Dexter: can the killer thriller come back from the brink?
Everyone has their own line in the sand with regard to the Dexter reboot. The show’s final season in 2013 was such a colossal cliff-plummet that people need assurances. Some will only watch Dexter if it can return to the dark satire of its early days. Some need to know that this reboot is a finite coda, and not a springboard for another series. Me? I just wanted him to shave.
And, at least judging by the teaser that dropped this weekend, my wish has come true. You will remember that when we last saw him, Dexter Morgan (Michael C Hall) had faked his own death and hightailed it from Miami to the Pacific north-west, where, under an assumed identity, he had become a lumberjack taken to staring off into space and modelling a beard so woeful that it looked like a form of necrosis.
But that was eight years ago. In the first proper look we’ve had at the reboot – now officially called Dexter: New Blood – it is clear that he has finally scraped the rust-coloured merkin off his face, and is getting on with life. And so, in accordance with my principles, I shall be watching.
Which isn’t to say that I’m going to enjoy it, because the teaser seems to be telling two different stories at exactly the same time. One of them looks brilliant. That’s the one where Dexter is eaten up by paranoia, where he knows that his legend lives on and that just one stray glance from a stranger might be enough to drag him out of exile and back into justice. That show, about a man crippled by the weight of his past, is something you would absolutely watch. Think of the blackand-white Gene scenes from Better Call Saul, where Saul Goodman’s effervescent brashness has been dulled by a weary, decade-long responsibility to keep out of trouble. Now imagine the Dexter version of that. Sounds good, right?
But not so fast. Because this is Dexter, and the Dexter version of Better Call Saul was always going to be much, much worse than Better Call Saul. Because the other story in the teaser is the story of a man with a profound sexual infatuation for weapons.
In the teaser, there’s a shot of Dexter gazing lovingly at an axe. And then a shot of Dexter gazing lovingly at a knife. And then fondling a gun. And then lovingly sharpening a blade. And then gazing lovingly at a kitchen knife while he fondles it. And then fondling a barber’s razor. And then wielding a knife. And then, finally, a scene of Dexter gripping the handle of a razor blade. The teaser is one minute and 39 seconds long. He gazes at or fondles a potential murder weapon once every 12 seconds. If he continues at this pace, then, over the course of the reboot’s 10 44-minute episodes he is going to fondle more than 2,000 knives. That is less a series and more a nightmarish QVC segment.
Listen, I’m a realist. I know that Dexter’s quality control fell too far to ever properly recover. I know that the hiring of Jennifer Carpenter, presumably to play the ghost of Dexter’s murdered sister, is a sign that the show is still too enamoured with its past. I also know that Dexter wasn’t actually very good for most of its run, and that I’m just pinning its failure on the final season for the sake of narrative simplicity. I know all of this. I am bracing myself to go into Dexter: New Blood with low expectations and still come out disappointed. But he has shaved his stupid beard off. That means, for better or worse, I am in.