Dexter – The First Season (Showtime DVD)

 

Picture: B-     Sound: B-     Extras: C+     Episodes: B-

 

 

Dexter Morgan robs life from the bad and gives to the needy.  The needy, you ask?  Well the need in this case is his deranged craving for death and murder.  Now on DVD is the critically acclaimed Showtime series Dexter: The First Season.  The series stars Michael C. Hall as Dexter a Miami Police lab tech who analyzes blood spray patterns to help gain insight into brutal murder cases.  And whereas Dexter may seem to be just another stuffy, unemotional, shut in by day Dexter’s true passion comes to life at night.  Dexter Morgan is a serial killer and has no remorse for what he does.  The lives that Dexter takes, however, are not exactly of innocent people.  Dexter Morgan murders other murders, rapist, and a plethora of other societal scum.

 

In turn Dexter’s actions bring up an interesting paradox; is it right for him to take the law into his own hands and is he just as bad as them?  Adding further fuel to the fire is the fact that Dexter could not care less about ‘helping society;’ Dexter just is fulfilling his need to kill.  A need that he has had since he was 3 years old and a need that his foster father helped him to hide from the world.  In many ways Dexter’s main struggle is to just survive and appear normal.  A struggle that Dexter must always be one step ahead of.

 

The series is interesting and has an original concept.  The intended nature of Michael C. Hall’s character, Dexter, to be totally emotionally absent and deranged does find the audience to be a bit distanced.  When viewing a film or television series the audience looks for a way to connect with the characters. The characters on this series, however, are so ‘out in left field’ that it is hard to make any reasonable connection.  Since Dexter already has no emotion, dates a woman just to seem normal, and has no interest to help society with his murders but only to fuel his true passion of death, the audience may find themselves at a loss on whether they like this character or not.

 

Dexter’s sister is also a main character on the series (played by Jennifer Carpenter of the underrated The Exorcism of Emily Rose) as a loud mouthed, newbie, police detective that has no idea her brother is a mass murderer; in fact it is hard to know where this girl’s head is at most of the time.  The series is definitely a dark comedy that has many drama elements.  The situations and conversations on the series are often laughable, whether intended to be funny or not.  Some of the casting is unusual in the sense of whether the characters are actually suppose to be that strange and hokey; this reviewer is still unsure after watching all 12 episodes of Season One.  An example of this is actor Erik King as Sergeant James Doakes.  King plays the character as a very brash man, with a deep, highly annunciated voice; which just reminds this reviewer sadly and laughably of Greg Hollimon’s portrayal or Principal Onyx Blackman on the series Strangers with Candy.

 

The whole of Season One focuses on the viewers getting to know Dexter and why as an audience (if nothing else) you should be intrigued by the character.  The series to this reviewer boils down to not liking the character or connecting with him, but rather to delve into the mental labyrinth of what is going on in this odd and deranged man’s head.  What is his past?  What is his future? And so forth.

 

Each episode is interconnected so a viewer cannot afford to miss a single episode; though there are summations at the beginning of each episode.  This reviewer enjoyed the series to date, but in order to keep the attention of a growing audience the series must evolve into something more.  What is this something more?  Only time can tell.

 

The technical features on this 4 Disc, 12 episode set are nice but not perfect.  The picture is presented in a 16 X 9 Widescreen and tends to have some light/dark issues in many scenes and at times the colors are skewed.  The sound is adequate with its 5.1 Dolby Digital Surrounds, but fails to give the ‘pop’ one would expect of a suspenseful murder drama like Dexter.  The extras are presented nicely and are plentiful, but failed to totally capture this reviewer’s interest; overall being less than exhilarating.  Special Features include ‘The Academy of Blood- A Killer Course,’  ‘Witnessed in Blood- A True Murder Investigation,’ two free episodes of another Showtime series Brotherhood, and a plethora of other downloadable features.  Overall, the features are there but did not capture this reviewer’s interest in the slightest.

 

Dexter Morgan is a serial killer.  In many ways viewers realize he is a car crash waiting to happen and we can’t wait.  So sharpen your knife and suit up for the Emmy Nominated series Dexter: The First Season.

 

 

-   Michael P Dougherty II