Looking At Dexter’s First Season Makes Me Remember Why I Loved It The First Time
A Personal and Cultural Retrospective
The idea that Netflix invented binge-watching is something of a myth. To watch an entire season of any television show was something that one could do during the early years of the Golden Age of TV. Practicality was another matter.
I remember when I was watching cable at the start of this millennium that many networks would often rerun entire seasons of shows after they had first aired. FX would run the first and second seasons of 24 after the first two years had aired; HBO did the same for many of its original series such as The Sopranos in marathons leading up to the premiere of the new season and the Sci-Fi channel reran seasons of Battlestar Galactica on multiple occasions leading up its final season and beyond that. Whether anyone was willing to be home in order to sit through them is a question that I can’t answer for certain but the couch potato existed before Netflix began streaming television so it’s more than likely.
But the network that was the most devoted to it and has been more than willing to stand by that model even after a change in ownership was Showtime. I don’t remember when they began it for certain but throughout the period that so many of their best original series were on the air; whether it was The L Word or Homeland, Nurse Jackie or The Affair, Showtime was always willing to run marathons of its original series. There was a method to that madness when their shows were in their original run. Before the season finale of a series like, say, The Chi they would air on at least one of their networks the entire season leading to the premiere of the season finale. Then in the lead up to the second season of, say, Penny Dreadful they’d air the entire first season before the premiere of the second. In an era when streaming was unheard of this demonstrated a measure of respect for the fans: it acknowledged that they might have forgotten the details of their favorite show or might just want to see it again before the new season started.
This is something I could respect even if I didn’t fit my own viewing patterns. There’s something that even twenty years into my habits as a viewer that resists the binge-watching model, even when it comes to series I love. I can handle watching one episode of a series, maybe two but after that I go into a certain sensory overload and have to move on to something else. That maybe my personal issue with binge-watching (along with, as I’ve mentioned previous, all the other problems its led to over the years for television as a whole)
I don’t regret this decision but in a sense I know its hurt me multiple times because these days how all networks tend to show any previous season. Recently HBO reran all of Deadwood two separate times over the last two weeks. Deadwood is still one of my favorite series of all time and I would gladly welcome the possibility to rewatch it again. But I’d like to do it at my own pace and not at the demand of a marathon. The same could be said for previous seasons of other shows that I missed during their first run but would like to watch at a measured pace now. But with Showtime and HBO you tend to get one shot and its all at once. Consequently over the years I’ve missed multiple occasions either to look at series I might have liked more had I gotten a better chance — The Affair is the most recent example — or that need to be savored more than binged — Billions is the best example of that.
But recently an opportunity has arisen to do this at a modified pace. No doubt as an effort to prepare viewers for the prequel series that is soon to come, Showtime has started to air at least the first season of Dexter on Sundays two episodes at a time. This has been an approach to rewatching a series I have always preferred: I did so for shows like Big Love and The Wire when they did so back in the 2000s and it’s a way that fits my mindset. So, even though I still want to finish the second season of The Bear before Sunday I decided to watch the first two episodes of Dexter tonight. And as often is the case with so many shows I’ve been a fan of in my viewing career, I’m reminded of why I fell in love with the show in the first place as well as certain details I had forgotten with the passage of time.
Rewatching both the pilot and the second episode I’m struck my several things both about Dexter himself and all the characters in his orbit. Since this may well become a recurring series (at least for Season 1) I’m going to limit my initial impressions on what we get from Dexter in the first few episodes as well the two major characters who have sadly become the most criticized by the fandom and indeed social media in the nearly twenty years since we first saw the show.
First of all I should mention that unlike any series with an antihero at the center I’d seen before and almost none since that James Manos and Clyde Philips, the two men who created the show made two brilliant decisions when it came to their protagonist.
Tony Soprano was someone who we gradually realized was a monster. Vic Mackey’s actions we could excuse because he was a cop. Don Draper was just a misogynist at first; we only gradually realized what a mess he was. And it may have taken us until the final season of Breaking Bad to realize that Walter White had been the villain the whole series. None of them, it should be added, show any signs of self-awareness or an ability to change from their unpleasant tendencies and most of them get even worse as the show’s progress.
Dexter is unique in a way we never saw before and really haven’t seen since. He is aware — and the narration ensures we know this — that he is a monster. It’s not just that we see him kill someone in the first five minutes; it’s that his interior monologue makes it very clear that there’s a void in him that doesn’t make him connect. I’m reminded of a line Andy Kaufmann used in Taxi as a joke to Danny DeVito: “What do you think of the human race? I’m looking for an outsider’s opinion.” Dexter’s monologue, particularly in the pilot and the first seasons, makes it clear to us that Dexter has a similar sense of detachment.
More to the point he has a self-awareness of that fact in a way none of the characters I’ve listed and very few others in this century have. This is a man who knows that he as an outsider, not from society but in the entire world. He tends to take everything at face value (he can’t pick up on Angel’s jokes, for one) and his behavior walking into the police station shows a person who has to engage in performance twenty-four hours a day. One of the things the show never goes into detail in its flashbacks with Harry is whether Harry managed to show him how to fit into society when he was developing the code. (I actually hope that the prequel series shows that part.) Perhaps the writers are making a comment on society as a whole as to how killers get away with their crimes and the flaws in policing: Dexter himself mentions in the pilot how in Miami Metro Doakes is the only one who notices something is off about him — and that everyone else in the station just shrugs that off to a clash of personality rather than Doakes’s is the only one who has a clue.
The best shows in television are so perfect in their casting that you can’t imagine anyone else playing the role. Dexter’s unique in that regard as well. In The Sopranos and Mad Men James Gandolfini and Jon Hamm, respectively, were relative unknowns when they were cast. Michael Chiklis has played cops before but no one could have pictured him as the one he played in The Shield. And anyone who would have thought the man best known for playing Hal in Malcolm in the Middle could play Walter White in 2008 would have called you crazy. But in the case of Dexter Michael C. Hall was the perfect choice even before a single episode aired. This was, after all, the man who had just played David Fisher on Six Feet Under for five seasons. Throughout the series we saw him constantly wearing a mask either in his professional capacity as an undertaker or as we learned in the first season, someone who had been hiding his sexuality from the world all his life. David Fisher also regularly had conversations with dead people — something that the show would put into effect starting in Season 3 — and was more than capable of emotional outbursts in private. Hall hadn’t played a serial killer but considering how much in touch he was with death on Six Feet Under the real question is why he took the role: you’d think he’d spent enough time with death and restraint to want to do a comedy.
The most critical part of the show, one that takes a little time to dawn on us, is that’s a reversal of so many series we’d gotten used to and would later on. And it’s here that we get to the second part of this review which deals with the women in Dexter’s life.
In a book I read about Dexter not long after the fifth season aired a writer wrote an essay about three female characters that they referred to as “Dexter’s angels.” In the writer’s mind these characters were the ones that brought out the parts of Dexter’s nature that he truly didn’t think he had: the human connection. Particularly in the first half of the series (generally agreed to be the creative highpoint of the show) Dexter’s relationship with all three women were the key to the show — which is why it’s disturbing that so many fans loathed the two most prominent ones.
We meet the first one briefly in the pilot: Camilla, the woman who works in the records at Miami Metro. Camilla is a recurring character in the series and you could be forgiven for forgetting here. I certainly did with the passage not only of the series as it progressed but with the passage of time itself. But there are multiple reasons, particularly in the first two seasons why she’s so important.
When Dexter enters Miami Metro with doughnuts he goes out of his way to go see Camilla. Camilla’s in her late fifties and she has a maternal air to her that Dexter himself is unaware of. (I’ll be curious to know if we see Dexter’s foster mother in the prequel series; she’s basically absent in the flashbacks.)
Dexter’s behavior seems a little faked in every interaction we’ve seen so far (save one, which I’ll get back too) but with Camilla he seems more genuine in a way we have seen yet. This is in part because he’s asking her to go over old crime files to serve his baser instinct but we’ll see he’s more than capable of doing this without help as early as the second episode. It’s clear given Hall’s performance that he seems to feel something beyond the usual front he puts up. He looks more at ease around her and he doesn’t stumble verbally the way he will with most other characters. There’s an argument that Camilla is the mother Dexter never truly had and he may not be able to acknowledge it to himself.
I must confess that it wasn’t until the second or even the third time I watched the first season again I realized that Camilla was played by none other than ‘Emmy-winner Margo Martindale’ as she is famously known on BoJack Horseman. I didn’t even make the connect by the time I saw what was her breakthrough role as Mags Bennett on Justified in 2011 (which won her the first of her three Emmys to date). But in my defense it is tribute to the kind of actress Martindale is that you can’t square the same woman who played Mags Bennett and then Sylvia, the Jennings’ handler on The Americans with the kindly woman we see here joking with Dexter. Mainly its because with Camilla there’s no guile, no steel and no meanness: she’s genuinely a good person who cares with no agenda. So it’s tribute to Martindale in that sense I couldn’t make the connection.
The next character who has been the subject of a huge amount of toxicity from fans even while the show was on the air was Deb, Dexter’s foster sister played incredibly by Jennifer Carpenter. I suspect that the loathing for Carpenter is much for the same reason that Skyler took so much vitriol from fans on Breaking Bad: she appears to be the person who is standing in the way of our ‘hero’ from doing what we love him for. It’s hard to comprehend this because Dexter is a vigilante and no one seemed to mind if he outwitted Angel or Doakes. The toxic misogyny is strong in this one.
But it’s clear from the start of the show that Dexter does feel comfortable with her in a way that he pretends he doesn’t. He tells us “I’m not capable of liking people but if I did I’d like her.” And that’s just not true from the moment we hear her on his answering machine: he gives a smile of fondness he’s probably not aware of.
It’s clear from the very start that Dexter is a good big brother despite not being able to understand the dynamic. There’s clearly affection in the way the two of them banter that comes from being siblings; a mutual respect for Deb at Dexter’s capability to figure things out; the way he clearly wants his sister to advance at Miami Metro. He clearly respects both her vulnerability and her compassion, both qualities he knows he doesn’t have. He knows he has to be the most careful around her because he fears what it will be like if she ever learns who he truly is. (Those fears, as we know by the end of the series, are completely warranted.)
Carpenter nails Deb as solidly as Hall nails Dexter in the pilot. There’s something refreshing about where the female character on a cable series then (and now) is by far the most foul-mouthed character on the show. Deb’s profanity is at the level of the characters in Deadwood but unlike them it’s clear as much a mask as Dexter’s. Deb knows how hard it is to advance as a cop as a woman and she clearly curses and is profane about her sexual habits because she wants to show the locker room talk doesn’t scare her. She knows that female cops are considered weaker and have to work twice as hard and while she has pull in the department because of who her family is she clearly wants to make it on her own.
This is made clear in one of the better conflicts in the first season and one of the best ones throughout the series: the relationship between Deb and LaGuerta (Lauren Velez). LaGuerta is clearly a political animal who likely endured the same sexism climbing the ladder that Deb is dealing with but from the start it makes it clear she holds as toxic a view to women cops as her male counterparts. When Deb tries to talk about the refrigerated truck where the bloodless bodies are being dumped, LaGuerta immediately shuts Deb down and demands to go back to looking for a witness. When Deb and Dexter find the ice truck in the second episode LaGuerta immediately reads Deb the riot act for going against her orders. Chain of commands matters more than a break in the case to LaGuerta. It’s not until Deputy Chief Matthews (Geoff Pierson) essentially shows up at the crime scene that LaGuerta promotes Deb from Vice to Homicide in a brilliant scene in which she says in front of Matthews how impressed she is by the work with her body language arguing the complete opposite. Deb relishes that moment later on.
During Dexter’s run on the air female led cop dramas would begin to dominate cable and network TV, from The Closer and Major Crimes and Law and Order: SVU and other procedurals. Deb is as heroic and complicated as any of the female leads and has a clearer sense of right and wrong that some of them don’t. So why has her character been labeled annoying at best and one of the worst character on TV? I would have considered Deb the true hero of Dexter during the time it was on the air and she still comes away with the greatest moral clarity. The toxic misogyny is the only explanation for so many who hate Dexter’s second angel.
But if the contempt for Deb is baffling the similar contempt for the third is absolutely horrifying. Rita Bennett, who Julie Benz played exceptionally for four seasons, was arguably the show’s most constant form of goodness throughout the series. We know in their first meeting that Dexter chose her for camouflage purposes which might explain why some people think she was being used. Those people clearly chose to omit her backstory which Dexter tells us.
Rita’s husband Paul was guilty of domestic abuse, regularly beating and raping his wife before he was finally put in prison. Dexter points out that Rita in her own way is as damaged as he is but it’s clear that he (unlike so many online trolls) never judges her for it.
Even if we allow the fact that Rita may have started as a beard its worth noting that in Dexter’s scenes both with her and Astor and Cody he seems unguarded in a way we don’t see at any other point in the Pilot. If its an act he’s putting on it’s a very good one: he truly seems to love every moment he’s with Astor and Cody and acts like a truly good father. And he has a similar level of honesty with Rita. The main reason he agreed to date her was because this is a relationship he doesn’t think will involve sex and he believes passion will lead to his monster coming out. (This is just one of many areas where Dexter is clearly wrong.) But it’s clear in his scenes with her that he gets the small moments right in a way Rita hasn’t had.
It’s clear in his interior monologues that while he’s great at killing monsters and cutting their bodies up the idea of comforting his girlfriend is too big an obstacle for him. Yet in the second episode it’s clear he has the ability to do that.
The biggest argument for Rita being annoying is that she was hopelessly naïve as to who she was dating and later married too. First of all, it’s worth noting this is basically true for almost every character he interacts with, including the regulars. And considering that knowledge of Dexter’s true self often leads to horrific consequences throughout the show it’s hard to argue why you want her too.
You could also argue that Rita, like many battered women who leave abusive relationships, are drawn to people they think are protectors but are really just another monster. Her attitude, in accepting so many of Dexter’s excuses over the series, may very well just be another version of the ones she kept telling hers each time Paul beat her. This is a pattern we’ve seen throughout television in the years to follow, most notably with Celeste Wright on Big Little Lies and Sally on Barry. And for all the flaws in Dexter’s character during the four years of their relationship he never physically hurts Rita or her children. (I’ll leave aside everything involved Harrison and his origins for another article down the line.)
What seems to be going with the attitude towards Rita, sadly, seems more a case of the internet literally deciding to blame the victim. This is even sadder than with Deb because Rita is the only series regular who is entirely an innocent. And in a sense Benz’s work was a revelation from where most viewers knew here: her work as Darla, the vampire who sired Angel in Joss Whedon’s Buffy-verse. There’s no guile with Rita, all she wants is to be a good mother to her children and a good girlfriend to Dexter. Benz completely nails the broken aspects of Rita in the first episodes, someone who wants badly to move on from her relationship but can’t seem to get past her trauma. There’s an argument Dexter is better matched with her than any of the other broken women he will be involved with during the series, even those who learn his secrets. Yes Dexter is putting on a front with her he doesn’t with any of the others but in this case the front is something that is actually healthier for him then revealing his darkness.
That may be, in hindsight, the most revolutionary thing about Dexter. In a way it’s a reversal of what we famously see unfold on Breaking Bad. Walter White spends the length of the series becoming the monster he always had the potential to be. Dexter Morgan begins the show as a monster and finds himself, almost unwittingly, become more of a human being. That thesis, as we shall see, makes up the bulk of the first season.