| Darkly Dreaming Dexter Yesterday, due to the presence of a commute once again, I finished the source book for the latest show I am DLing, "Dexter". I link to the IMDB because we in Canada are not allowed to see the website to the American Showtime show. Huh? It IS running here on The MovieNetwork so I find it assinine. Actually I find the idea of not allowing other countries to view promotional material as incredibly stupid but that is another story. As I said, I finished reading the book by Jeff Lindsay I must say that I was incredibly disappointed. The book is relatively small, obviously one of those first mystery genre books that intends a long running series. But I found the writing incredibly lacking, so far as to be boring. While I am more interested in carrying forth a story these days, rather than endless exposition on character traits and backgrounds, I found the style just blasé. But the series I am enjoying incredibly !! I love the character development, progression of the season long story (rather than quickly resolved book plot) and the focus shift from horrific crimes to the growing relationship between Dexter and Rita. For those not knowing, Dexter is a psychopath who works for the Miami police department as a blood spatter expert. No one knows or knew, but for his dead adopted father who taught him how to blend into society, that he likes to kill and Dexter assists by only killing those who deserve it, such as other serial killers or plain mass murderers. Dexter is unemotional or more precisely, lacking in the normal emotional reactions of every day people. His father taught him to face this and fake it. Thus he makes friends with his coworkers and has got himself a girlfriend. The series works for me on two levels. Yes, I have a macabre sense of humour and often giggle along with Dexter as he notices something about a murder scene that would have others retching. The writers understand that most of us find horror movies more funny than horrific. The horror of the series comes in watching Dexter react negatively to a situation where we are reminded that while he is an unemotional killing machine, he was also once a normal human baby made into this by a nasty nasty past. No one is born a monster, we are made. The other level is a show that wants you to like it's characters and develop some sympathy for them. No matter how much I live Law & Order: CI, I will never actually care for it's characters as they are presented faithfully but not with much sympathy. I like worrying about Dex as his past comes back to him, about Deb for the crash she is about to experience, about Rita and her ex-husband troubles and Angel with his ex-wife troubles. I like the show and will continue to enjoy my downloaded, no commercial, watch when I want state of it. December 09 06 |
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Comments
I didn't enjoy the first episode of Dexter at all, I found it too much like a network TV detective show, but I can just hear some network exec say, "But get this..HE'S a serial killer too, but he only kills other killers!"
But I hung in there, and it did grab me. I completely love the characterizations, and the way they continue to build sympathy for Dexter.
PS , i found a way for us Canadians to access Showtimes website..(www.sho.com)..cut n pasted from the whedonesque forums-
Open your browser
open tools
select options
click general
click connection settings
Select the Manual proxy configuration option
In the HTTP Proxy box, type 128.114.63.15
In the HTTP Proxy Port box, type 3127
click ok
down with the man!
Posted by: uber at December 10, 2006 11:43 AM
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