12 Essential Episodes of Dexter
12 Essential Episodes of Dexter
Photo: Darren Michaels/SHOWTIME/Everett Collection
When it comes to spinoffs, modern TV networks seem to have an endless appetite. Weâve gotten expansions of the mythology of Game of Thrones, an endless onslaught of side quests for The Walking Dead, and even recently waved good-bye to the enigma that was Young Sheldon. So itâs no surprise that Dexter, a crowning achievement for Showtime, is getting two more series in the franchise: Dexter: Original Sin, which looks at Dexterâs killinâ days as a 20-something whoâs also just getting used to his day job as blood-spatter analyst, and Dexter: Resurrection, which is a continuation of a story line that has already ended twice (the latest ending seemed to pretty conclusively kill him off, too!).
As the Dexter empire sets itself to conquering new blood-stained shores, itâs time to look back at the installments that have made the franchise worth returning to over the years. Even the showâs most dedicated fans will likely admit that itâs been a fairly bumpy ride. But just as the series had the capability to devolve into utter cartoonishness, when all of its elements came together, it could deliver some outstanding results. Dexter is far from a relic of the aughts â it bore consistently solid performances, a bevy of intensely memorable story lines, and relished in its own grisly vibes. Itâs a kind of efficacy that was very clear during the time that most of its audience recalls with fondness: the very beginning.
As Showtime muscled in on the Prestige TV wave that HBO had all but created, Dexter would soon become their golden child. And itâs apparent from the beginning what ripe material they were working with. The show is atmospheric, the casting is excellent, the writing is occasionally inspired (this would be the showâs most wildly fluctuating aspect) and the hook is a once-in-a-lifetime elevator pitch: What if there was a serial killer, but he only killed bad guys? With an effortlessly watchable Michael C. Hall at the forefront, it unsurprisingly became one of the defining shows of the era.
What is most surprising about watching the debut episode, though, is how many tones the series is playing with. Itâs both extremely dark (âLook or Iâll cut your eyelids right off your face,â Dexter tells a soon-to-be victim in what looks like a basement from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and oddly campy (âJust like me ⊠empty inside,â his constant internal narration states as he gazes at an empty box of donuts). And though these two aspects will shift in prominence back and forth as the show goes on, they will be present for its entire run.
Though it would never approach the level of, for example, Hannibal, Dexter would often try to find beauty in its parade of grotesqueries. âSeeing Red,â in which Dexter is led to (and promptly faints in) a room that contains a veritable pool of blood, is one of those moments. Itâs a great set piece, one that the series would rarely match again.
Season 1âs main arc concerned finding the âIce Truck Killer,â a man that also turned out to be Dexterâs brother. As such, the first season also revolved around Dexter trying to figure out where he came from. Collapsing in all of that red provides the trigger for his repressed memories â he watched his mother get slaughtered in a shipping container and he sat in her blood for days. In combining a memorable scene of gore with an adeptly revealed backstory, Dexter proved that it could be both a cartoonishly violent exercise in antiheroism and a gripping personal drama. Sadly, it wouldnât always be working with material of this caliber.
The finale of the first season, in which Dexter kills his own brother and thus saves his adopted sister Debra (whom his brother had dated and planned to murder) couldâve been the end of the show itself. In fact, the concluding moment shows Dexter in a dream sequence where heâs surrounded by people cheering for him and his actions as he mulls over whether his deeds have made him a good person. Of course, in retrospect, that audience is obviously the viewers of the show itself. Whoo, Dexter! You kill people but, like, in a cool way!
Though the show would go on for eight seasons, its emotional themes never really evolved past the ending of the first season. Sure, the chess pieces get moved around and new characters question him and how he can relate to others, but in the first season, where Dexter is forced to confront his feelings about himself, his origins, his âbloodâ family and his found family, you get a pretty good treatise on what the show has to offer. There would be better seasons (with more explosively entertaining episodes) but Dexter would never tell as cohesive a story as this again.
If there is one major difference between seasons one and two, itâs that two mostly finds Dexter playing defense. The dumping ground at the bottom of the ocean where he deposited most of his victims has been uncovered, and expert FBI agent Frank Lundy (played by the charming Keith Carradine) is set to find this âBay Harbor Butcher.â Meanwhile, Dexterâs own co-worker in the Miami Police Department, the surly James Doakes, is tightening the screws in his grudge against Dexter. And thatâs not even counting Dexterâs new love interest, Lila, who has a prying fascination with Dexterâs dark side and his previous girlfriend/eventual wife, Rita, who mainly just wants Dexter to stop being such a secretive weirdo.
This episode is the best example of these elements all coming together. And its finish, in which Doakes finally discovers that his self-made workplace nemesis Dexter is the killer that heâs expected all along, makes for a satisfying payoff to a subplot thatâs been in the works since the first episode. Common fan wisdom says that Dexter peaked in its first half, and by seeing how well it juggles all of its different throughlines here, itâs hard to disagree.
One interesting thing about Dexter is that season finales often feel like concrete ways to end the show entirely, especially in the first half. Dexter rarely rushed to get to the finish line during these glory days â rather, it would actively begin to tie things up with a few episodes to spare, allowing the true emotional climax some breathing room. Here, the slate is wiped clean so that we get time to say goodbye to Doakes, Lundy and Dexterâs glorious deranged ex, Lila, who absconds to Europe (only to be pursued by Dexter in the closing moments of the episode).
If thereâs another reason that the end of season two provided another legitimate reason to roll credits on the whole Dexter thing, itâs the fact that by the end, heâs affirmed a new âcodeâ for himself. Forever haunted by the specter of his Dad, a former cop who discovered Dexterâs burgeoning psychopathy and trained him to use it for âgood,â Dexter decides to go his own way here and try to live by his own rules. Does he deliver on his promise in the third season and beyond? Noooooot quite. âNewâ Dexter is a lot like the old Dexter. But at least, at the time, it felt like it was working toward something special here.
The third season of Dexter is serviceable but unremarkable, as it mostly plays with a redux of the major themes of season two: What if Dexter became close to someone who accepted him, but this time itâs an unstable dude rather than a girlfriend? Season four, though, despite its abundance of plot lines that donât really go anywhere interesting, is remembered as perhaps the highlight of the entire franchise. And thatâs predominantly due to John Lithgowâs Emmy-winning performance as Arthur Mitchell aka the Trinity Killer, who is essentially the Dexter version of the BTK killer.
Taking advantage of something rarely seen outside of his roles in Brian De Palma films, Dexter turns Lithgowâs aw-shucks persona into a mask for something truly terrifying. And in âHungry Man,â we get to see his home life, one where he keeps his entire family in a state of paranoid despair. Dexter, so focused as it was on the titular killerâs relationships, rarely allowed such an in-depth glance at what it was like for the other families of the many, many monsters that inhabited Miami. But the tense Thanksgiving dinner in âHungry Manâ gives us a peek and makes the audience glad that weâre stuck with goofy, milquetoast Dexter Morgan.
Though many would likely opt to put the fourth season finale âThe Getawayâ on a list of the most essential episodes, itâs actually not that well-constructed (though it features a parade of big moments like Trinityâs death, the reveal that Trinity murdered Dexterâs wife Rita, and the discovery of Dexterâs son sitting in a pool of his own motherâs blood, thus continuing the family cycle). In comparison, the cat and mouse antics of the previous episode, âHello, Dexter Morganâ are much more gripping. It also grants one of the rare moments that we ever really, truly fear for Dexter.
Dexterâs main advantage is that heâs cautious and plays things carefully, avoiding the emotional pitfalls and irrational patterns of his rival murderers. But heâs never been toe-to-toe with someone like Trinity, who has been concealing himself for decades. Trinity stalks Dexter to his office in the police headquarters and (in a sequence that makes John Lithgow look roughly 19-feet-tall) cuts Dexter down to size. Itâs an iconic moment in the show, as, for the first and perhaps only time in the series, Dexter meets his match.
After Ritaâs death at the end of Season Four, Season Five was a solid effort that did little more than rearrange the furniture of the show (though it does feature an absolutely fantastic guest role with Robocop star Peter Weller playing a crooked cop). However, itâs a masterpiece in comparison to the sixth season, which is one misguided plot (the twist involving its main antagonist can be seen from a mile away) after another (Deb falling in love with her adopted brother Dexter is an infamously bizarre tangent that thankfully gets dropped within a few episodes).
Its only real peak is when it literally drives away from the main storyline entirely, as Dexter (and his deceased, serial killer brother playing the Devil on his shoulder) take a brotherly road trip to check in on the remnants of Trinityâs family. Despite the sheer number of killers in the show and the countless families that were undoubtedly ruined, we rarely get to see the personal impact left behind. And if âNebraskaâ is any indication, things arenât going well for anyone. Here, we see a family thatâs been torn apart, as Trinityâs son is forced to kill his own angrily obsessed mother (who recently drove her daughter to suicide). A rightfully poignant episode in a season that fell drastically out of step with itself.
After a haphazard sixth season, the course correction of season seven is deeply refreshing. It manages to stay focused on what is obviously the most pressing narrative of the series to date â Deb discovering that Dexter is the Bay Harbor Butcher. And though there are a few hiccups along the way (the writers introduce the late, great Ray Stevenson as a threatening Ukrainian mobster but never quite manage to make the plot feel worthy of the performance), season seven feels like an appropriately driven follow-up to the early years of the show.
âAre You ⊠?â also represents another of season sevenâs best aspects: The characters, most of whom are apparently noteworthy detectives, are actually smart. Yes, the show is called âDexter,â and so everyone gets to slip on the requisite banana peels in order to continue being blind to the fact that heâs a serial killer. But in the span of one episode, Deb goes from unwittingly helping Dexter clean up one of his own crime scenes to confronting him about a lifetime of his work. In Dexter time, thatâs essentially pressing fast forward. But itâs wonderful to see someone like Deb not be treated like a total buffoon.
In terms of providing closure for the series, season seven is more satisfying than the real final season. Though it would kill off Deb, send Dexterâs son off to live with Dexterâs latest weird girlfriend, and end with Dexter living alone and working at a lumber company, as a whole, season eight makes no reliable efforts to wrap up Dexterâs story. It kills time until itâs allowed to hit the aforementioned bullet points and calls it a day. Meanwhile, season sevenâs âSurprise Motherfucker,â which shows Dexterâs previously devoted police boss Maria LaGuerta finally turning on him and Deb being forced to choose between Dexter and LaGuerta (who stands for the normal life she could have) brings the show to a proper head.
Featuring a few flashbacks with the deceased James Doakes (whose season-one line âSurprise, Motherfuckerâ had been embraced as a meme by this point), season seven is a season finale that joins the long line of Dexter finales that couldâve ended the entire show. And though it doesnât punish Dexter for his crimes or kill him off, itâs the last time the original series felt like it had a grip on its own thematic potency. Everything after would be a fall from grace.
Well, not everything. If the sequel series, New Blood, was any indication, Dexter had a little bit left in the tank. But to access that fuel, it needed a complete change of scenery, an overhaul in the cast, and an entirely new dynamic to work with. New Blood is a fun time, one that balances the macabre and the camp that was so evident in the first episode of the original series. And rather than simply be âDexter with sweaters,â it forces him to try to wrangle in his own sonâs murderous urges, a job that causes him to reflect on the morality of his own.
The final two episodes provide a sort of capsule story, even as they build on the show as a whole. Dexter introduces his son, Harrison, to his âcodeâ and the son, who idolizes Dexter, becomes a pseudo-protege for a bit. âThe Family Businessâ feels like a pilot in a way, one where Dexter and his brood seem bound to go off on a Batman & Robin-style adventure to administer twisted justice to the world. But of course, this is Dexter, meaning that itâs only a matter of time before it all comes crashing down.
What do you do with Dexter? Does he get to go free? Rot in jail? Perish? And if itâs the last thing, who gets to do him in? These are questions that the show feels like it wrestled with from the beginning and, until the end of New Blood, could never really settle on. But âSins of the Fatherâ is likely the best conclusion that the franchise could have at this point â he learns that what heâs done is flawed and that he likely deserves death, one provided by his own son Harrison.
Harrison shooting Dexter, an act that Dexter actively supports as both atonement for his kid and a lifetime of questionable decisions, doesnât come out of nowhere. âSins Of The Fatherâ provides little hope that the two will ride off into the sunset. But it is a bit shocking in its sense of finality. Dexter always seemed intent on providing wiggle room for its star to escape and loopholes for him to prove to himself that he wasnât as big of a monster as the killers without their names in the title. New Blood allows all of that to evaporate, meaning that regardless of what the upcoming spinoffs provide, there is a concrete point in history when Showtime made its peace with the end of Dexter Morgan.
12 Essential Episodes of Dexter
