TV Review: Dexter, Season 5

Spoilers ahead, so jump ship while it's still safe . . .

Dexter. Perhaps you've heard of him -- the central character taken from Jeff Lindsay's novels that detail the adventures of a modern day monster -- a vigilante serial killer who kills other serial killers to feed his "Dark Passenger."

Showtime consistently puts out an interesting, thought-provoking series that often delves into ideas of what it means to be human, in between bouts of Dexter's blood letting.

As a bloodspatter analysis expert with the Miami Metro Police, Dexter lives a nicely compartmentalized life divided between his adopted sister, Debra Morgan who serves as a detective, his family, new born son Harrison and adopted step-children Aster and Cody, his wife Rita portrayed by the talented Julie Benz, and his night time activities as he brings killers to justice. All this shatters by the end of the fourth season when Dexter's hunt for the Trinity Killer leads back to his front door -- Rita is brutally murdered by Trinity and Dexter is left to pick up the pieces of a shattered life, attempting to grasp the finer nuances of grief, loss and love -- if he is even capable of such things.

One of the key components of the Lindsay books is the dark humor that surrounds this dark, disassociated, narcissistic character is his fine grasp of what makes a serial killer tick -- or rather, how they don't really tick at all. And Lindsay never forgets it.

In Dexter the show, there's an increasing problem in dealing with a character that is essentially unforgivable -- that is, he's a killer. And no matter how much a TV audience might enjoy the vigilante aspect of what Dexter does -- what he does is still wrong. The most chilling aspect of this show is how much audiences connect with and identify with Dexter -- but just because you like him doesn't make him less culpable for what he does.

In this way there are echoes of Hannibal Lecter who perhaps paved the way for characters like Dexter, for villains whose darkness we regard like an exotic animal in a zoo.

As long as Dexter can continue to be disassociated and unfeeling, what he does make sense. But this doesn't make for a great story, and so as new plots and characters are introduced into Dexter's world and begin to influence and affect him, I find it hard to believe that Dexter can hold onto his monster-self, his "Dark Passenger" without eventually having to reconcile his disassociated state. What makes Season 5 so interesting is that he spends most of this season with "broken" women -- the ghost of his murdered wife, his awkward angsty teenage daughter Aster, his sister Debra, and the most exciting female antagonist I've seen in years, Julia Styles' excellent Lumen Pierce, a rape victim slated to be killed -- before Dexter interrupts the killer.

For a guy with no apparent emotions, he sure is feeling a lot for the women all around him -- he struggles to fine genuine emotion in the events of his wife's murder and his own grieving process, but here's where the real problem begins -- if he begins to feel to this extant, how realistic is it that he keeps killing at the rate that he does? Once you begin to feel, you begin to hate, to love. And in loving, makes the path open for empathy. And if there's one thing that by definition serial killers do not have -- it's empathy.

Enter Julia Styles.

She's been the victim of a circle of serial rapists, when Dexter finds her, weak and struggling out of her prison. Dexter has a real dilemma at this point -- kill her or save her? He saves her, and together, Dexter and Lumen set out to track down the men who've been raping and killing women for the past few decades. Julia Styles gives a great, genuine performance of a woman taken to the brink and then brought back -- with more than she bargained for, a Dark Passenger of her own.

There is a strange kind of cuteness to Lumen's and Dexter's odd courtship -- the mating rituals of serial killers, if you will, where he buys her gloves and a knife, or hilariously, a scene in which Lumen dons her own serial-killing clothes (dark, nondescript) that leaves Dexter speechless in apparent admiration. Interestingly, while their courtship culminates closer to the end of the season, their first "kill" together has more erotic overtones than sex -- for them, the act of killing is a consummation. For the first time, Dexter has someone he can share everything with, and the effect on the character is profound -- and humanizing.

For once, it's nice to see a woman portrayed with a sense of realism -- with an inner steel rather than a victimized despair. The appeal of her character is that Lumen refuses to accept the injustice done to her -- she is more than the rape act committed upon her person, a central idea lost in popular media when portraying victims of assault, and Julia Styles delivers a three-dimensional figure with feral intensity.

The main antagonist is motivational speaker Jordan Chase, who has his childhood friends orchestrate these rapes according to his directions, though Chase does not engage in these acts himself. Portrayed by a deft Jonny Lee Miller, he provides an interesting storyline, opening more questions than he answers -- why he does what he does is never fully explained, and his transformation from social, high-energy do-good public figure to what Dr. Alexander Lowen terms a "little god," is nothing short of horrifying. Most notably, he is one of the few guest-killers in the series that proves an equal opponent for Dexter -- someone who is a master of manipulation and Dexter can't quite get the drop on, which is a welcome change from the usual series formula.

Michael C. Hall has been well-recognized for his acting skills, but for a character whose facial expression is often a mask, he rarely gets to dive in deep to Dexter's inner psyche on a highly emotional level -- but he gets a chance to do that here at the season's end in an incredible portrayal of broken heart.

It's hard to say where the series plans to go in the future, though it is sometimes hard to stomach a show about a killer who is raising a child. While this is well-acted, well-filmed, well-written, one should never lose sight that Dexter is first and foremost a monster -- and should he ever become "human" the premise upon which the show is built -- Dexter's killing -- promptly falls apart.

Promotional image for Dexter Season 5 from wikipedia here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter_%28season_5%29
Review banner made from public domain image from wikimedia commons here:
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