TV REVIEW: 'DEXTER' - SEASON THREE PREVIEW

An Astonishing, Amazing, Attention-Grabbing Bloody Mess

By: Richard Elfman

February 17, 2008

Rome is now ancient history, along with HBO’s other stellar stand-outs, Sopranos and Deadwood.  That leaves AMC’s Mad Men and Showtime’s Dexter, in this writer’s opinion, as head-and-shoulders the best two dramatic series on television today.

In terms of Dexter, we started out quite the cynic, literally sitting out the first season while listening to friends and family rave about it.  A sympathetic serial killer?  Forgetaboutit! says me, in my best Tony Soprano.Then, out of curiosity, watching Episode 1, Season 1 on disk…hooked!  Totally f***ing hooked.  My wife and I completed the season, 11 more episodes, over the next three nights…and still we craved more.

I suppose we all suffer childhood’s slings and arrows which traumatize and “shape” us.  Poor Dexter Morgan’s backstory was that, as a tyke, he watched his mother get chain-sawed in a shipping container, where he was then locked in the dark, wallowing in her blood for three days until rescued — and then adopted, by kind-hearted cop Harry who, it turns out, harbored a deep-seated Dirty Harry.  When Harry finds the boy’s trajectory headed towards becoming a pathological murderer, Harry coaches and teaches the lad to only kill really bad people — the “code” with which to live a productive life.

Now grown, Dexter, played by the incredible Michael C. Hall, works as a forensic blood splatter analyst for the Miami police, where his younger sister (Harry’s daughter) works as a homicide detective.  As that isn’t complicated enough, Dexter becomes involved with comely Rita, a damaged divorcee with two darling kids. Dexter does his honest best to be a supportive boyfriend and father to the kids…and only sneaks out to kill really bad people when that damned urge gets too strong.Sound preposterous?  Well, it works.  At the show’s weakest moments, often during the sub-plots, it still holds its own against the standard TV cop melodramas.  At its better moments, which come on a regular basis, the show hits a sublime note, often surreal, sometimes horrific, touching, funny, dark, and existential — yet still revealing insight and hope into a human being striving to find himself.

With Romeo Tirone’s photography of red-accented sets following Dexter in slow motion to the incredible music of Daniel Licht and Rolfe Kent, we savor more than a cop show/slasher film, for things have elevated to the realm of fine art.  Kafka meets Fellini.  Dexter’s darkly witty inner monologues, heard as voice-overs, revealing his conflicts and terrors, are some of the best lines in the show.  When innocently asked if there was anything unusual in his background, we hear Dexter’s mind comment wryly : “Like, mom was killed by a chainsaw; my brother was killed by…well, me — that kind of stuff?”  His brother was also a serial killer but one with no moral code, of course.

Everyone, at some time or another, has a secret they don’t want revealed.  Dexter, whom the audience comes to empathize with, obviously has his share, which keeps us all on the edge of our seats, as his fellow police workers, including his sister, get closer and closer toward catching him.  One can certainly count on this show to deliver suspense.

Hall’s nuanced portrayal of seemingly mild-mannered Dexter —  passive-aggressive is putting it mildly — has a worthy match in his love interest Rita, played by Julie Benz.  Call it that “Rene Zellweger in Jerry McGuire” quotient, Benz can say more her eyes — tearing up as she looks into Dexter’s — than a lesser actress can say with 200 pages.

The four episodes we have seen so far of Season 3, while piling up its requisite share of victims, delivers some major turns and surprises. Significant new arrival is Emmy-winning Jimmy Smits, playing an ambitious assistant D.A. whose unlikely alliance with Dexter gives “blood brothers” a whole new meaning.  Also joining the force is enigmatic Joey Quinn, played by  Desmond Harrington, as a hip, brilliant detective under some sort of mysterious investigation himself that we can assume will reveal itself by the end of the season.

Returning ensemble are Jennifer Carpenter as Dexter’s dorky-cop sister, David Zayas as skirt-chasing Detective Angel Batista, an actual ex-cop playing a quite believable cop, Lauren Velez as the hot, hot-blooded Lieutenant LaGuerta, and C.S. Lee as geeky forensic nerd Vince Masuka.

Season 3 episodes of 'Dexter' premiere on Showtime, Sunday nights at 9pm EST/PST beginning September 28.