My thoughts about movies and TV shows I've been watching

See also my blog on books: Elliot's Reading

Monday, April 25, 2011

Dexter: the TV show that requires the most willing suspension of disbelief

"Dexter," on Showtime, requires more willing suspension of disbelief than any other show on television, probably (I haven't seen every one show on television), but if you are willing to buy the premise and accept the improbabilities of the plot the series is very entertaining and provocative and, at least insofar as the lead, Michael C. Hall playing Dexter Morgan, very well acted, too. The premise, simply, is that Dexter, adopted by a police officer, is damaged through childhood trauma and unable to feel empathy and drawn toward killing and destruction, and his dad teaches him a moral "code" so that Dexter, unable to stop killing, does so to avenge wrongs - he's a one-man vigilante, dispatching various abusers, kidnappers, et al. The premise I find very intriguing, but what makes the show ridiculous at times is that Dexter, who btw works in the Miami PD lab, is able to kill one person after another, many of them prominent, and never leave a single clue, never be caught - it's really preposterous, makes Miami PD to be the totally stupidest PD outside of the Swedish police in Stieg Larsson's world (but that's another story). Nevertheless, when I put that disbelief aside I'm fully entertained by the Dexter episodes - haven't seen all seasons but now watching Season 6, in which he takes up the case of woman played by Julia Stiles, who has been brutalized, and they set about finding who tortured her - turns out to be a new age therapist evangelist sociopath who's smooth and cleancut, the worst types, and doing them in - all the while being spied upon by a private detective hired by another cop - maybe he'll get caught at last? I doubt that.

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