Dexter is a television series about the titular character, who is a serial killer who kills serial killers, and his day job is being a blood spatter analyst for the Miami Metro Police Department. The series consists of eight seasons with twelve episodes per season. The first season was originally adapted from the first in a series of eight novels, but subsequent seasons departed from the source material. I am somewhat curious and interested in comparing and contrasting the characters as they are depicted in the series versus the books, but the latter is a huge commitment.

As a huge, unequivocal but still disturbed fan of Hannibal and someone who enjoyed the absurdity of the ridiculous The Following, Dexter was an obvious draw, but I would caution interested viewers to turn away if a couple of aspects of the series are deal breakers. I do not usually watch police procedural shows except for the Law & Order franchise so if you are more interested in the crimes than the cops’ lives, you may want to turn heel and start to walk the other way. While I may not be familiar with police procedural shows, I would not be surprised if the narrative twist of Dexter is that in any other show, he would be the wallpaper, and the cops would be the A list stars, but that dynamic is reversed however the cops still play a large part of the story, and those storylines are incredibly tropey and problematic. I am not saying that you cannot grow to enjoy their role in the story, but it is a rather huge weak link if you are not a fan of that genre. It also takes an incredible amount of suspension of disbelief to believe that there are enough serial killers in the city of Miami to keep Dexter busy for ninety-six episodes. Seriously?

If you are watching Dexter, you are watching Dexter for Dexter because Michael C. Hall’s performance and the character are incredibly interesting. Get another actor, and the character could be theoretically interesting, but even the best actor may have problems with the increasingly repetitive and absurd dialogue. Hall surpasses Michael Fassbender levels of professionalism for never breaking character or appearing horrified at the quality of the stories that he is supposed to bring to life. Hall, who failed to get my attention in Cold in July, really impressed me. He is a great physical and vocal actor. Hall is supposed to be playing a man without emotions, but he is deft at projecting flashes of internal insight about his character’s interior life on his face. Unlike most American actors, he does not immediately go from pleasant to explosive in one step. He really explores the entire spectrum of his character’s psychological state and elevates the series.

Dexter is at its strongest when the special guest actors can match Hall’s caliber of acting, and the writers use the special guest star’s character to explore some new aspect of Dexter’s life. Dexter wears a few hats initially as a cover to hide the passion in his life, killing, but what makes Dexter intriguing is the possibility that he was misdiagnosed as an irredeemable serial killer and has the potential to be a full human being with a family and friends. Hall is good enough to single handedly carry the series, but he should not have to, and the series is at its weakest when the special guest stars’ roles could appear on any crime procedural series, not Dexter specifically, and fail to bring out more texture and nuance in Dexter’s social life.

I am a completist and would never follow my own advice, but if you decide to watch Dexter, I recommend that you only watch seasons one through five. Season Six is the worst because it felt generic as if the events could have literally appeared on any police procedural series, and the main big bad was lame. Season Seven and Eight are not good quality, but at least they are Dexter specific though they reek of The Hobbit desperation to keep the money rolling in.

As Dexter unfolded, I began to wonder if I or the series creators actually could correctly define who a serial killer is. I think that you have to enjoy vigilante series such as the CW Arrowverse because Dexter is more similar to an action hero than an anti-hero. I do think that the series was going down The Following’s path more than it should have except instead of as villains, the series kind of imagined a society of serial killers as a nice community and had completely departed from grounding the series in any realistic psychological framework that would expose the complications of such a scenario. I am not saying that it could not work, but at some point, the series utterly gave up on credibility.

Dexter is an excellent multitasking show. When I tried to give it my complete attention, it faltered. Though you do not want to miss Hall’s physical acting excellence, making this show a focal point instead of a diversion could be a mistake because giving the story more thought could be its Achilles heel.

If you have already watched Dexter and are interested in my spoiler filled thoughts on the series, keep reading.

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Season One was rough, but solid. I recall being impressed that Sam Witwer was not the big bad. While I am unfamiliar with Christian Camargo even though I have apparently seen him in a ton of movies and other television series (Plunkett & Macleane, K-19: The Widowmaker, Karen Sisco, The Hurt Locker, Breaking Dawn, Europa Report, Haven and House of Cards), I do not recall him, which means that he is an excellent character actor. While it was a little soap opera-esque, I was basically fine with using his character as a narrative opportunity for Dexter to explore his past, distinguish himself as a serial killer and claim his identity as a man straddling both worlds. The Code is not just something that he is given, but is his moral code on a fundamental level. His cover life is not as much of a cover as he thought, and it is the real twist of the series. On some fundamental level, he is compelled in both aspects of his life to protect people, not just selfishly kill for the pleasure of killing. The killing serves a function and is not the point. For a serial killer, the latter is the reason for the season. Dexter is compelled to do what he could not do when he was a child and basically wants to save his mother, which explains why he chooses Rita and likes kids.

Season Two built on the strength of Season One. If I have one complaint about Season Two, it is that I cannot believe that Rita would stay with Dexter if she genuinely thought that he had a drug problem, which is never revisited in subsequent seasons. Why did she just stop insisting that he goes to AA meetings? Season Two is when the writers signaled to me that they were not just into a lurid tale of sex and violence, but were as intrigued with Dexter’s psychological makeup as I was. Like a lot of noir movies, Dexter has a voice over that depicts his interpretation of the episodes’ events. When it stops then resumes, he is exasperated that the “voices” have returned, which turns a plot device into a sign of pathology. Normal people do not have narration and because he was finally experiencing normal interactions and experiences, he stopped monologuing.

Trauma has a way of emotionally freezing someone at the age that he experienced trauma, which explains why Dexter is initially only able to be fully human with kids because he is basically one of them, which explains his oral fixation and the importance of food and hunger in his life. In Season One, he does not get sex though he has it. Because he begins to thaw in Season One by confronting his past trauma, he begins to move into his adolescence in Season Two, enjoys sex and begins to want to have a full relationship with a person knowing him as a complete person. This desire creates a dilemma that the series struggles with in subsequent seasons with mixed results. What kind of woman would be interested in Dexter if she knew what kind of person he is? In Season Two, the answer is someone not compatible with his life, but Rita is also clearly not it. Jaime Murray is required to play a trope, the crazy, sexy girlfriend, but she manages to imbue her with as much personhood as she could.

Season Three is the season that got me completely invested in Dexter’s life. Jimmy Smits plays a district attorney, Miguel Prado, who decides to befriend Dexter in spite of a chasm in socioeconomic class. It was the first time that the viewer truly knew more than the protagonist and could see the danger signs before he could—if someone is interested in Dexter, that person is probably not someone whom Dexter should get to know, but Dexter, unfamiliar with love bombing, decides to try and reciprocate his friendship with disastrous results. My favorite episode is nine because we see what Dexter is like when he is genuinely angry, which we never see again and is elicited from being duped into believing that he had a friend. He recognizes that Miguel is like him—he uses the same lines to fake emotion and connection with Rita and Dexter. The most chilling Dexter moment is when Dexter recycles a line from a homicidal stalker to propose to Rita. If prior seasons show that Dexter has more humanity than the average serial killer would, Season Three reveals that he simultaneously has less humanity or more flawed humanity than he initially believed. Also it is when I realized that Smits is a massive wall, and Hall is tinier than he appears. If I have one complaint about this season, it is that Dexter’s computer activity at work is never monitored again even in subsequent seasons when he is a suspect.

Season Four is the season that real time viewers of Dexter believe that the series should have ended, which I disagree with, but understand. It is the funniest season as a gang of neighbors chase a disguised Dexter down the street. If Dexter is enraged with the discovery that he is not as emotionally removed and immune to manipulation as he would like to believe, it is a lesson that he fails to learn in Season Four as he has to balance his day job, his passion, and being a husband and father. Unlike most series, Dexter as a series actually gets stronger when the protagonist has a child. A lot of abuse victims are forced to confront their trauma when they have a child, and that child reaches the age that they were when the trauma happened to them. For me, this season was a huge turning point which revealed that Dexter was not a serial killer per se, but a vigilante as he abandoned his routine and cared more about the victims than killing the perpetrator. John Lithgow plays his foil, whom Dexter initially wants to learn from then become nothing like him. It is when Dexter consciously embraces true, selfless love through his son and prioritizes it over the pleasure of killing that he becomes human. Also comparing and contrasting his stepkids love for him with The Trinity Killer’s children was a brilliant holiday episode. It explains why he can no longer maintain any semblance of distance and is constantly harried. It makes the last episode more devastating.

Season Five is my favorite season and when I would have ended the series. It continues the thread of Dexter as someone who is becoming more interested in saving people than deriving pleasure from killing with all its complications. When he kills at the beginning of the season, it is brutal, serves no grander purpose and paints him in the worst light ever. It is the boldest move in threatening the likeability of the protagonist. We are watching him learn to become human, and Hall is at his best in this season. Hall looks a bit neanderthalish to me, but he is expert at creating these quivers of emotion while trying to suppress and control it in evertyscene with Julia Stiles, who has not aged a day. It is a really well earned, twisted and beautiful story arc that worked for me as he found his soulmate. I was also really invested in them stopping the big bad, and it felt like the most realistic, disturbing big bad to date. His relationship with his step-children is complex, but he rises to the challenge. It is the first time that he can express genuine positive emotion and reciprocates love. Prior to this season, he never verbalizes love that he does not feel, but in this season, he experiences genuine human emotion and can express it. While he is still a predator, it is not his primary identity. It is also the only season that the writers attempt to acknowledge that Spanish speakers experience racism as they are treated like a monolith instead of a diverse community with varied backgrounds.

Season Six is dreadful. It is the worst season primarily because the big bad could literally be inserted into any standard police procedural show and is so painfully derivative and poorly created that it hurt my soul. I love Halloween, but there was one movie in the franchise in which Michael Myers turned into MacGyver and started using explosives to kill his victims, which just no. This season felt like that. It was supposed to explore Dexter’s relationship with God and morality with a big bad obsessed with the Book of Revelation if that big bad was not great at reading comprehension because the actual connection to the Bible was tenuous at best. I normally love anything vaguely apocalyptic regardless of quality and even I was retching at how lazy the writing was. The killer has issues with sexual women which is so tired and uninteresting. The most absurd moment is when Dexter escapes an explosion, swims in the ocean then helps some Cuban refugees by sticking a pitchfork into someone threatening them, which was a sign that the series was literally done. When did we build a time machine to the eighties? The locust CGI was dreadful. It was the point when Dexter as a serial killer became a cheesy action hero in the vein of the Equalizer. How did the series get renewed after this nightmare? I love Tom Hanks, but this was the moment when I realized that Colin Hanks was a limited actor and does need to be an actor. He did nothing interesting. Edward James Olmos should have trusted his instincts and turned down the role.

If I was forced to compliment Season 6, it was one of the few scenes with Dexter and his son, who was getting ready to appear in a school play about Noah’s ark. Dexter has embraced the idea that he is a part of God’s kingdom on some level instead of trying to exile himself from humanity, “That boat has a place for all the animals, not just the sheep and zebras, but the lions too.” Dexter is one of the few series that I think improves with having children, and Hall works wonderfully with them. My heart grew three sizes, and it totally made my Christian heart cheer that Dexter realized on some level that God loves him, but is this the artistic equivalent of Glen’s radical forgiveness on The Walking Dead or a cheesy Christian propaganda film that is enjoyable for its sincerity and in spite of its lack of quality?

Season Seven felt as if all the original writers quit, and Showtime invited a bunch of fan fiction writers to get a shot at the big time. It felt as if anything could be pitched, and Showtime would unquestionably bring it to life. What if Deb found out that Dexter was a serial killer? What if Dexter had a stalker? What if Dexter faced off against the Ukranian mafia and became a hit man? What if Dexter had a hot self-defense killer girlfriend, but we treated it like a less believable episode of The Red Shoe Diaries? This latter one defied all logic because he was basically going to kill her then when he changes his mind, they have sex on his butcher table. Um, no, based on her MO, wouldn’t she try to kill him? Also since she only kills in self-defense, but does not enjoy killing, wouldn’t she not like Dexter. Yvonne Strahovski, whom I have seen before in Chuck and shows Herculean levels of professionalism for making a living out of bringing male dominated sex fantasies to life while doing her best to inject some integrity into her characters. The titty quotient increases exponentially in this season since most of the police procedural scenes occur in a strip club. If I did not have a soft spot for Ray Stevenson, I probably would have flipped tables as he gradually becomes Dexter’s gay best friend who exists to give him love life advice. Also why is hot nanny around when the kid is nowhere to be seen. Basically Hall is chewing the scenery the entire season, and though it is a hot mess, at least it was fun on some level so I went along with it. The most criminal moment of the show is how everyone suddenly knows Dexter’s biological story though it was a secret that only Deb and Dexter knew. Dexter calls himself Dexter Moser. Where is the continuity person on the show? Also I don’t think that Dexter would kill LaGuerta. Ruin her life, sure, but murder, no.

Season Eight started off stronger than the prior two seasons, and it felt as if the series could potentially get back on track, but it was mainly recycling prior seasons better seasons. When I saw Charlotte Rampling, I was simultaneously horrified and thrilled. She is a great actor who currently only appears in bad productions. So the good news was that at least Hall would have a challenge, but the bad news was that the series was probably going to end poorly. If I was watching this series in real time, even as a completist, I emotionally disconnected from the series during episode eight at the idea of a happy, civil community of serial killers and their therapist. I watched The Following, and even I could not get on board. There were signs of this development when Dexter considered taking on an apprentice, but when it actually happened, I tapped out. It also reminded me of the original Dark Shadows series in a bad way. The dialogue was basically a recap of what happened in the prior scene. There were flashback episodes with bad wigs. The worst part was that I could not decide if the way that the writers handled its protagonist was stupid or made sense. Risk takers get rewarded for risk so they will continue to take more risks and inevitably fail. Because of Dexter’s lower than normal ability to get excited in the face of danger, he has a tendency to be a risk taker, but I could not believe that he would continuously make the same identity mistakes that he made in Season Four, but he did. I know that people hate the ending, and I don’t blame them because it does not quite work considering the lessons that Dexter learned before, but at that point, I was just happy that it was over. Also Julian Sands as an abusive husband was so lame that he should probably leave it off his resume.

If you are still interested, read further for my thoughts on the supporting characters. Season One and Two were the best seasons for the police procedural stories to further the supporting cast’s character development and not simply serve as soap opera filler or to simply advance Dexter’s storyline. Doakes and LaGuerta were solid foils for Dexter as people who wanted to selflessly stop crime and did not have an ulterior motive. LaGuerta may be ambitious, but she takes her job in the community seriously and fundamentally cares about protecting people. In Season 2, Doakes has unwavering principles that even his personal sympathies will not mollify in a case where a husband kills his wife so it sets up a well-earned dilemma for Dexter and Doakes when they finally clash. Doakes was a great foil for Dexter because his personal life really did fit the profile of a serial killer more than Dexter except for his race. I wish there was a way to keep Doakes because he provided a tension and left a void, but LaGuerta as Doakes’ heir and the complete opposite of Doakes and Dexter was an underdeveloped but intriguing storyline that I wish was given more thought. Erin King did a great job with a character that initially seemed two dimensional, but I grew to respect and appreciate as I learned more about him.

If I have a real issue with Dexter as a series, it is the way that they seemed to genuinely not like LaGuerta. She is seen through the filter of her ambition as a fatal flaw and constantly in opposition with Deb, whom we are supposed to side with, but I felt that Lauren Velez never played her character as a villain and understood her completely. She hates Deb’s unearned entitlement—coasting on her father’s reputation and her brother’s ideas and the way that Deb gets praised for being sloppy in a way that LaGuerta could never do. I could tolerate the writers treated LaGuerta as the villain with respect to Deb, but when Batista, another detective, friend and eventual husband of LaGuerta is depicted as having the moral high ground in comparison to LaGuerta because she cares about her husband not having bar fights, believes in financial security and wants the best for her husband’s career after they split up, I realized that the writers and I could never have lunch. LaGuerta could do no right, and they enjoyed taking her down a peg or two. Yes she was trash for violating the sisterhood, but not with Deb…..

David Zayas has to be a good actor because on paper Batista is a garbage individual yet Zayas is able to make it credible that Batista is the moral compass of the precinct. He cheats on his wife. He is a male chauvinist. He gets into bar fights then acts inconvenienced when his victim is hurt. He is a nasty drunk. He is the kind of guy who would buy Playboy insisting it was for the articles. Also he owns a restaurant and got the promotion as a lieutenant. Does Quinn see a profit from his investment in the restaurant.

I want to like Deb because she is a hard worker and curses a lot, but I never could fully embrace her however I am uncertain if it is because of the way that the character is written or the actor, Jennifer Carpenter. In the first season, Carpenter was scantily clad, which I did not have a problem with, but it was painful to watch her because she was so skinny. Also she physically favors acting asymmetrically and always seems to be on the verge of tears, which to be fair, the latter seems to be required. I did not like Deb because whenever Dexter disagreed with her professionally, she always took it as a personal betrayal, and it made her seem like a spoiled brat. I also felt as if the writers made the sibling relationship more subtextually sexual than it needed to be then when it became overt, I began rooting for Carpenter who had to make it plausible without ruining the show, which she did, but it was just horrific. If you make a serial killer look disgusted, the writers have gone too far, but maybe the writers were just picking up on Hall and Carpenter’s natural dynamic because they got married during the show. I did not like Deb’s lack of boundaries with Dexter, but whenever the writers wrote them as siblings being there for each other like in season two and five then parts of season eight when they basically became professional odd couple partners, I enjoyed their dynamic. Also Deb’s storylines were heavily romantic thinly disguised as professional, and it made me hate her more.

I am going to defer to Asian viewers, but isn’t it a stereotype to make the Asian man a complete lech? He did not get a real storyline until the final season though I did enjoy the episode where he is incredibly hurt to not receive the professional support of his colleagues and became withdrawn to realize his real place in the precinct.

Joey Quinn’s character was a hot mess. He was supposed to be corrupt and dangerous, but that storyline got forgotten. Talk about letting relationships define you. Yikes! He went from being Diet Doakes to being defined by his relationship with Deb, a stripper, hot nanny and Deb again. Another painfully skinny actor. Quinn is at his most useful as a vehicle for Peter Weller to get into the action.

Do we all agree that James Remar is not a good actor, but he stays getting roles as adopted fathers in Dexter and Black Lightning? I do not like Harry, who was well intentioned, but basically abused his son by grooming him into becoming a killer and basically finishing the work that he could not do. He only saw the lack in his son and not the potential. I did like the way that the series used him-as a real person in flashbacks or recordings or as a figment of Dexter’s imagination. The saddest part of the last episode is the sense that even imaginary Harry is not there.

I will always love Julie Benz from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, but I do not like Rita. Season 1 was my favorite Rita because I thought that she was discovering herself like a healthier Betty Draper. She stole the neighbor’s dog and beat her husband with a baseball bat! When I thought that she knew what she wanted out of life, was embracing her sexuality and was trying to achieve it by setting boundaries, but by season three and four, I saw her as a social climber who was positioning herself to use Dexter as a leaping off point to something better. Given the opportunity, she would have definitely upgraded spouses. She embraced the good life unquestioningly, and when Dexter did not fit, which he never did, it felt as if she was ready to fire him. Does she deserve someone honest with her? Yes! Her real issue was not his bad behavior because when it suited her, for example when he hit the neighbor, she cosigned it.

It was really weird to see David Ramsey act as a pot smoking musician and not Arrow’s straight-laced Diggle. Also the bedrock of Courtney Ford’s career is playing loving daughters of homicidal fathers on Dexter and CW Arrowverse. Another CW connection is Mark Pellegrino, who played Lucifer on Supernatural and Rita’s husband! How to Get Away with Murder’s Billy Brown appears on the series for a hot second. Dollhouse and Agent Carter’s Enver Gjokaj kills Brown! Sleepy Hollow’s Crane’s wife, Katia Winter, plays a stripper. The Dead Zone’s Sean Patrick Flanery gets a raw deal with his story arc in the final season. Why did his character have to become a jerk at the eleventh hour? Notable brief appearances as filler killer is true Blood’s Sam Tramwell, Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Denise Crosby and Scandal’s Tony Goldwyn.

I do not have cable, but I will happily watch Dexter when it picks up again during the fall of 2021. Given the trajectory of the quality of the series, I am not optimistic, but if rumors are true that Jon Cusack will be the special guest star, then I do not care. I have watched Cusack in worse.