Monday, December 20, 2010

Okay, Hollywood. Sometimes You Get it Right.

So, for a while now people have been on my case to check out Showtime's good guy serial killer show, Dexter, but I just hadn't been able to bring myself to do it. There are a couple of reasons for this.

One reason is that I had a similar idea years ago and obviously the creators of Dexter illegally entered my brain and mined it for sweet ideas, kind of like whoever went ahead and started manufacturing window scrubbers that had a ball joint for cleaning the inside of your car windshield. Time for me to invest in a tinfoil hat.

Another reason is that I'm kind of a douche. You know, if I didn't discover it on my own then I'm not going to give anyone else the satisfaction of turning me onto it. It took me a long time to check out Firefly and The Wire for the exact same stupid reason.* And the way people lord the amazingness of their shows over you can be a turn off as well (See Arrested Development, a show I actually liked but never loved based solely on the people who did love it).

Anyway, I just finished the first season of Dexter and it was pretty great. It's gruesome and twisted, but the writing is great. The characters are lovingly fleshed out and the story is extremely engaging. It might start to suck as the seasons progress, but I'm hooked now and will probably ride it out to the end. You should check it out if you're looking for a show to obsess over for a while.

*Sometimes I'm right. People still sing me the praises of Mad Men, but I watched two seasons of that show and it's just plain terrible, I don't care what anybody says.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I like Dexter. The sister sucks really bad though. I only have one problem. Ok, so when I took my criminal justice class, they said that all serial killers do have a sexual motive and indentifying that motive is important in catching the killer. For example, if I remember correctly, Bundy was a necrophiliac. He would visits bodies weeks later and I think it help lead to his capture. Those bodies were his trophies. I think that if Dexter, who had his trophies, were to satisfy himself it would be more realistic. Grosser, but also more realistic

Maximum Colossus said...

Well, you gotta sell him as a good guy or it doesn't work. I think to add jerking off to his MO might not just be gross, it would make him completely unsympathetic and unrelatable.

But you know, you're totally right. It's like that singing frog in the WB cartoons. I know for a fact that frogs can't sing.

And I don't mind the sister...yet.

Unknown said...

I know it would make him unlikable, but he is a serial killer, right? Aren't we supposed to kinda feel bad for liking a serial a killer even if he is only killing other serial killers?

I guess what I'm saying is this, Dexter wanting to kill and torture serial killers doesn't make him a killer. It makes him normal.

Maximum Colossus said...

But then he actually kills them. That's not abnormal enough for you? I think most people are content to let the legal system worry about crime and punishment. Everybody talks a big game about what they would do about a serial killer or Nancy Pelosi, but the majority of us would never truly act on it. So maybe Dexter's impulses are perfectly normal, but his inability to stop himself isn't.

And you might as well throw out everything you know about real life serial killers anyway, because it's pretty apparent that is not entirely what they are drawing from on this show.

I'm going to go ahead and leave it at this. If he jerked off on dead serial killers, I'd never have gotten past the first episode.