The Book Club with No Books: Dexter

 

So, Dexter.

Did you watch it?

I got so into it that other people have offered me their houses and their cable so I can stay current on this season. Other people’s cable is awesome! It gets me out of the house and gives me Showtime, and I don’t have to bend over for Time-Warner or suffer the bowdlerization of CBS.

But first we catch up. Shall we discuss, after the jump?

Things I really like about the show:

• Michael Cuesta! I haven’t been this excited since Agnieszka Holland was directing episodes of The Wire. I love Michael Cuesta. I went to see L.I.E. when I was eight months pregnant, and the guy taking passes tried to talk me out of it. Aw hell naw! Michael Cuesta is a tragic humanist who sees messed-up people through a faceted lens.
• I immediately like the premise of the principled sociopath who passes as functional. Who makes an asset of his lack. It has the potential for a sustained dramatic trajectory required of good television.
• I like the dreamlike camerawork immediately. Michael Cuesta! Woo!
• It works on the level of a procedural and of a caper.
• Just look at Dexter’s furniture!
• C.S. Lee as Vince Masuka is my new TV Detective Boyfriend. He’s got the Dudely Quotient and the Sick Bastard quotient, and he’s a snappy casual dresser.

I was not as sold on

• the Miami setting. Some of the characters are sort of rattling around in it. Maybe it needs to ripen; I’m still in the first season.
• the voice-over; I am warming to it. (Part of the joy of diving into a series on DVD is the snowball effect of self-paced viewing; I could do without networks altogether.) It began as an expository device, perhaps necessarily, but the voice-over is becoming more contrapuntal, more intimate in its ironic understatement. (“It sounds like someone’s doing something very bad.”)
• the flashbacks, and it’s not just the wig factor.



Onward.

Comments

[Martha]

It *could* be a book club :) Since the tv show is actually based on a series of books. The first one is called Darkly Dreaming Dexter.

*is a nerd who works in a bookstore*

P.S. I think the guy playing Dexter is H-O-T HOT!!!

[Heather B.]

In the long run the flashbacks help narrate the story. It's how we find out how Dexter came to be the sociopath he is today. Also, I wonder how much they cut out from the Showtime version to the network version.

[jodifur]

I turned it off after 10 minutes. I couldn't handle the cutting of the face. Ironically, I work in child abuse and my my undergrad thesis was on serial killers and I could not handle this show.

[selfmademom]

jodifur, I totally agree with you (except for the part about the thesis- didn't do that). I couldn't take the first 10 minutes. I actually convinced my hubby we should watch it and we were both done after the face cutting.

[robin]

Interesting that the face cutting couldn't be handled.. i wonder what you guys watch and can take. I am super anti-violent and this show almost doesn't impact me at all.. but I read the book first.

CBS didn't really enforce any limitations on the editing of the show from its Showtime size down to what they were going to air. I'd say about 10 minutes were cut, I only noticed a few places where it had been edited, though. Mostly language is what is cut, FWIW.