Dexter Morgan is a geeky lab worker for the Miami Metro Police Department, he is the lover of Rita, and a surrogate father to her kids Astor and Cody, other than that he is the chewtoy of his foster sister Debrah, and is the guy that brings the entire precints donuts.
And he is a serial killer, who has killed at least twenty people by the start of season one.
But don’t worry, they were all killers themselves. All is well and good in the jungle. The women and children and cuban immigrants have a dark protector watching over them.
At it’s heart Dexter is a show about what it means to be human, as opposed to being a monster. Dexter uses his narration very frequently to remind us that he has no real emotions only emptiness. But it takes no shrink to see that Dexter is obviously mistaken, almost self-deceptive.
Dexters constant musing inner monologue serve two purposes. First of all they allow us a glimpse of the mind of this killer, and allows the audience to sympathize with him. Though the fact that he is played by Michael C. Hall (pulling of cute and creepy with equal amounts of ease) doesn’t excatly hurt either.
And then I propose this to you:
The second purpose of the narrative is in fact a far more sinister one, which only comes to mind if one allows oneself a great enough distance to the narrative device. Dexter narrates as if to a specific person, and it is clearly obvious that this person can not be any other character within the diegesis of the show itself.
We are the Dark Passenger that Dexter speaks of. We are the ones that compel him to perform these task, that are in any categorical sense of justice just plain wrong.
I find that thinking about “Dexter” in this way opens many new and interesting interpretations. Try it.
Dexters returns for his fifht season on America’s Showtime on September 26th 2010.
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