It’s bloody…
…It’s gruesome…
…It’s darkly delicious…
Yep, it’s “Dexter”, season 2, and it’s nothing short of superb in every way.
Dexter is back in the second season of what must undoubtedly be one of the very best TV-shows ever made. He’s the perfectly nice and normal guy who works at the Miami Homicide Division’s forensic department. He has a nice girlfriend, a lot friends, an annoying sister… Hm… I feel like I am forgetting something here. Oh yeah, and his hobby is to kill murderers, chop them up to little pieces and dump the bodies in the ocean.
In this second season, our favourite serial killers suffers an identity crisis. It isn’t easy being an emotionless psycho who’s pretending to be normal, and it certainly doesn’t help when all his victims are discovered on the ocean floor and one of the biggest manhunts in history is set in motion to find “the Bay Harbor Butcher”, aka Dexter Morgan. Things start to get messy and chaotic, and soon he begins distrusting himself and his motivation down the most basic levels. Am I evil? Am I good? He needs answers, but where to find them?
Micheal C. Hall plays his character, Dexter, to perfection. It is quite ironic actually, that one of the best realized characters in ever portrayed Television would be a serial killer who doesn’t even count himself as a “real human being”. Because, are you really human if you don’t know what sorrow is? What joy feels like? Aren’t there more that binds us together than similar DNA?
Watching “Dexter” demands a whole lot more of the viewer than regular shows do. Every sentence is brimming with meaning, every scene seems to foreshadow what is to come. As I sat down to watch it, I couldn’t stop analyzing every single detail, thus making the experience of watching it kinda like reading a really good novel. And I’ve always preferred a good novel to a good series, so it finally felt like I could have my cake and eat it too. Actually, it’s no wonder I feel that way since “Dexter” is in fact based upon an acclaimed trilogy by Jeff Lindsay.
The overall plot of this season is very good, but it isn’t the strongest point of the show, which is the main character himself. His musings are what we came for and why we stay, but the plot keeps us on edge and guessing at everything. The rest of the cast doesn’t really hold a candle to Dexter himself, but I feel like they’ve improved somewhat since the first season. Especially his sister isn’t as poor or boring as she initially was, and that’s good, cos she was my least favourite thing about this whole deal. There are some new faces this season, and they’re all good. I found Laila to be a particularly sexy brand of awesome and enjoyed watching every second of her (both artistically and aesthetically, if you catch my drift…).
So all in all I’d say this season was a little bit better than the first one and I’m really looking forward to the next and final installment of the series. Thankfully, “Dexter” wasn’t ruined by the WGA strike, so we got all of the 12 episodes that were planned. I can’t recommend this show hard enough. There are few things on this planet that can compete with “Dexter”.
9,5 /10
Posts
I pretty much agree with everything in your review, but I think it deserves a perfect 10. With all the excellent Tv-shows out there today Dexter is in a different league along with BSG and The Wire. Of course House is good, Rescue Me, Heroes and Scrubs are good as well. But Dexter is excellent in almost everything it does. The only flaw I can find is that the actress playing Dexters sister is mediocre. The rest is pure perfection. I will of course have to rewatch it, but I don`t think my final verdict will be any different.
If Dexter doesen`t qualify for a perfect score, very few things does.
7. January 2008 @ 15:00 ( Permalink )
That’s pretty much what I said in the review, so I’m glad we’re agreed. I very seldom dole out 10/10 grades on books and TV series; they have to VERY special in my opinion to deserve being rated “perfect”. True, “Dexter”, season 2, came very close to getting that grade, but the slightly weaker supporting cast and the mentioned sister made reconsider. But, hey, what difference does really a half point do?
7. January 2008 @ 23:38 ( Permalink )
Half a point dosen`t make that much of a difference, you`re right there. But in my opinion the 10/10 should be used more often in general. Percection in litterature, videogames, movies or Tv shows are rareley achived. In fact I have never played a 100 % perfect videogame, read the perfect book, or watched the perfect Tv show. Thus the perfect score should be used when a piece of art comes so close to perfection as possible. But, hey, that`s my opinion. I review cds for a fanzine on the net, and I don`t think I`ve ever handed out a 10/10 myself.
The new charachters this season were brilliant, Keith Carradine and Jaime Murray are both outstanding actors. Michael C. Hall might just be my favourite actor of all time. And Jennifer Carpenter has improved a lot as Debra Morgan. But as you said, half a point dosen`t really make any difference, it`s just nitpicking.
Nice blog by the way, and you write very good book reviews.
8. January 2008 @ 05:56 ( Permalink )
You people are REALLY selling Dexter…
8. January 2008 @ 08:06 ( Permalink )
“Nice blog by the way, and you write very good book reviews.”
Thank you, Mr. Very Nice Duiker With Brilliant Taste! I’ve checked out your blog as well, and will have to keep doing so in the future.
I would like to rate more things 10/10, that’s true enough. Last year, I think “Catch-22″ was the only book to earn that grade, no TV shows came closer than 9/10 but somehow I managed to give 10/10 to “Requiem for a Dream”, “Blade Runner” and “Donnie Darko”. And I wouldn’t change those grades if I could go back in time and do it over again, so apparently movies gets the mark of perfection easier than other things.
But fussing over grades is nearly pointless. Everyone have their own standards both when they’re setting ‘em and when they’re interpreting other people’s grades, which makes for a shitty system. In my own experience the best way to go about things like these are seeing whether or not your taste matches the reviewer’s, and only then can you be 70/30 percent sure that you’ll end up feeling nearly the same. The grades are there mostly for my own benefit and pleasure - they provide some easy basis on which to compare my experience on - but they’re essentially worthless.
8. January 2008 @ 12:04 ( Permalink )
Hm, I seem to have misplaced my link, where is Duiker’s blog?
8. January 2008 @ 12:29 ( Permalink )
Gah, I gotta get back to watching this again… Started watching the first season, I found the plot itself rather weird, however the main character I found purely awesome.
8. January 2008 @ 22:51 ( Permalink )
I really want to say that Requiem for a dream sucked ass, but when it comes down to it it’s really a brilliant. We watched it in 8th or 9th grade. I remember several girls either started crying or throwing up, and definitely everyone sat back with a sense of disturbed malcontent.
So if a film can move you that much it HAS to be good
Besides the message was very important: DON’T DO DRUGS
8. January 2008 @ 22:54 ( Permalink )
“Besides the message was very important: DON’T DO DRUGS”
Or in the very least, “if you want to lose weight, find another way of doing it than taking speed.”
11. January 2008 @ 16:00 ( Permalink )