Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All

This is another post courtesy of the beauty of Netflix. I just finished Dexter Season 2 and am officially hooked. Dexter, as a character, grew on me.

I am not completely bought into his psychosis yet but I am vested in whether he gets caught or not. In the middle of season 2, I realized that I was watching a well-told reverse thriller.

It’s a reverse thriller because in most cases, a thriller follows the path of the people trying to catch the criminal—cops, Feds, military, etc. Usually, we are given a rookie or an outsider (reporter, civilian consultant, etc.) as a story surrogate. Through this character’s eyes, the audience experiences the chase.

In Dexter, we follow the chase through the eyes of the criminal. The puzzle solving, the race against time—these elements are all reversed. He plays out the story from the other side. While I’m not fully pulling for him, I am always intrigued in how he’s going to escape.

Season 2 has a lot of what I love about Battlestar Galactica—just when you think that things can’t get any worse, they do. And that had me burning through the discs in a hurry.

One of the reasons why I can’t be fully on Dexter’s side is that the traditional cop side is also so strong. In Dexter’s pursuers, there is the rookie for whom we can root. As a bonus, the brilliant rookie is also Dexter’s sister. Her complicated character is good enough to catch him, but we also know that it is better for her if she never does. The longer she fails though, the more she doubts herself. Oh, the angst!

The push and pull of this show makes for a really meaty viewer experience.

Tags: TV //