Isn't It Good

It's a curious thing to watch something slowly but swiftly move into greatness, and there's nothing more satisfying than seeing a great creative individual or team turn their failures or missed opportunities into greatness. Every shortcoming of Dexter's first season has been used as a trampoline to grab onto the treebranches of excellence, and the excellent second season would not be possible without those very specific shortcomings. I know in my boners that the writers and producers of Dexter knew that their first season would be their weaker season, but if they could succeed at making it a hit, the second season would be their great achievement.

That said, it has a great deal of surface flaws that could have been fixed quite easily. That it's rife with flaws is just something one has to learn to respect about serialized drama, and that these flaws are so wildly specific to the need for twelve hours of drama lest ye die is disappointing. It's the eternal reminder that, as a product, film and television is always going to be hamstrung by its need to meet certain requirements for the sake of marketability and longevity of investment. I'm more willing to forgive these flaws, though, because television offers a venue for serialization at the same time as long-form drama and while certain concessions are necessary, they're not concessions made by the creative team but rather by the medium they're working in. Television is a flawed medium and that's not going to change until televisions themselves are entirely replaced by the more malleable streaming content or until a mad genius figures out how to work commercials into a narrative.

For those of you who haven't seen the first season, I'll be discussing plot points for the second season that tie into the end of the first season. Also, you may want to know that the show is about a blood spatter ANALyst and sociopath who murders bad guys. In faggot's terms, spoile4s hehe.

After dispatching the Ice Cream Sandwicher, Dexter has become distraught. For almost a year the personal mindgames he played with another serial killer gave his life verve and meaning. His sister is a shaken mess and living with him after her intensely intimate encounter with the Ice Man Cometh and Sgt. Doakes is suspicious of Dexter and following him at night. Oh yeah, and a scuba diving team uncovered the dozens of dismembered bodies Dexter has been dumping in the ocean for years.

On the lame side of things, Dexter's girlfriend Rita thinks that Dexter is a heroin addict and sends him to Narcotics Anonymous where he meets a fox named Lila who, like all attractive women, is totally out of her mind. This is where the series shows its allegiances. When given the choice between being an intense thriller slash dark comedy and being a soap opera, it jumps into the neon jean shorts of soap opera with no shame.

And god damn the writers for taking the easy way out, because they strike dogs about halfway through the season only to give it all up like they couldn't wait. As the first season flirted with dark comedy and horror, the second season becomes a full-fledged black-as-the-heart-of-Africa comedy and we get a scene or two of such knee-shattering horror that it became heartbreaking to watch the writers and producers cop out for the sake of tits. Everything aside from its meandering narrative is an improvement over the first season. Every character is fleshed out and given dark, rough angles, especially Angel, the loveable brown spot on Dexter's rainbow of political correctness who gets a comic and tragic angle and goes through a very sympathetic arc. Deborah, Dexter's sister, is given the most complete arc that also falls victim to some soap opera writing towards the end, but her story is incredibly true to her established character, which goes against the time-honored tradition of destroying a well-established character and rebuilding it for the sake of the plot.

But really the best character on the show was Sgt. Doakes, the endlessly intense, borderline psychopathic police officer who is obsessed with proving that Dexter has some kind of secret. This is the dynamic that allows the second season of Dexter to become the best thriller I have ever watched on television. All those stupid asides that focused on Doakes last season that I complained about are given purpose. Without his character fleshed out, and without his background probed, we would never understand the transformation he goes through and we'd never sympathize with the horrors he goes through.

What makes Doakes such a spectacular antagonist is not only the way Dexter's heroism (in that he's the character we follow, and therefore the hero of the story even if someone else has the moral highground) is established against the Ice Tray Cracker (who is pure, swamp monster evil) in the first season and then challenged by Doakes in this season. Doakes is an asshole, for sure, but he's also a good cop who plays by the rules and gets the bad guys the right way. Dexter is an evil little bastard who hopes Doakes fails so that he can kill the criminals that slip through his fingers. Like all great hero-villain relationships, the conflict is tied to our own sense of morality and we choose sides based on that. If a film or television show understands that, they have the viewer by the balls.

I misjudged Dexter based on its first season and want its forgiveness. I take back everything mean I said about the first season and only stick by my criticisms of the second season. It's a strong argument for not passing judgment until you've seen every episode of a television show, but mostly I'm pleased that Dexter called me out on my lack of patience. It's a show with patience and I'm glad I stuck with it. I encourage anyone considering starting with this show to approach it with the same patience.

9/10