The CBS airing of the pilot for Dexter was not as bad as many fans suspected it might be, mostly because in this era of CSI and its countless clones, the grisly details don’t seem so grisly anymore. On the other hand, what do you do with those words we must protect the little tykes from hearing (as if they should be watching shows like Dexter at all)? Frickin’ is a pretty good sub for, well, I won’t say what for, and frankly Debs is a bit more likable when she is not so potty mouthed. But then there is Doakes. The menacing man in blue who is almost on to our antihero.

And when he whispers into Dex’s ear, “I’m on to you, mother-lover,” the comment provoked laughter rather than concern. So here is my suggestion to the CBS censors: get your stupid selves to your local video store and pick up a copy of Johnny Dangerously. At least then you will learn how to be CREATIVELY funny, you fargin’ bastages. Or should that be fricken’ - gawd, who knows. Wait, I bet the little tykes do. They heard it on the playground.

Tags: Dexter, Drama by Elaine
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Blog sites are filled with comments - both pro and con - on how Dexter played out this season. I can only say, the predictions I gave weren’t a spoiler because I hadn’t seen the final episodes, but I was right on. Lila - as annoying as Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s little sister Dawn - just had to go. She was ruining his control, and would likely have ruined his life. As for Doakes, would Dex have finished him off if Lila hadn’t conveniently done it for him? I like to think not. I’m sorry he’s gone. It would have been so much more interesting had he killed Lila and gone on the run, another hanger-on for next season’s plotline. So where is Dexter going in Season 3? I suspect [Read more →]

Tags: Dexter, Drama by Elaine
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When the last episode of Dexter was over, a friend I was watching it with turned to me and said, “That was just a single hour?” Yes, it did seem longer, not because it was tedious, but because so much action and emotion was packed into a single episode.

Suddenly Doakes is more than a glowering menace, Dexter more a conflicted monster than a focused hero, Harry something of a twisted lunatic, and Lila … [Read more →]

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One of the interesting things about humans is how incredibly stupid even the smartest ones can be. In the Nov. 18 episode, it was Doakes’ turn to be an idiot — in his case due to pride and anger. Walking out of a meeting with FBI Agent Lundy. Breaking into Dexter’s home and, instead of calling 911 when he finds the mother lode of incriminating evidence, he steals it instead. And puts it in his CAR for the FBI to discover. So now he is suspect numero uno but that still didn’t stop him from putting a bullet in Dexter’s leg.

It seems logical that the last three (only three … ah, the sadness of it!) episodes will be shot, a la 24, in nearly real time, since Dexter has Doakes in a lock up and a whole lot of body parts and cocaine (and Doakes) to dispose of.

And then there’s the lascivious Lila. Where will she figure in? Might she have followed Dex to his current killing room? Might she want to match her monster with his, and prove she is as twisted as he is? If she does, there’s a glowering victim at the ready. If she does, she’ll break the Code of Harry. And what a deliciously bloody ending that would be.

Got a better one? Share, share!

Tags: Dexter, Drama by Elaine
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Dexter has always been something of an innocent when it comes to understanding the non-homicidal urges of the human species. In episode 7, he falls into clinging Lila’s trap completely. Matter of fact, he was so obviously clueless that it was depressing to just sit down and write about how completely she had him wrapped around her pale and beautiful little finger, torching her apartment so he have to leave Rita and the kids and go and hold her scrawny smoke-covered body. So depressing, as a matter of fact, that I couldn’t write about it. But what a difference a week makes!

Yes, Lila had Dexter where she wanted him, but not Debs. From the moment the two women meet late at night in Dexter’s kitchen (Lila, naked and lit by the open refrigerator, covers her chest and says, “pardon my tits”) it’s clear that war has been declared.

“I’m Switzerland,” Dex says as the two women spar as around the edge of a full-blown catfight (I’d put my money on Debs), then goes off to do what he does best — taking a chainsaw to the man who killed his mother. If only Lila was this easy a fix.

Maybe she is. [Read more →]

Tags: Dexter, Drama by Elaine
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For a man who claims that he does not understand sex, our hero gets plenty of it in Episode 6 — aptly titled “Dex, Lies and Videotape.”

Dex has been lying to Rita, having not told her that he took a road trip with his sexy sponsor. He’s been lying to Lila, not telling her what he is really addicted to. AND, he’s apparently been deluding himself by believing that the voyage into the darkness of his soul would not affect his facade. [Read more →]

Tags: Dexter, Drama by Elaine
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At the end of episode 5 our hero is on his docked boat in the middle of the night using a UV light to find all the incriminating bloodstains so he can scrub them away, while somewhere above him a security camera is recording his every move. Are the writers really so dense that they don’t realize that Dexter is way smarter than that? OR, is his lapse of intelligence due to what happened to him earlier in the episode, when he began a journey of twisted self-exploration that ended with him confronting the man who helped kill his mother? He went so he could talk to the man, and say “You stole my life, and I’m not the person I’m supposed to be.” Yep, he actually got the words out before he grabbed a baseball bat and added some pithy punctuation. [Read more →]

Tags: Dexter, Drama by Elaine
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One of the measures of a series’ success comes when it begins attracting stars in cameo roles. This season, we’ve already seen Keith Carradine as Special Agent Lundy. Now JoBeth Williams joins the cast as Rita’s surreptitiously toxic mom, who sizes up Dexter and says, “That man is hiding something.” He warms up to her when she tells him that if the Bay Harbor Butcher is only killing evil people, Miami ought to give him a medal. Some in the city, and a lot of the BHB’s victims, agree. Unfortunately, Lundy is not one of them, and as the hunt for the killer continues, Dex’s paranoia is growing.

[Read more →]

Tags: Dexter, Drama by Elaine
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Posted by Elaine B.

Our hero, a.k.a. the “Bay Harbor Butcher,” now finds himself in hot water with the suddenly cold Rita. She can deal with her boyfriend’s role in her husband’s death but not with living with an addict. So, in what has to be the funniest moment this season, Dexter attends his first open meeting of NA, where, as people discuss their addiction, he contemplates the state of his knives and stock of duck tape. It’s all very boring until Lila, the dark and hot and vaguely gothic beauty a few rows in front of him, takes him out for coffee and explains how she also feels those strange urges rising up in her, that little voice whispering like …

“A dark passenger,” Dexter supplies for her, his voice full of quiet excitement.

Exactly. But she may mean cocaine, or expensive wine or even chocolate. Or does she mean something more?

But, inspired by her and even more by the fact the Rita shuts him out until he can produce a newcomer’s chip from an NA meeting, he goes back and actually shares his feelings — real human feelings — and it liberates him in a way he finds astonishing. Is that a real smile on his face? Is that real laughter? I’m convinced that, at the least, what he feels for Rita is real love.

And he ought to love the fact that Doakes now thinks he’s found the secret Dex has been hiding. He says he understands, or is that a ruse?

Meanwhile, Debs discovers a pattern to the BHB’s kills. Is the noose tightening around Dexter’s neck just as he has a chance to be something akin to normal? And what will the citizens of Miami think when they finally learn what sort of “victims” have been pulled from the briny deep?

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Posted by Elaine B.

(Warning: contains spoilers)
Like every Dexter fan, I anxiously awaited the moment when our good-guy killer would return and say “Tonight’s the night.” Unfortunately, this season that means bowling, bowling and more bowling and, in spite of the team shirts that proclaim “Bowl till you bleed,” there is a world of difference between a split and a slice. Knowing how long it has been to the minute since he last killed (his brother), Dex is getting hinkey. The only severed body part he has to play with is the Barbie doll head his brother left as a sick calling card.

It’s the fault of Doakes, who has made tailing Dexter his raison d’être, all because he suspects our hero of SOMETHING. Doakes is the glowering presence at the bowling alley bar, the lights in the rearview on an empty street, the eyes looking over Dex’s shoulder at the station house. Doakes needs a hobby, a girlfriend, anything to keep him occupied elsewhere so the sordid streets of Miami can be just a little bit safer thanks to Dex.

Then, Doakes takes a night off. Is he out glowering at young gangbangers? Coaching little league? No matter, it does give Dex a chance to claim a victim, and in a parallel to the first episode of the series, he has spotted another deadly man of the cloth. Here it is a blind voodoo priest who arranges hits for the right amount of cash. And in the moment when his knife falls on his plastic wrapped victim, Dex can’t do it. Pity on the disabled? Doakes putting him off his game? Does the audience of clucking chickens in the priest’s back room distract him? Remorse for killing his brother? Let’s say, yes, but mostly to the last. You don’t just wipe out your blood kin and escape with the id intact.

[Read more →]

Tags: Dexter, Drama by Elaine
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