Dexter

Sunday evening I finally saw my first episode of Dexter. Now, I'm usually open to watching a new show. How can you not be intrigued by a premise of "America's favorite serial killer"? The pull of the show is that the main character is a cop and a serial killer who kills "bad" serial killers. So, you're supposed to like him, right? However, I have to say that I was generally disappointed with the entire show. I didn't even like the main character. I'm open to the possibility that I caught a bad episode, but the show just left me with a bad feeling. I kept waiting for the "funny" moment to cut through the awkwardness of the show, but it never came.

I'm not sure how early the episode was in the season, but I'm guessing it was from the first season. The story line for the episode revolved around an ice truck killer whose victims would end up in frozen pieces. My first assumption was that Dexter would catch the killer, make him understand how much of a horrible person he is and then get rid of him, like the "good" serial killer the commercials made me want to believe. However, he didn't catch anyone. In fact, when presented with an opportunity to stop someone from doing something evil, he just stood there. There was this scene with a woman who is "sort of" his girlfriend. He has an opportunity to help her, but he just stands there with this look on his face like he's trying to make a decision about what to do till it's too late. He even has a shovel! The scene sets you up to think he's going to hit him with the shovel for stealing his girlfriend's car, but he just watches him drive away.

Then, the episode returned to his past to reveal his first victim who was a nurse slowly killing her patients with overdoses of morphine. She was going to kill Dexter's dad, but his dad told Dexter to stop her from hurting him and her other patients. Apparently that was enough to set him off and turn him into a killer. So, his solution is to wrap her living room in saran wrap, awkwardly wrestle her to the floor, then saran wrap her, naked, to a table and force her to discuss her personal photo albums and a few other things before he finally kills her. The nurse wasn't exactly in the best of shape and my only thought was "oh for the love of god, get her off my TV screen." While there's no question that she was a bad person, I wasn't convinced that she necessarily deserved to be emotionally tortured then killed. Adding to the uncomfortable feeling of the scene was the fact that the director led the you to believe that you were going to actually have to watch Dexter murder her. Fortunately, they cut away before you could see anything. Well, besides most of her unclothed body (minus the two most personal parts covered with saran wrap). I was relieved when that scene was over. I'd be glad to never see something like that again. They don't make eye bleach, but I could use some.

The show was just uncomfortable, awkward and icky overall. I really wish I could un-see the saran wrapped nurse.. I also didn't like the main character because I was unable to find a large enough redeeming quality offset whole awkward "serial killer" thing.