Will Dexter's son follow the code?

By Elaine Bergstrom

Spoiler Warning

We all have friends about whom we say, “Why did he (or she) ever marry that person?” I’ve felt that way about Dexter marrying Rita for the entire season, but as last night made clear, my feelings are irrelevant. Dexter married Rita because he loved her. He actually put off killing Trinity because he hoped to learn how to be a good family man. When he saw how Trinity terrorized his family, he saw how different his own life with Rita and the kids had been. And, when Trinity’s family was led away by police, he saw the potential future for his wife and children. Has there every been a better reason for a man to abandon his homicidal ways? [Read more →]

Categories: Drama by Elaine
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Tags: Dexter, Dexter Season 4 finale

By Elaine Bergstrom

It’s been an up and down week for Dexter (the series) and Dexter (the killer), too.

First, the bad news. Indiana teenager Andrew Conley (17) has been charged in the murder of his 10-year-old brother Conner. Conley says he felt compelled to kill and that he felt like Dexter afterwards. However, the troubled teen also confessed to having these feelings since he was in the 8th grade, well before Dexter aired. Noted child psychologist Dr. Lisa Boesky says of his act, “It’s rarely something that happens overnight. This is not caused by a television show or a fight with their parents. This is typically indicative of a serious disturbance. And clearly in cases like this, it indicates that something is seriously wrong.” [Read more →]

Categories: Drama by Elaine
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Tags: Dexter, Dexter copycat killer, Dexter Season 4, John Lithgow

James Remar as Harry Morgan

By Elaine Bergstrom

Are monsters born or are they created? This is a query, nature vs. nurture, and it’s time to ask the hard question: Would Dexter really have become a monster, or did Harry deliberately create one, a sort of dark avenger for his own frustrations — and perhaps urges. [Read more →]

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Tags: Dexter, Dexter Lost Boys

By Elaine Bergstrom
It’s been a rough few weeks for our conflicted antihero, but an educational experience, too. He’s learned a lot about Arthur and even more about himself. After he confessed to Arthur that he’d killed an innocent, looking for some sort of advice from a man he still thought had things together, it led to a confession from Arthur about his own horrific past and the guilt he felt after his sister died. Worse, as the video above reveals, after Dexter learned the truth about Arthur’s family, his all-too-human reaction to the horror Arthur Mitchell’s family endures has put a target on his back. He’s also begun to realize that there are more than three killings in each cycle. And now that Debs figured out that someone shorter than Trinity shot her, Dexter will be looking for the killer’s accomplice. [Read more →]

Categories: Drama by Elaine
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Tags: Dexter, Dexter Hungry Man

Dex and Harry, his real dark passenger

By Elaine Bergstrom

I’m blogging from Cleveland this week where the front news coverage is all about Anthony Sowell, dubbed “The Cleveland Strangler.” Seeing his victims smiling in old photos on the front page of the Plain Dealer and watching the local news cams hovering over the police and the search dogs hunting for more bodies or the prayer vigils being held almost nightly in the community in which Sowell found his victims, my thoughts move to the Ice Truck Killer, to Trinity and to the Bay Harbor Butcher, Dex himself. [Read more →]

Categories: Drama, Fall Preview 2009, Horror by Elaine
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Tags: Dexter, Elaine Bergstrom, Showtime, Trinity

By Elaine Bergstrom

I’ve always been creeped out by suburbia — the vast expanses of lawn; the preoccupation with gardening, often at all hours; the vacuous need to own, own, own; the pressure to always live up to other people’s expectations because, unlike city life, other people expect that you should. This is the world that Dexter entered when he bought a house for his family, and in this week’s episode, “If I Had a Hammer,” he took the plunge, gave up his apartment and became a full-time member of the riding mower set. [Read more →]

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Tags: Dexter, John Lithgow, Season 4, Trinity

Dex and Harry, his real dark passenger

By Elaine Bergstrom

One of the most intriguing things about Dexter the series is how perfectly its creators see the internal conflict of Dexter the killer. And in Sunday’s episode, “Dirty Harry,” Dexter goes through a series of revelations, the second far more troubling than hopeful.

It begins with his reaction to the news that Debs had been shot, a deep anger that has him saying, “If Debs dies, I’ll be (pause) lost.” And there is just a hint of a question in that final word, as if he isn’t sure that what he feels is true or, more likely, amazed the he can feel so deeply about another person. [Read more →]

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Tags: Dexter, Dexter Webisodes critique, Roma Maffia comes to Dexter

By Elaine Bergstrom

As a vampire aficionado, I spend a lot of time contemplating creatures of the night and lamenting the lack of any great ones on television now that the True Blood season has ended. Vampire Diaries‘ Damon has the potential to be wonderful, but he’s unfortunately stuck in a series aimed to appeal to Gossip Girl and Twilight fans rather than to those of us who recall the days of Spike, Angel and even the delightfully playful Henry Fitzroy from Blood Ties.

So I find vampires where I can and at present two of the best are found in Dexter. The Trinity Killer and Dexter are two sides of the same vampiric nature. They each need to kill to survive. So what if the killer is human and capable of surviving direct sunlight, he still has that need to kill to be whole. And so what if their nature isn’t supernatural; something made them the way they are, changed forever to be more or less than human. [Read more →]

Categories: Action, Drama by Elaine
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Tags: Blood Ties, Christina Cox, Dexter, Dexter Season 4

By Elaine Bergstrom

No, our cynical killer will not start taking happy pills. Instead, for fans who need more kills and more backstory, Showtime will air a 12-part animated web-only series, Dexter: Early Cuts, beginning Sunday, Oct. 25. Each short feature will feature a new aspect of the Dexter story and can be accessed at sho.com [Read more →]

Categories: Drama by Elaine
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Tags: Dexter, Dexter wallpaper, Dexter web series

By Elaine Bergstrom

My second-floor bedroom and its deck are in the rear of my home. They look down on the apartment building on the next street over. In its backyard, a neighbor installed a bright outdoor light. I don’t blame her. It gets very dark in the narrow space between garage and building, but I really hate how it shines in my window, ruins my view of the stars and sometimes keeps me awake at night. On insomniac nights, I used to contemplate BB guns or just sneaking over and popping the bulb until it occurred to me to simply put a deck chair between my window and the offending light. So I sympathized — a lot — with Dexter’s sudden act of rage that had him breaking out the infinitely more obnoxious motion detection lights his neighbor had installed. But sadly, acts of rage are not so good an idea in a neighborhood where everyone in on guard, including Rita who is sure to peg him for the vandal after seeing him … well, behaving like a vandal. [Read more →]

Categories: Drama by Elaine
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Tags: Dexter, John Lithgow, Quinn, Trinity Killer