK didn’t live through the season’s end. He was such a complex creature—especially in relationship to Dexter—that it would’ve been great to see a season built around his torment of Dexter now that both are fully aware of their relationship.

In the end, I think it’s ITK—Dexter’s truly uninhibited mirror image—that makes the more compelling character. A good guy serial killer is novel, of course (and I’m sure that went a long way toward selling the show), but the way Dexter is presented seems designed to avoid complexity rather than confront it. He is, in the end, just a updated version of Batman—a man with a dark past that drives him to violent action, yet channels it into “good.” But ITK is a real killer, one who murders unabashedly and without reason, and yet still claims to have the moral high ground—or perhaps claims to be above morality altogether. Now that’s a character of real complexity; yet as soon as the show revealed his true nature, it killed him off. For a series that so clearly wants to be seen as bold, innovative, and edgy, that’s a remarkably timid move.