Visiting 'Dexter's' laboratory
I've been a devoted fan of the Showtime series "Dexter" since Day One, but I had some misgivings about this season and its indelicate plot plans: Dexter is a father-to-be, Dexter is getting married, Dexter gets a best friend -- for a show that has been so adept in its scalpel moments, I fretted that too many blunt objects were being brought down on the story arc of my favorite vigilante sociopath.
So as I watched the season's penultimate episode last week I smiled and shook my head. They did it again. The cruel complications of Dexter Morgan's life have played out with all the usual nuance and, like the blood splatters he studies during his day job (and creates during his night job), it all looks like art when you take a few steps back.
The season finale is this Sunday and Dexter will have his wedding day -- but his first choice for his best man, Miguel Prado (Jimmy Smits), won't be there, I'm guessing, because he was drugged, abducted and garroted by the groom on last week's episode. Wedding planning can be such stressful business.
One of my colleagues at the Los Angeles Times, Maria Elena Fernandez, has a great feature on the show in today's paper and talked to the stars, among them the relentlessly good title actor, Michael C. Hall. Here's an excerpt:
On the verge of becoming a husband and father, after three intimate dances in which he revealed his innermost secrets to other people, the question Dexter introduced in the pilot lingers: Is Dexter capable of loving? Dexter confessed then that he has no feelings, but that if he were to love someone, it would be his sister, Deb (Jennifer Carpenter). Just before he killed Miguel this season, Dexter declared impassively, "I don't get to have friends."
Do we believe him?
"I don't know that Dexter is the most reliable narrator," Hall said by telephone. "I don't know that he was at the beginning of the show, and I don't know that he is now. I think he tries things on and plays at being a human being. I do think there's an appetite for connection and revelation in Dexter that he doesn't consciously acknowledge. But that motivates a lot of his behavior."
