- ‘Twas the issue before Xmas and on each TV station
- Were enough Xmas specials to make the Pope worship Satan.
- They’re sappy, they’re snowy, they’re relentlessly cheery
- You shouldn’t try watching without imbibing some beer-y;
- And for Hindus or Buddhists or just plain Agnostic,
- Holiday TV is practically toxic–
- Tim Allen in THE SANTA CLAUSE or PRANCER in a pinch,
- It makes you wish you were Scrooge or the Grinch;
- So before you drown under in the sickly-sweet Yuletide,
- Or choke on a roast partridge with a pear tree sauce side
- Let’s look at some telly that makes you feel nauseous
- And escape from all things Holly and Claus-ious…
- Get out your raincoats because it’s ‘bloody’ hard work
- As we dissect Dexter (Thursdays, Showtime-Showcase Cable Network)
DEXTER is based on a series of novels written by U.S.-based Crime Writer Jeff Lindsay. On the surface the show is yet another in a long line of forensic science mystery shows, dozens of which escaped from a sloppily sanitized clean bench over at CSI- CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION some years ago, then mutated and were released onto an unsuspecting public’s TV schedule. However, whilst not quite as good as CSI, DEXTER is right up there with, and well ahead of, some of the dodgier imitators (cough, CROSSING JORDAN, cough). The reason for DEXTER being aces and eights ahead of CROSSING JORDAN (despite no gratuitous shots of Jerry O’Connell in underwear, an oversight that many TV shows are guilty of) is the blacker-than-Black-Widow-venom vein of humour running through it and the (literal) killer twist.
Dexter Morgan, played by Michael C. Hall (most famous as gay brother David on SIX FEET UNDER), is a smoking hot (I think it’s the haircut and tan) Miami-based forensic scientist. Dexter specializes in blood-spatter pattern analysis, a field of the science which finds and studies blood stains at crime scenes and uses this to find out where and how the blood got from a victim to an antique jade ash tray in the shape of a cymbal-banging monkey.
Dexter is a renowned expert on all matters blood-related – and he should be – his hands are soaking in it. As we find out early on in the debut episode, Dexter’s such a great forensic serologist because he’s also a quietly deranged serial killer who, thanks to some childhood trauma that left him an orphan, has developed a fixation with blood. Dexter even maintains a collection of blood samples in a hidden area of his house. I’ve heard of taking your work home with you, but there are limits!
Dexter tells us that for years he’s been under the influence of a shadowy alternate personality known as the ‘Dark Passenger’ that takes over him when the need to shed blood instead of studying it becomes too strong. This ‘Dark Passenger’ does nasty things with all manner of cutlery and, when he’s in one of his ‘moods’, causes Dexter to refer to himself in the third person (i.e. ‘We are going to gouge out your spinal column with this rusty oyster fork.’). It’s called the ‘Royal We’, probably because Royals also tend to have a ‘Dark Passenger’ in their psyche – although in their case it usually limits them to taking too many skiing holidays or marrying people who look like farmyard livestock.
Dexter still wants to be a (mostly) law-abiding citizen, and he is an awfully good forensic serologist, so, with the help of his adopted father, a police captain (gay actor James Remar from CRUISING), he reigns in his not-so-imaginary friend and kills only ‘bad people’ – usually other serial killers! Needless to say, he earns a reputation as something of a Dirty Harry – only more sticky, so I guess he’s really a Bloody Harry – at his forensics centre, and the unsuspecting police keep bringing him more serial killer cases to… er, ‘solve’. As ‘We’ begin watching series one, Dexter is obsessed with finding and draining the blood of a vicious maniac known as the Ice Truck Killer, who drives an old ice cream truck (Never order a strawberry surprise from this guy!) and who has a closer connection to Dexter than even he thinks…
Mix yourself a Bloody Mary and watch it!
