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Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Dexter Season
3
BACK IN THE DAY. We here at Instapunk have taken some criticism in the past for giving a good review and then changing our minds later (scroll) without alerting the IP readership. This post is therefore an update in re the third season of the Showtime series Dexter. The first review elicited the following from Thomas Jackson, an upright member of the site's commenting community:
I realize television has become a race
to see who can get to the bottom of the cesspool quickest. Most shows
lack wit, plot, or anything worthy of the term entertainment,
substituting the attractions that the brain-dead find interesting.
These include filth, gore, sex, and anything you were taught was
unacceptable behavior in kindergarten.
I would note the same people who condemn shows that do not feature these attractions as boring are the same people who react most violently against any production code, action against Janet Jackson and her ilk, or allowing consumers to have a selection of channels on cable rather than... the gerbil dressed in lederhosen humping Janet Jackson...
The reason for this is clear; while most consumers will take some channels they have little interest in, most[ly] niche channels. Bravo had to change when they [went] all queer... attracted Barney Frank and no one else. But we still get it rammed down our throats.
Dexter being on showtime means we are spared having to see it unless, like other cable channels, we get a schedule of one horrific program rebroadcast forever.
Original programming need not be torn from the mouth of the Jerry Springer show. Most of these will pass away unmourned and unnoticed while the great programs go on forever.
Talent used to mean something in television. Now sensationalism matters. And we are poorer for it.
I would note the same people who condemn shows that do not feature these attractions as boring are the same people who react most violently against any production code, action against Janet Jackson and her ilk, or allowing consumers to have a selection of channels on cable rather than... the gerbil dressed in lederhosen humping Janet Jackson...
The reason for this is clear; while most consumers will take some channels they have little interest in, most[ly] niche channels. Bravo had to change when they [went] all queer... attracted Barney Frank and no one else. But we still get it rammed down our throats.
Dexter being on showtime means we are spared having to see it unless, like other cable channels, we get a schedule of one horrific program rebroadcast forever.
Original programming need not be torn from the mouth of the Jerry Springer show. Most of these will pass away unmourned and unnoticed while the great programs go on forever.
Talent used to mean something in television. Now sensationalism matters. And we are poorer for it.
Yeah. Okay. And all that. Probably right. We stand rebuked by those who know without having been tempted. Hats off to your virtue, Thomas, and nobody feels worse than I do about having to concede that Season 3 is absolutely FANTASTIC. Mrs. CP and I just finished the seventh episode and we immediately agreed that it may have been the best single series television episode we'd ever seen. A cold-blooded serial killer asked to perform a mercy killing. Something about life and love and the incredible complexities of moral responsibility. Something unexpected. Something very moving in a totally antiseptic and artificially rational way that comes down, as these things do -- for you and me and the children who will have this power over us one day -- to a coldly delivered soul instinct, but this time presented to us inside out. Everything we thought Dexter was about it is about. There's an easy epithet here that would go a long way toward rebutting the Thomas Jackson type dismissals, but it won't be uttered here. Easy answers are rarely easy in the learning of them.
The most seriously philosophical and, yes, ultimately religious, series ever made. And the most discomfiting. The fact that Michael C. Hall hasn't won an Emmy as the ethical but admittedly evil Nemesis we only hope could one day, as a Miami forensic technician, deal (uh, you know) with David Caruso on CSI Miami is a scandal.
A glimpse:
