Dexter Season 1 Episode 12

Borrrrrn freeeee, as free as the wind blows, as free as the grass grows... Or, free of sense and logic and morals. That's not such a good thing to be free of. Silly Dexter.

Right. Last episode. That means, once I've written this review, I'm free. Free! Free from trying to figure out why Miami police are so stupid, free from trying to figure out how Deb doesn't just snap in half, free from trying not to cry as my intelligence gets repeatedly battered every week...

So, Dexter knows who the Ice Truck Killer is. He's got DNA evidence, too. (Which you'd think he should maybe tell someone about?) Doakes and Laguerta know who the Ice Truck Killer is, too, and finally so does Deb, the silly cow. All of this is dealt with pretty quickly, which is a relief. For some reason, a new lieutenant has been hired to start work in the middle of the Ice Truck Killer case, right when an officer has been kidnapped and is probably being murdered right this minute. Really not very bright, are they? It's weird how sometimes there's actually a sense of urgency this episode, and then everyone just stands around yapping for ages instead. I really wish the office politics wouldn't keep intruding into policework in the way that they do. I hope that's not realistic.

Okay. Dexter knows where the Ice Truck Killer will have taken Deb, because it's linked to his childhood, and he's finally remembered that he's got a brother, so that takes care of who the Ice Truck Killer really and truly is. Hands up who figured that out at least six weeks ago? Ugh.

Remember that weird eating-in-the-car joke they shoved down our throats in the first and second episodes and then forgot all about? (Have we even seen Dexter driving since then? It's all a blur now.) It turns out there was a point, and there was even a point to Dexter having been eating a banana: the Ice Truck Killer/Rudy/Biney/Brian is doing it now too. Well, that was worthwhile, wasn't it?

That's not the only thing that's back from the early shitty episodes, either - the rubbish dialogue is back with a vengeance. Quote of the week: "... his happy place, where he kills more than time." Gag me. Bleurghhh. And while I'm on the subject of killing more than time: if that home refrigeration unit would have taken years to put in, then why weren't the first few bodies frozen? Why did he need an ice truck if he already had a walk-in freezer in his house? Why have we been calling him the Ice Truck Killer, considering how irrelevant the ice truck turned out to be? Does this hurt anyone else as much as it hurts me?

Breathe.

I really like the dynamic between Doakes and Laguerta now that they're partners again. That's how it's meant to be. It's nice. Rita showing up while Dexter's in the middle of running about trying to track down Deb isn't so nice: why does everyone in this show take everything so personally? Fuck, not everything is about you. Fuck off, Rita.

Now, here's where having read the book really comes in handy. In the book, the idea that Dexter was closely linked with the Ice Truck Killer, maybe to the point of actually BEING the Ice Truck Killer, was a big deal. It's been almost completely obliterated in the series. But that closeness is what they're trying to evoke now, and it's not really working. There's no real temptation for Dexter to give up trying to be human and go be with his brother, because the Miami police actually know what's going on this time. There's no way Dexter could kill Deb and make nice with his brother; all that tension is gone, because we just know it isn't going to happen. So all the conflict that should have been in this episode has evaporated, which is a massive shame.

Plus it doesn't help that I'm actually hoping someone will kill Deb, whether it's Dexter or Brian.

Eventually, as we all know, Dexter does the 'right' thing and Brian gets his comeuppance, and everyone lives happily ever after. But not before a horrible conversation with Rita along the lines of 'the poor thing must be a mess, falling for a serial killer'/'what are the odds?' re: Deb and Brian. Well, higher than you'd think, Rita. P.S. I hate you.

It's a shame that most of this episode sucked. I love Mousaka's little aside about the apparently suicided Brian: "It's retarded. Look at him. He's dead." I love the Dexter parade. I don't love the over-abundance of alliteration when they summed up how damaged everyone is, and I don't love...

I don't love this series. I wish I did, but I don't think I can keep watching. There are some snappy one-liners that genuinely make me smile, and I'll miss those. I'll miss Michael C. Hall's spot-on facial expressions. I'll miss the few moments of poignancy the writers have managed to squeeze out of Angel's ongoing heartbreak. But I won't miss being constantly treated like I'm an attention-deficit idiot by writers who apparently never moved on from blunt crayons. Sorry, Dex. I wanted to love you.

Originally published at Den of Geek.

Dexter Season 1 Episode 11

It's almost the end of the series now. Probably for the best. We've known for sure who the Ice Truck Killer is since episode 8, so it's just getting annoying that the characters don't know who he is. Dexter's smug observation that it's funny that only Doakes has realised there's something off about him has come back to bite him in the ass, hasn't it - how come you can't recognise your own, Dex? The Ice Truck Killer is right under your nose and you're too stupid to notice. Pffft.

Speaking of Doakes, I think he annoys me for the same reason that Deb does - both of them constantly run around telling everyone else how they should feel. Or, how they should show how they're feeling, I guess. It's stupid. Particularly Deb. You know, I think I'd quite like it if the Ice Truck Killer offed Deb. She's asking for it.

Anyway. The Ice Truck Killer is clearly trying to tie up all his loose ends now - offing the prostitute who remembered him, as well as trying to kill Angel. Happily, Angel is awesome and didn't get killed (just put in the hospital so he can be in the right place at the right time later, and come up with some useful info...) For some reason, Dexter seems determined to find enough evidence to convict the Ice Truck Killer before they find out who he is, for sure, which is kind of odd, especially if the ending goes the same way it did in the book. (I'm trying to forget I know about that, really I am, but it's all so stupid...)

You know, most of the things that used to enrage me about this series are now sort of acceptable. I like Michael C Hall a lot more now. He seems to narrowly avoid most of the clunkier lines; most of the rampant stupidity is handed off to Deb, instead.

But lots of the characters are changing; they're not being portrayed in the same way they were at the beginning of the series, and though in some cases this is a good thing, in others it's a bit nonsensical. Take Laguerta, for example. To begin with, she was the bitch who was preventing Deb from getting a promotion; pig-headed, obsessed with her media coverage, a sly politician but a rubbish cop. Now, though, she's become sympathetic, even funny, and more determined to catch the right guy than just look good to the press. I'm not sure why, though? If anything, the altered Laguerta just makes Deb seems even more annoying by comparison.

I need to take some deep breaths. I really want to just forget these last two episodes happened. What have we learned? Well, that the records of the crime scene Dexter was found at have been destroyed. That Rudy isn't Rudy, but he is the Ice Truck Killer. Or, no, we already knew that... that Deb is very stupid? Ummm... okay, that Angel is the emotional centre of this programme. That's something nice to focus on, I'll think about that. I love Angel. He's my favourite. I wish they wouldn't use him in the deus ex machina way they did this episode, but I like that there's someone in there I can empathise with. Obviously Dexter's not much use as an emotional focus, so the writers did at least do a good thing with giving me Angel to watch.

In other news, I still really hate Paul. Won't someone in prison please kill him in his sleep? The Lesson of the Week seems to have been "don't lie to kids or else", I guess. They're getting less clear cut. Is that good or not? I like the way that the nauseating Steadicam was finally used in order to be deliberately dizzying this time, rather than just because the production team doesn't own a tripod, but that was pretty much a flashback sequence, wasn't it? And it's not as if they don't flag up every tiny bit of evidence as they go along anyway...

I think I'm going to hang my decision on whether or not I liked this series overall on the season finale. Not long to go now.

Originally published at Den of Geek.

Dexter Season 1 Episode 10

People this episode who are 'Seeing Red': Dexter, Sarah. Is this the worst episode of this series so far? Probably.

This has to be one of the least consistent shows ever to grace television. How is it possible for some episodes to be so clever, so subtle, so funny, and generally so enjoyable, and then for other episodes to be so painfully bad? It only took about ten minutes for this episode to break my will to live. Or at least, my will to continue sitting in front of my TV.

Remember how, last week, Rita smacked Paul around the head with a baseball bat instead of calling the police? Or even calling Dexter, who's both her protective boyfriend AND associated with the police? Well, turns out she's now being charged with assault. Even though supposedly Dexter filed a police report because Paul broke in and threatened her, somehow that got lost in the system and instead Rita's being charged with assault.

Despite the fact that Paul has a history of spousal abuse and has just got out of jail for drug dealing.

But no, they're going to arrest Rita and possibly award Paul custody of the two children. Honestly? I nearly switched the TV off, or at least screamed in rage. There is no way, even assuming the entire Miami police force is as incompetent as the homicide department have been proven to be, that this would happen. It's just stupid. Cripplingly stupid.

So there's that. But if I spend any more time worrying about that, I'm going to go completely insane, so let's move onto the plot thread that makes me less angry: a jar of blood has been mailed to the Miami police's homicide department, and inside the jar is a key. And inside the room that the key leads to? Lots of blood. Lots, and lots of blood. Into which Dexter promptly falls face first, because the sight of all that blood is stirring up long-buried memories in his sociopathic little head...

It seems that this whole season has been a case of the Ice Truck Killer playing games with Dexter, trying to provoke him to remember something about what happened prior to his adoption. And it's all gone a bit weird now: the clues are getting more obvious, with the killer flagging up several instances of the number 103, as well as just sending Dex the key instead of letting him find his way there of his own accord. (We know it's the Ice Truck Killer, by the way, because all the blood came from the five bloodless victims... actually, why am I still calling him the Ice Truck Killer since a) the ice truck was a complete irrelevance, and b) we know who he is now? Old habits die hard, I guess.) 10:3 is blatantly a date, by the way. It'll either be October 3rd, or March 10th; probably the former, since this is American. Maybe I should become a police officer?

Meanwhile, Mousaka and Angel have gone out clubbing to some club that doesn't exist anywhere on Earth except on TV, and they've uncovered another lead: a prostitute with a prosthetic hand, and all the fingernails have been painted different colours, like one of the Ice Truck Killer's previous victims. She remembers servicing a client who painted her fingers those colours in the first place - a lead! Hurrah! One that doesn't even depend on Dexter!

And also meanwhile, Deb is really annoying, and Dexter's using power tools to spatter blood all over some walls. Hee. Rudy/Ice Truck Killer does some good skulking about, generally being suspicious when Angel comes calling and by bringing over some steaks to Dexter's house (why does Dexter keep one knife in a drawer all by itself? That's not suspicious at all, Dex...). Something's gone wrong with him, and he's stopped being all charming and nice and started just being a creep. Maybe that's because we know who he is, now, but I think they've also changed the way he's being written. And not for the better.

The final five minutes were a bit packed, weren't they? Paul's back in jail - despite, um, Dexter's completely random stupidity - and Angel's been stabbed. Noooooo! Angel's the only character I like! Damn you, Dexter, damn your eyes.

Originally published at Den of Geek.

Dexter Season 1 Episode 9

The killer's closing the net - actually, he's practically dancing around wearing a t-shirt that says "I kill whores" under Dexter's nose. And smug old Dexter hasn't even noticed...

Is anyone else really, really, really annoyed by Deb? She's unbearable. Unbearable. She's just a horrible brat who whines all the time about how she doesn't get promoted and can't keep a boyfriend - because she's rubbish at her job and she's really annoying. She pretty much deserves everything she gets.

Anyway, now we know who the killer is, it's all turning into an elaborate game of cat and mouse - with Dexter in the role of mouse, something he's really not accustomed to. Another odd thing about this episode is that half of it has been shifted out of Miami, about five hours up the motorway - something is about to rock Dexter's world in a way he never would have expected. He's been left a house in his father's will. Yeah, his real father, the one his adopted father had told him was dead. Turns out dependable Harry lied; and since most of Dexter's life is based on following Harry's teachings, this causes a bit of a problem. Or, it would, if Deb would shut her mouth for long enough for Dexter to hear himself think.

Obviously an episode about Dexter's real family and adopted family is going to feature a lot of flashbacks. And it does indeed feature a lot of flashbacks. Dexter can't believe that Harry would have lied to him, but DNA tests don't lie. The next thing Dexter can't believe is that his real father died of natural causes, because apparently blood spatter analysis requires you to know everything about everything related to medicine. (Maybe it does? Anyone know?) In the course of his investigations, he breaks into a morgue, has a chat with a mad little old lady, and goes for a nice drive with the Ice Truck Killer. Deb, meanwhile, goes absolutely apeshit, aside from a peaceful interlude where she dances like a moron instead of helping to pack. She really is pointless; she's now replaced Rita as my most disliked character.

Speaking of Rita - every time Paul turns up and does something threatening and no-one calls the police, I've been scrawling "RESTRAINING ORDER" across my notebook. A quick tally shows I've currently done this seven times, with one added "CALL THE POLICE!" These people are stupid. Especially Paul.

The theme this week, in case anyone missed it, was "honesty." Which is where the Laguerta/wannabe killer and bizarre Doakes/Angel subplots come in. It's odd that the fake killer has chosen to ridicule Laguerta over how she got her promotion, because every time they tell that story, it sounds like she actually deserved it. Which, um, isn't really very humiliating. Can't this nonsense be over yet? I'm really bored of the smug pretend-Ice Truck Killer.

I'm not particularly drawn into Doakes subplot, either - by the end of the episode, we've gathered that while he was in the military, he encountered some particularly brutal and evil people; he spotted one in Miami; he shot the guy. Except the lies Doakes is telling don't make sense; okay, he has to lie because he was wrong to shoot the guy (except in Dexter logic, which is a cool parallel I didn't notice till I came to type this very sentence) but he's lying in really obvious ways that can be proven to be false. Couldn't he just concede that he was standing somewhere else when he shot the guy? What difference does it make, other than to make it really obvious he's lying? ARGH.

I can't decide if I like this episode or not. There are some wonderful touches - like when Dexter calls Mousaka and says "Hi, it's Dexter Morgan" and gets a quick "Dude, I know your last name" in response; and yet there's some utter nonsense in there, too. I also can't decide how I feel about the blatant Jeff Lindsay shoutout: "...making sure dear Dexter's dealing decently with his dead dad" is not a sentence anyone would say in real life, but it made me laugh. What the hell, I'm in a good mood; this can go on the good list.

Originally published at Den of Geek.

Dexter Season 1 Episode 8

How do you get an 18 rating? Violence - check. Swearing - check. Sex - aha! That's what Dexter's been missing, clearly. Better make up for lost time, then...

Oh well. I should've known they wouldn't let me be smug for long - yup, we now know who the Ice Truck Killer is. I'm sort of glad, because if it wasn't intentionally obvious, then it was just horrific writing. But no, we were supposed to be able to tell who he was, and now it's been confirmed onscreen, so the final four episodes will just be a case of waiting for Dexter to catch on. I like this much more than I liked the way it was handled in the book, though there's one element of the guy's identity we don't know yet, and I'll keep schtum about that.

Though you've probably worked it out already, because it's not a particularly hard thing to figure out. But still, I shan't spoil it if you haven't.

Anyway. Apparently, someone must have noticed that despite all the chopping up of bodies and rampant swearing, there's been very little sex in Dexter thus far. So this week, everyone has sex. A lot. There's very little actually happening in this episode, because it's all character-driven stuff; and that's a really nice change of pace for this show. What little plot there is is mostly wrapped up with Laguerta interrogating the wannabe-Ice Truck Killer, and Dexter's Victim Of The Week. Happily, it's not just any old Victim Of The Week; it's actually an interesting one. Dexter's initial crime scene was that of an apparent suicide; a business woman who shot herself in the face. But it's not as clear cut as it sounds, because Dexter's seen this before - three times in the last couple of years, successful women with everything going for them have randomly shot themselves. And they all had the same psychiatrist...

Cue lots and lots of scenes of Dexter chatting about his deep dark issues with a creepy shrink. I can't quite decide if I like this, or whether the number of lines that will blatantly be lifted and shoved into trailers for the series annoy me. (See: "I'm a sociopath", "I'm a serial killer" "I kill people", etc.) Overall, I think I liked it, though the writers do seem to be taking Dexter in a weird direction. Instead of actually being the empty sociopath they kept telling us he was, he's actually just a damaged man who'd quite like to be loved. Rather than having him be repulsed by sex and physical contact, he's actually just afraid that if he has sex with Rita, he'll open himself up to her and she'll be scared by what she finds out enough to leave him. Which is sweet, if not quite in keeping with the person they keep telling us Dexter is. There's a bit of a disconnect between what they say, and what they do, but I think this'll be sorted out in series two.

I want to ignore the Laguerta/wannabe killer subplot, but that would be a bit irresponsible. It's just that, once again, this plot seems to make the police out to be utter incompetents, and I really don't like it when they do that. There's always some bizarre power play going on - between the officers themselves, and between the officers and the criminals - and this time, Laguerta seems to be... I can't figure this out. She seems to think that the guy they've arrested might not be the Ice Truck Killer, which is pretty astute, for her, but she's... arguing with him trying to get him to prove that he is? With bribes? Or... what? Is she trying to prove he is the guy, even though she thinks he actually isn't, or what? Baffling. Either way, we know for sure now that he's not the killer, so spending this amount of time on the wrong guy seems a bit daft.

My final thought for the week: the "Ice Truck Killer"? It's a bit of a misnomer, isn't it, considering he only used an ice truck in about one episode? I really wish I'd given him a clever name of my own. The guy mostly kills prostitutes, so you'd think someone would throw the word "ripper" in there somewhere, but they haven't. Oh well, too late now.

Originally published at Den of Geek.

Dexter Season 1 Episode 7

Dexter's past comes back to haunt him again, and - was Deb actually right about something? Bloody hell. If this keeps up, even Laguerta might learn from her past mistakes...

I love it when we get to see Dexter actually doing his job. Like, his real job, the one he gets paid for, the one he very rarely does because he's too busy either killing people or skulking around crime scenes suspiciously while not ever doing anything useful. So, anyway, we open on a crime scene, and a very stylish one, at that, all pink lights and pretty surroundings with a corpse right in the middle, and Dexter actually, you know, looks at the blood spatter and the knife wounds and realises... he's seen this before. He knows who did it. That floppy-haired kid from episode 3, the one Dexter thought he could see himself in, has killed again. Which means Dexter fucked up by not killing him. Oops.

Meanwhile, Deb and Angel have a lead on the Ice Truck Killer, and the evidence is mounting up: the guy's home is full of photos of crime scenes which were never released to the press; there's a ton of what they're calling "crypto-taxidermy", weird misshapen stuffed animals, basically; and the guy's computer cache is full of websites on how to carve up human bodies. It doesn't look good, but it's also all circumstantial evidence. And, brilliantly, the episode actually acknowledges as much.

Right, so that's two stories, are we ready for a third? Naturally, it's a Rita subplot, and, if anyone took my bet last week, cough up now, please. Rita's husband (yeah, they're not actually divorced, oops) is out of jail and back in her life, picking up the kids from school and randomly bringing doughnuts round for breakfast. And no-one mentions the restraining order, or calls the police, or in fact does anything other than look a bit scared. Good casting on this guy, by the way; he looks almost exactly like Michael C. Hall, which is a nice touch.

I'm getting a bit tired of Rita, though. Granted, the scene where Rita and Dexter are rubbing one another's feet and confiding in one another is nice; they're much more intimate with one another than they were six episodes ago, for one thing, and it's cute. The conversation where she confesses she thinks there's something wrong with her because she only falls for men with dark sides (until Dexyboy, of course) is nice, too, because you get the moment of empathy for Rita, but then the scene continues - just long enough to bring the focus back round to Dexter; where it should be, since he's the star of the show and all.

This narrowly misses out on being my favourite moment of the week, both because Rita is starting to grate on my nerves, and because there's that bit where Dexter's spouting off about how this guy they've arrested couldn't possibly be the Ice Truck Killer, but in the background, they're digging up a corpse. That's lovely. That, right there. Do that more often. I like it.

The different threads in this episode tie up a little clumsily towards the end - the interrogations are a bit odd, as is Dexter's random rounds of the prison, but because everything ends properly, it's kind of okay. There's still a slight problem with obviousness, though. Because from where I'm sitting, it's horribly clear that a) the guy they've arrested might have kidnapped one hooker, but he's just a murder groupie and nowhere near good enough to be the Ice Truck Killer, and b) that guy Debs is chatting up at the hospital IS THE ICE TRUCK KILLER.

Obviously, I don't actually know that, because I haven't seen the rest of the series, but since my last bet paid off: cash money on it being him. It's blatantly him. They couldn't have signposted that any more clearly, at all. It's him it's him it's him. It's got to be!

Aaahhh. As creepy as Dexter's final smile in this episode is, I have to sympathise; I'm grinning just as much. Please, please, please, let the quality stay consistent this time. Please?

Originally published at Den of Geek.

Dexter Season 1 Episode 6

Last week's episode of Dexter was good. This week's isn't. Don't you really bloody hate it when that happens? It's just rude!

I knew I'd spoken too soon. I should have known that the moment I let my guard down and started to like this programme, it'd screw me over. Which is pretty much what happened this week.

Okay, last week I kind of skipped over the details of Dexter's Victim(s) Of The Week, because it seemed like the least important part of the story. This week, it turns out, it wasn't: the episode kicks off with Dexter being called to a crime scene - and it's his own crime scene. You can immediately tell it's a different director this week, because there's way too much zoom going on. There's also too much Steadicam.

I mean, there's always too much Steadicam work in Dexter, because apparently they think it's stylish or something, but really, is a static shot once in a while really too much to ask? I blame Lost. That's where all this nonsense started, and I had a good rage about that back when Lost season 1 first aired, to the point of writing a blog offering to buy the creators a tripod if that's what it took. Probably for the best they didn't take me up on that, though.

Anyyyyway. Despite the fact that we've been told Dexter always takes great care over his kills, this time he evidently fucked up, since not only has one of the bodies been retrieved, but there was also a witness: a small, scared Cuban boy locked in a car boot. And even as Dexter is desperately trying to cover his tracks - even to the point of planting and destroying evidence - Deb is working against him by actually showing some initiative for once and coming up with a criminal profile that exactly matches Dexter. Uh oh...

There are things in this episode I love, and things I hate. The things I love are as follows: "No more doughnuts for Masuka", along with other voice-overed asides that include actually funny jokes that Dexter couldn't say out loud; the interaction between Deb, Doakes, and his family; the smiley face on one of Dexter's blood samples; the final reveal of the artist's impression of the killer.

Unfortunately, the list of things I hated is much, much longer, to whit: the dream sequence, which is total nonsense; the over-abundance of flashbacks pointing to the fact that there's something weird about Deb - they actually lean really hard on the maybe-Deb-is-the-killer angle, which is patently nonsense; the Patrick Bateman alias Dexter uses to access drugs, as if that would ever possibly go unnoticed, and the way that Dexter even bloody well comments on how clever and invisible he thinks he's being; the fact that Rita's ex is on his way back, way too early in the game, and the way I will put cash money on the fact that even though they mentioned a restraining order this week, he will show up at some point later and no-one will point out that he is not legally allowed to be there, CASH MONEY ON IT; the way they're trying to make Laguerta sympathetic, again, even though it would work much better if she was the bitch you love to hate; that the entire Miami police force seems to take solving cases so personally that they'll ignore evidence if it means that their own pet theory becomes the accepted one.

And there's too much zoom. Ugh.

As a matter of interest, is anyone actually buying into the maybe-Dexter's-the-killer theory? The series actually thrusts that in your face a lot less often than the book does, which I like, except that I think maybe it's been lost entirely, which I don't like. What do you reckon? Anyone know who the killer is, yet? Apparently it's different from in the book, so it should be a nice surprise...

Originally published at Den of Geek.

Dexter Season 1 Episode 5

Miami: sunshine, sand, and serial killers. Sounds like the best place on Earth to start a new life, doesn't it? Er, no. Sounds like a great place for Dexter to set up camp, though.

Are we really completely sure that it's Dexter who's the sociopath in the Morgan family? Because sometimes, I think it might actually be Deb. She is really, really useless. I'm sure we're supposed to like her and root for her and sympathise with her struggles to get promoted when the overbearing Laguerta treats her like shit, but really, Deb's just too stupid to ever make detective. Then again, most of the police in this series seem a bit rubbish, so I'm sure she'll be fine.

Here's what we know about the Ice Truck Killer thus far: he kills women. He's definitely killed at least one prostitute. When the bodies are discovered, they're dismembered, cut into sections with almost surgical skill, and about half of them have been wrapped up with plastic. On some of the bodies, there's been some cell crystallisation, which is how we know he has an ice truck, hence the pseudonym. Even though he didn't do that until quite late in the game, but never mind. He also knows Dexter quite well: he's broken into Dexter's flat on at least one occasion, leaving him cute little messages all over the place. And... that's about it.

Enter Tony Tucci, the only person known to have encountered the killer and lived. He spent nearly a week tied to a table, having one limb after another amputated, and then being left to lie there while rats chewed the sheets he lay on. Ewww. But what better way could there possibly be to extract information from this witness than to traumatise the shit out of him? Well, maybe to do anything else. Anything. Still, Deb reckons the best thing to do would be to blindfold him - apparently she's heard of context dependent memory - and although Doakes first takes her to task over this (go Doakes!) he eventually concedes that it might work, and although Tucci doesn't want to play, he too agrees to have a go. Because... otherwise there would be no new leads, I guess.

So what new information do we glean about the Ice Truck Killer? Well, that he likes throat lozenges. And a partial fingerprint. Okay, that might be useful. Yay for Debs!

Meanwhile, Dexter is caught up in an utterly ridiculous subplot involving a Cuban maid who works at the same hotel as Rita. Every night after work, this maid goes and sits on the beach and waits, because she's paid money to some creep who calls himself the Coyote, who apparently is good at smuggling people out of Cuba and into America. Only sometimes he decides he wants more money, and when the desperate relatives can't pay up, he kills the people he's been smuggling. Clearly, there is only one way to stop this guy...

Something about this episode reminded me of Tru Calling. It's got that kind of structure, almost a superhero narrative, where a normal person gifted with some sort of supernatural power or knowledge has to investigate something and bring about justice without getting the police involved. It almost always involves breaking and entering - thus, Dexter sneaks into a private car lot, and then later onto a boat, to get the proof he needs that this is a Bad Man whom he is permitted to kill. Maybe he should claim to be the bartender. Or go and break into Eliza Dushku's house; it's about time she had a taste of her own medicine.

Meanwhile, Rita is starting to get all starry-eyed and wanting to have big serious relationship talks with Dexter about where their relationship is heading; which, clearly, is something he's completely unable to cope with. Normally around this point I'd be rolling my eyes and complaining that there are too many threads here, but this time I'm not going to because - it almost hurts me to admit this - the threads are actually linked together, and well. There's a common theme to all the stories in this episode: the search for love, or at least for meaning. Even the very, very minor plot elements tie into this - there's the one-handed, one-legged night watchman who's concerned that no-one will ever love him again; there's Deb making googly eyes at a cute doctor; and there's Angel, still trying to get over the breakdown of his marriage. It's tight, rather than messy, and it's also funny - the bit where Dexter tries to make himself cry at a weepy movie by just not blinking is hilarious, and his little chat with the sociopathic people-smugglers about how they keep their love alive after twelve years of marriage is just spot-on.

This is all starting to feel very, very promising.

Originally published at Den of Geek.

Dexter Season 1 Episode 4

'Let's Give The Boy A Hand' - those writers do love their puns, don't they? What would Dexter do with a hand, though, anyway? Probably use it to scratch his back, knowing him.

I... think I'm a little bit in shock. I might have a nice sit-down and a cup of tea while I write this. I don't want to get too over-excited or anything, but this episode? Actually quite good. I might even go so far as to say "really good." Having checked the IMDB, I now know that episodes 1 to 3 were directed by someone different than episode 4, which might account for it, or it might be the fact that writer Drew Z. Greenberg is actually a real writer who wrote an episode of Firefly, but - this worked. I actually enjoyed this episode, which makes me a bit confused and, apparently, slightly gushy. So I'll get on with the review now.

The episode starts with a gruesome discovery: a severed hand set on a deckchair in the middle of a beach, complete with a nice postcard-style Polaroid of it. The first thing that's really obvious about this episode is that the cinematography has suddenly got much, much better; they're making real use of the Miami setting now, and this whole scene looks gorgeous. The gory body part is so incongruous with the beauty of the setting that suddenly I can sort of almost see the artistry of the killer that Dexter's been banging on about for the last three weeks.

Turns out that the hand belongs to the night watchman that Laguerta has fingered as the killer, which means she needs to make a public apology pretty darn quickly... and that, since there's actual blood spatter at this crime scene, that Dexter gets to do the job he's paid to do, rather than just lurking around irrelevantly. Hurrah! On top of all that, there's some nice characterisation here, when Dexter makes a quip about this being a "nice hand-job" and then doesn't understand why everyone else thinks that's funny. Not to over-egg the pudding here or anything, but this is the kind of thing we need to see; this is how you show that Dexter isn't like everyone else and doesn't feel the same things that everyone else does. Constantly telling us that he isn't feeling it doesn't work nearly so well as just one little light touch like that.

On top of that, the flashbacks to Dexter's unconventional upbringing in this episode are much better integrated into the main narrative of this episodes than they ever have been before, or ever will be in an episode of Lost. Unfortunately, some of this cleverness is balanced out by some redundant stupidity in a Dexter monologue about wearing Hallowe'en masks and pretending to be monsters, but I'm willing to forgive that because I'm still so pleased with the hand job joke.

Before long - in fact, exactly 24 hours later - another grisly body part turns up, from the same man, only the blood spatter analysis reveals something interesting: that the man was alive when both of these pieces were amputated. See, Dexter can do his job and his hobby at the same time without it being suspicious, it's not that hard. Anyway, since Laguerta feels so bad about publicly accusing an innocent man of being a ruthless killer, and because she's a stupid cow, she decides it's imperative that they find the guy while he's still alive, and instead of helping to look for him, she starts stalking the guy's mother all over the city, as you clearly would if you're a detective. Bah. I think this was supposed to make us like Laguerta a little bit, but she's meant to be an obnoxious bitch so it doesn't entirely work. I prefer disliking her, anyway.

Eventually, it turns out that the body parts are all involved in the perverse game the Ice Truck Killer is playing with Dexter, so obviously only Dex can figure out the message and find the guy. In the meantime, there's a nice-but-silly subplot going on with Rita's bitchy neighbour mistreating a dog, which helps Rita learn to stand on her own two feet (or kneel on her own two knees, as the case may be) and there's a brilliant subplot featuring Angel. Throughout the episode, he brings a selection of jewellery he's thinking of giving to his wife for their anniversary to Dexter for approval, only to be told that there's something hilariously wrong with it. (The diamond earrings which are supposed to be Xs and Os just spell out "ox"; the four-leafed clover looks like 'some kind of bug'.) Only, by the end of the episode it turns out, heartbreakingly, that Angel and his wife have separated. It's nice because it's all so cleverly handled, played as a joke right up till the end, when it turned 180 degrees and gets serious, providing insight into a character who previously hadn't been much more than an annoyance.

Am I praising this episode too highly? It's just that after three episodes of the writers telegraphing their intentions in letters twenty feet high, giving everyone racially stereotypical and clunky dialogue, something with this level of sophistication seems like a revelation. This show can be clever! And witty! And emotionally involving!

It'll all be shot to hell next week, I'm sure. Still, it's nice to see the writers giving their stories room to breathe. Perhaps it's because Dexter didn't have a random irrelevant Victim Of The Week this week (unless you want to count the night watchman, so kindly gifted to him by the Ice Truck Killer at the end there) and so instead he got to actually engage with people a little more. Whatever it is, I hope this is a sign that the show is starting to find its feet. I'm actually looking forward to the next episode!

Originally published at Den of Geek.

Dexter Season 1 Episode 3

Dexter's the main character, and he's a serial killer. Have we mentioned that, at all, yet? He only kills bad guys, you know...

I'm still having issues with Michael C. Hall's portrayal of Dexter. I'm trying not to, but I can't help but feel he's just the wrong shape. He's too... bulky, and athletic-looking. I guess maybe it'd be harder to believe that he could kill all these people if he were weedier, but on the other hand, he's supposed to be a lab technician. Wouldn't you expect him to be sort of... less beefy, maybe?

He does look good in the promo shots, though, I'll give him that.

The other thing is that he still misdelivers lines. I swear he eats the full stops between sentences somewhere and mashes them into one line instead of two. But then I don't have the script in front of me, so who am I to judge? Aside from a TV critic, of course. So, let's see...

Dexter's Victim Of The Week is this floppy-haired kid who's just been released from a juvenile detention centre for killing a man a couple of years ago. Dexter thinks he's mocking the system, gloating that he wasn't put away for long and plotting to make another move - a theory which is somewhat reinforced when Dexter stalks the kid to an antiques market where he buys a nasty-looking hunting knife then waves it around like a maniac. Subtle, real subtle.

The flashback thread running alongside this narrative explains Dexter's first ever murder of a human being: a nurse at the hospital his father was taken to who fancied herself as a bit of an angel of mercy type, doling out morphine to patients like it was going out of fashion. The message of the week (they really love to shove those down the viewer's throat, don't they?) is that Dexter only kills in order to save lives; he only kills people who are going to kill other people. Except since it's episode 3, they're still telling us this rather than showing us; and when Dexter spares his victim after finding out he, too, only kills people who deserve it, it's not really the revelation the writers think it is. Which is a pity, because a few episodes later, it might have worked. Oh well.

So, that's two plot threads there; we've also got something bizarre going on with Doakes. Seems the cop-killer storyline from last week isn't quite exhausted, and it's about to get more complicated since not only was the murdered woman Doakes was knocking off the wife of the murdered cop, but she's also the sister of another Miami cop, and everyone's very angry, and they all put on clown masks and run about, and what the hell is the point of this subplot? Someone really should've cut this nonsense out.

At the same time, we've got Deb being forced back into her Vice uniform to interview some prostitutes about what they may or may not have seen with reference to the Ice Truck Killer's newest victim; I actually almost forgot he was even still around with everything else that's going on - he's left a new body at the town hockey rink, and the night watchman's gone missing. Laguerta declares a city-wide manhunt for said watchman, even though everyone already knows he's obviously not the killer and she's an idiot, because that is, after all, the point of Laguerta, except I don't care. And Rita's got issues with her ex-husband, and with child support services, and generally being long-suffering, because that's the point of Rita... It's ever so slightly exhausting, because the threads are all completely unrelated and there's never really time to develop any of them satisfactorily. This episode was, like its predecessors, a complete mess.

The crocodile was awesome, though. Points for that.

Originally published at Den of Geek.

Dexter Season 1 Episode 2

Dexter goes on a double date, eats some doughnuts, and, oh yeah, kills some more people. Meanwhile, the writers go batshit insane and rattle through a million and one ideas at once...

Oh dear.

I almost want to leave it at that, but a) that wouldn't really tell you very much about this episode, and b) that would rob me of the opportunity to have a damned good rant. So I'll carry on.

If the first episode of Dexter threw the viewer in at the deep end by opening mid-slaughter, the second stands next to a life-saver, then points and laughs as its audience drowns in nonsense. There is a hell of a lot going on in this episode: the Ice Truck Killer storyline progresses as he makes it clear he knows who Dexter is (and where he lives); Dexter breaks up with his pseudo-girlfriend, then gets back together with her; Dexter goes to watch a horribly manipulative drink-driving court case; a Miami cop is murdered, as are the two prime suspects; Dexter's sister has some kind of pointless crisis, and, oh yeah, did we manage to remember that Dexter's a sociopath who kills bad guys? Because he is, you know.

Reading back over that paragraph, is there any reason at all that it all had to happen in the space of one episode? It's not a lot of time to pack in as much as the writers seem to want to. Which is probably what's at the root of the problem: everything is told to the viewer, rather than shown. There's not enough time to do things properly, so instead they race through it all - making sure Dexter has enough of an expository voice-over that no-one gets left behind.

What does get left behind is the audience's ability to sympathise with any of the characters, because we're not given a chance to get to know them at all. There have been a couple of running jokes set up, but since we're only on episode 2, you'd think they'd be emerging slowly. Nope - they're labelled up in a couple of clunky bits of dialogue, so you know they're going to become running jokes. It's exasperating, the way this series is spoonfeeding itself to you; rather than showing you something and letting you figure out that it's relevant, or letting you find out the relevance next week, they just go ahead and write a line telling you. Do they really think we're that stupid?

My other gripe, thus far, is with Michael C. Hall himself. I'd seen pictures of him as Dexter before I read the book, so my mental image of Dexter isn't vastly different - and I should stress, once again, that the book really isn't very good at all - but there's something wrong about the way Dexter is portrayed. He's supposed to be this hyper-intelligent, cool, calm and collected type that charms his way through life despite never actually feeling anything for the people he's charming, with a misplaced sense of justice and an ever-present barely-restrained urge to kill. I can just about deal with that, if Hall were trying in any way to portray him as such.

Instead, he shouts and fusses and says stupid things to the wrong people; shouts at his victims with enough feeling that his voice becomes a gutteral roar and - oh yeah, his voice. Michael C. Hall doesn't have the right voice. He's not smarmy enough, somehow. He's too... rubbish. I just can't buy that he's persuasive enough that no-one has noticed what he's up to. Instead, I seem to be being asked to believe that the Miami police force is comprised of a pack of idiots so incompetent they can't spot the serial killer in their midst. Not quite the same thing, is it?

Hall is too deadpan, too. It is perfectly possible to be deadpan, to speak in a monotone voice, and still tell a joke. Hall isn't doing that; he sucks the humour out of the few lines the writers managed to squeeze it into. The line about the search warrant is actually sort of funny, if you write it down and look at it, but the way Hall delivers it, it's just throwaway dialogue. Which isn't something this series is good at, at all.

Sigh. Same time next week?

Originally published at Den of Geek.

Dexter Season 1 Episode 1

By day he's a blood spatter analyst. By night, he's a serial killer. And The Guardian thinks his show is torture porn. Den of Geek takes a more rational approach to reviewing Dexter...

The opening episode of Dexter doesn't pussyfoot about: it kicks off with Dexter stalking, then subsequently attacking and killing a man. A priest, actually. The thing with Dexter is that the eponymous character is a sociopath, and the writers don't want to quibble about that - the bottom line seems to be, he's a sociopath, now let's see what he's going to do about it.

What he does, then, is kill people. But only the deserving - Dexter's day job is to analyse blood spatter at crime scenes, his foster father was a cop, and his sister is currently trying to be one, so he's in a position to know a lot about the criminal justice system, and he doesn't like it when bad people get away with doing bad things. Like the priest who's been systematically picking off his choir boys - nasty. So Dex kills them.

It's a difficult premise, and a pretty interesting one. How can an audience be expected to sympathise with an emotionally stunted serial killer? Well, he only kills people who deserve it. Ooh, conflict and ambivalence.

I should probably confess at this point that I recently read the novel the TV show is based on - Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay. I didn't really set out to read it, it was hanging around the office and I was bored, so I picked it up. I quite liked the idea of it, but unfortunately, I also thought the writing was bloody awful. Somehow, though, the novel managed to be compelling despite the distractingly smug prose, so I thought the TV series might be great. Judging a TV show by its pilot isn't really very fair, but so far, I'm not won over.

The first episode of Dexter covers the first 100 or so pages of the novel. It's a novel that clocks in at under 300 pages, so you can see why that might be a problem. It's also a problem because the writers seem to be trying to pack in more than is absolutely necessary, and with no finesse whatsoever. The pilot seems to be an exercise in throwing as much information at the screen as possible and seeing what sticks. So we cover Dexter's troubled childhood and his unconventional father in a series of clumsy flashbacks; we witness Dexter explaining that he doesn't have any emotions and so has to fake all his human interactions (largely by buying people doughnuts, it seems); we witness the first couple of the Ice Truck Killer murders; and the interminable voiceover shoehorns in plenty of tiresome exposition in language as awkward as the novel's.

Many of the characters, particularly the non-white ones, are walking racial stereotypes, defined with the broadest possible strokes - and without any need, because, you know, the racial profiling was pretty much sorted out when you cast the actors. The dialogue throughout was slightly stilted, but I was willing to go along with it up until the unforgiveable moment when Dexter gazes into a Krispy Kreme box and remarks that it's "empty inside - like me." Sets your teeth on edge, doesn't it?

The really, really, really frustrating thing about Dexter is that, despite its many flaws, it's still kind of interesting. So I'll keep watching. After all, if they've shoved this much of the book into the first episode, they must have somewhere else to go with Dexter's story, right?

Originally published at Den of Geek.