Reviewed by Alicia Glass
Company: Clyde Phillips Productions
Studio: Showtime
Age: 17+
Review Rating: 9 out of 10
Dexter Morgan is a Miami Police Department blood forensics analyst by day and moonlights as a vigilante serial killer by night. Based on the “Darkly Dreaming Dexter” books by Jeff Lindsay.
You wouldn’t think that a show about a murdering serial killer would steal everyones heart, but there you have it. Dexter is incredibly popular, already on its third season, and shows absolutely no signs of slowing down. The Dexter panel at this years Comic-Con 2008 was so packed, they had to stop letting people into the Hall before the panel even started, and there was almost a riot!
Dexter is a remarkably complicated character, a self admitted monster, who has all sorts of rules and especially the Code, to keep him from getting caught. His adoptive policeman father Harry, who discovered what Dexter was at an early age and actually helped Dexter control his urges by allowing them to flower in tightly confined ways, along with coming up with the Code, is an amazement to watch. Dexter’s sister Debra also works for the Miami police department, but she’s a rabid fan of the legal way of doing things for the most part, and generally skates along on one horrid boyfriend after another. Dexter has a girlfriend, Rita, who has two small children and is coming off a bad divorce, so in the beginning she’s meek and broken and the perfect cover for Dexter. (Just wait til Rita grows a pair; it happens.)
At the police department where Dexter works, we have La Guerta, the female police Lieutenant who’s usually a bureaucrat, but tries to hold everything together when things get insane. Sergeant James Doakes suspects Dexter of everything he can possibly think of, and is determined to expose him. And the other Detectives, Angel Batista, and Vince Masuka provide background that beefs up the story. Not that it needs it, but hey, we can’t have Dexter killing bad guys 24-7, much as we’d like to.
Almost every episode is narrated by Dexter himself, as the action happens, so you can hear him plot in a thorough and methodical way. Somehow, the TV show gods ended up picking just the right person to play Dexter himself, Michael C. Hall of Six Feet Under fame does a phenomenal job.
Most people can’t get enough of Dexter. Whether it’s serial killing monster or avenging vigilante, Dexter is the next generation of entertainment at it’s finest!