Dexter: New Blood review: better dead

When it ended in 2013 after eight seasons, Right handedThe most prominent victim was undoubtedly Right handed. A parody of itself, the series was mostly killing time: season after season, someone approached antihero Dexter Morgan only to die, and the slate was erased so that Dexter could once again wonder if he was a good person who did things. bad, or a bad one fooling himself with the fairy tale of a good life. The most twisted thing about all this is probably that now, eight years later, someone would think someone would want more.

Premiering during the weekend, Dexter: new blood It is not a reimagining or a radical departure from the Showtime drama. Surprisingly, it’s a continuation of the original series that pretends to still be in the heady old days of yore, albeit with a change of scenery and a new supporting cast that gives the series room to repeat those familiar rhythms without the ridiculous baggage. that supposes. It comes with the same cast of characters who are fooled over and over again, year after year, let alone the equally dangerous baggage of having to face any of those characters again. Instead, a new career is needed on an old question: Why does Dexter Morgan kill? And why is the thing killing? Right handed is better at?

Still, most of New blood it is superficial. It’s a competent-paced thriller that, if it weren’t for the callbacks, Dexter’s son Harrison, now a teenager after his last appearance as a child; the ghost of Dexter’s sister Deborah, who died in the series finale, would do well as a standalone miniseries. Dexter Morgan, a reformed serial killer, has vowed not to harm any living being and it has been roughly a decade between Right handed and New blood becoming a happy fixture in the small town of Iron Lake, in upstate New York, under the name Jim Lindsay.

Temptation strikes Dexter when a nervous visitor arrives in town with bad vibes, and soon Dexter feels compelled to kill again. It is at that moment that New blood it becomes fascinating, not because it’s particularly great television (it’s just fine at best) but because, as in the original series, the show comes to life in its rendition of Dexter’s killing ritual.

Right handedMurder room scenes are the kind of thing TV shows hope to turn Emmy gold. They are essentially small one-act plays, where Michael C. Hall can stretch his theatrical skills and Right handedThe writers can probe a little deeper into the morality work at the heart of the show. In these moments, Dexter Morgan comes to life, showing his victims his true self after exposing his, often literally, as they are almost always naked and wrapped in plastic on a table. Usually Dexter takes the opportunity to rationalize his murder, to argue before a captive audience that he has high morale because he adheres to a code, and that code involves making sure his targets are guilty of harming the innocent or of some kind. another pernicious way. evil that it is better to get rid of the earth.

Even at its peak, the kind of show Right handed was at one point usually was in flux, wildly vacillating between two poles: at one end, Right handed it was a philosophical character drama about nature versus nurture and morality. On the other, it was a cat and mouse thriller between a scrupulous killer and a killer without either. When the show was at its best and embracing the above philosophy, the murder room scenes showed Dexter the way he is and how he thinks of himself. But at its most pulpy and ultimately worst, the murder room scenes were mostly about dessert, to cast Dexter as the good guy and his target as the deserving villain.

To your credit, New blood he’s interested in the most introspective murder. The 2021 revival deliberately uses Dexter’s ubiquitous monologue to ask if his life is starting to fall apart because he slipped and killed, or if he’s going to shit because he abstained for so long denying who he is, and the now. eldest son who abandoned in the Right handed final – it really is.

Through this prism Right handed the new and the old become a study of masculinity and intimacy. Cold and dead-eyed in his everyday life, Dexter Morgan tries to fit into a life that seems normal and correct to him: where he has a good job, a good family, and maybe even friends. Over and over again, intimacy is attempted, and rejected, in favor of the killing room, where Dexter has power, where he can claim he is right and his victim is wrong, where he feels more like himself. If Dexter Morgan is redeemable, he must escape the killing room which he cannot help but return to.

Here’s a comparison to the Incredible Hulk. When done right, the character feeds on a terrible irony: the repressed scientist Bruce Banner wants to do everything in his power to avoid transforming into his monstrous alter ego. The audience, however? There is nothing they would like to see more of. In its first four episodes, New blood seems at least mildly interested in this tension, carefully establishing the cozy wooded community that is likely to go to hell if Jim Lindsay becomes Dexter Morgan one more time. But we’ve already seen this happen, only then were it eight consecutive years in Miami. Right handedProblems are not solved with a change of scenery, but they can be with a change of perspective, one that New blood seems fundamentally disinterested.

Dexter Morgan doesn’t turn into a computer-generated rage monster, but he’s trying to keep a monstrous part of himself at bay; the emotion of Right handed is in witnessing his attempts to channel that monster, dubbed his “Dark Passenger”, and the consequences that stem from the fact that there is no real way to channel murder into positive character growth. By repeating many of the familiar rhythms from the previous series, Dexter: new blood shows the same inertia Right handed and Dexter Morgan suffers. Here nothing has changed. Some monsters are not that complicated. Maybe it’s silly that we once thought they were.

Dexter: new blood airs new episodes Sunday nights on Showtime and Showtime Anytime.