Dexter: Season Three…Underwhelming?

The first time for everything is always the best: the first time you eat a hot cinnamon roll from Cinnabon, the first time you have sex with someone you definitely, maybe actually like a little, and then there is the first time you watch Dexter. I already knew about the show before I popped my Dexter cherry, but I wasn’t really excited about the premise. A forensic scientist that is secretly a serial killer just sounded too damn gimmicky. Then someone told me, “No, no, you have it all wrong see, he’s a killer of other killers.” I then wanted to see it even less. Of course I finally got around to seeing it on DVD and immediately got hooked – just like everyone else. I was like a drug addict sucking at a cow’s teat in the hopes that actual blow would squirt out. I devoured the first season, and when I got to the final climax I thought, “How the hell are they going to top that?” And then in season two they did. For season two, the format of the show was deconstructed and reassembled. Season two felt like being in a box that got slowly smaller and smaller until before you knew it all the oxygen was depleted. It was claustrophobic and intense. And now after what seems like a long hiatus, America’s favorite serial killer is back for season three. I just sat through a marathon of third season episodes, and I was pretty much left with that “It’s Okay…” kind of feeling. I was underwhelmed. What happened, Dexter?

Season one allowed you to get to know the characters, and also gave television audiences a familiar format of singular episodic stories per episode, but still with an overall season arc. Who is Dexter going to kill this week and will the Miami police department ever catch the notorious Ice Truck Killer? This gave it a digestible feeling and the overriding sensation that the story was headed in some sort of a direction. Season two blew all of that out of the water by placing Dexter himself as the role of the mouse instead of the cat. A new serial killer is found with an even larger body count, and that killer is Dexter himself. Each episode ended with an increasingly bigger “oh shit” moment. Season three, however, started with the “oh shit” moment – that of Dexter getting his longtime girlfriend Rita pregnant. This of course isn’t very “oh shit” it’s more “gosh damn.” You heard me. It’s as if the writing staff just watched Superman Returns and said “Oh, that’s fuckin’ brilliant. Let’s give Dexter a kid! If it works for Superman it will work for Dexter!” – Sadly, it didn’t work for Superman

This third season seems to have Dexter wrestling with the idea of growing as a man and settling down with a family and making new friends, which is about as exciting as it sounds. I’m not saying it’s bad, it just not as fun as the show was before. If you are a fan of the Star Wars prequels, (someone’s gotta be, who else bought all those DVD’s?) you may be happy to know that Jimmy Smits is a recurring guest star this season. Unfortunately, he’s not playing Senator Bail Organa, but he gets about the same amount of stuff to do. Which is to say “not a hell of a lot”. He mostly sits on the beach with Dexter as they try to get to know each other and talk about their feelings. I’m sure by the end of the season Dexter will either get to know Jimmy Smits very, very well, either by bending him over and taking him down to brown town, or he’ll just kill him. I’m going to vote for the latter. I guess that’s the problem with this season; you know exactly where it’s going.

For the first two seasons, Dexter was a really great show that you just surrendered to as it took you by the hair and ran. This season feels like visiting the same neighborhood again. It’s still fun and better than most shows on right now but it was a step lower that the rush of last season. Many great TV shows do go through their awkward period, much like Lost did in Season three. And I hope that, like Lost, season four will blow my head off. Of course the season isn’t over yet, and they may still have some surprises in the end. I guess.

Still, there is certainly a lot to admire about this show, and I’ll continue to check it out and recommend others to check it out as well. But it’s sadly possible that the days of needing to know exactly what happens before the next episode is even out, wanting to talk to your friends about what you think the next outcome will be, and then betting on what conflict is going to get resolved (and in which way) are gone. With this really solid, but relatively underwhelming, story this season, are Dexter’s best days behind it? When we all thought “how can they possibly top this?!” after season two, it seems that, so far this season, the answer is “they can’t”. The writers of Dexter might just be human after all.