The Creepiest Character on TV Dexter

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Dexter Morgan. An outright serial killer may not seem to qualify as a troubled hero or anti-hero, but the premise of TV’s Dexter is ingenious. He is a killer who only kills other serial killers. He has been brainwashed by a doting step-father into using his compulsions for good, taking out the bad guys the cops can’t touch. Dexter is working as a police forensics blood-splatter expert, so the reason the Florida Police Department often can’t catch the killers is Dexter concealing evidence so he can exercise his own vigilantism. In reality, Dexter would either attract a great deal of suspicion from his cover up activity or get himself fired for not producing many positive results. Dexter appeals for its handsome looking hero, played by Michael C Hall, going from Six Feet Under to planting dismembered corpses six fathoms under. It’s Hall’s cheeky breach of the 4th wall and unique softening, humanizing take on the character that lifts the character above the rushed, simply nasty tone of the Dexter novels by Jeff Lindsey. In the books, Dexter is psychic, identifying other killers through mental empathy. The TV show wisely has Dexter making use of his professional position, rather than a convenient paranormal ability. In the novels, Dexter surrounds the killers he has caught with the dug up corpses of their victims. Hall’s Dexter starts out doing that but eventually settles for using photos of the victims slaughtered by his prey. He did dig up the bodies in the opening episode though. Dexter is convinced that his sociopathic nature prevents him from being capable of real love. He tells himself his wife and children are just a front and that he is dispassionate about them, but it is clear that he is deluding himself. It’s only when they are killed by the vengeful Trinity Killer, Arthur Marshall (John Lithgow) that Dexter realizes tragically that his love for them was genuine. Such complex studies of his psychology lift Dexter easily to the rank of TV’s darkest character for me. The Show has the creepiest opening credit sequence ever though it shows Dexter only getting up to shower, dress and get breakfast, every camera angle suggests violence. Food sliced with a knife as though being murdered, shoe laces tied in strangler’s knots, etc. The opening credit sequence on Youtube Arthur Chappell