Showtime’s venerable drama about a serial killer in search of his soul may be called “Dexter,†but it’s always been the Dexter & Deb show. The performances of Michael C. Hall as the diffident psychopath Dexter Morgan and Jennifer Carpenter as his ferocious, intensely vulnerable, hilariously profane adopted sister, Deb, are the yin and yang of the series. Dexter’s protectiveness of Deb helps to redeem him; she is, in Ms. Carpenter’s hands, so vivid and appealing that we like him for loving her.
The truth of this was brought home last year in the show’s seventh season, after the producers gave in to the pressures of time and common sense and had Deb finally discover Dexter’s true nature. This solved one narrative problem â€" she’s supposed to be a talented detective, after all, working in the same building as her forensics-technician bother â€" while creating others. The relationship was less interesting once the secret was reveaked, and the new Deb, who helped Dexter cover up his crimes and eventually committed murder herself, didn’t square with the committed, relentless cop we’d been watching for six years. Their bond was the explanation, of course, but it didn’t feel quite sufficient. The writers had burned the character to prolong the show.
“Dexter†begins its final 12-episode season on Sunday night, and in the first-rate premiere (written by the show runner, Scott Buck), the Deb problem has been dealt with effectively. Saying much of anything about the status of the characters will spoil some of the carefully timed revelations of Mr. Buck’s story, which takes place six months after Deb killed her boss, Captain LaGuerta. So stop reading here if you don’t want to know that she’s bottomed out, walking away from the Miami police department. Strung out on guilt and furiou! s at her brother, she’s regained the renegade vibe that was missing while she agonized through last season.
As the show heads to its much anticipated conclusion â€" will there be an ever after for Dexter, happy or not? â€" it’s become more complicated and less primordially entertaining. Dexter’s seasonlong battles with rival serial killers played by charismatic actors like John Lithgow and Jimmy Smits had a Gothic splendor along with a single-minded, pulpy energy. Now the show is focused on resolving the currents of love and guilt between the siblings, and in the early episodes of the season there’s no larger-than-life villain for Dexter to test himself against.
As compensation there’s Charlotte Rampling, bringing her authority, intelligence and dry humor to the role of a neuropsychiatrist and police consultant who knows a thing or two about Dexter. Whether she ultimately helps or hindrs him, it appears she’ll be on hand as a guide to the writers’ thoughts about his character; in a future episode she mentions that psychopaths are “an indispensable demographic†without which mankind wouldn’t have survived.
Also present is the show’s indispensable comic relief, the three stooges of the Miami-Dade Police Department: Angel (David Zayas), the softy; Quinn (Desmond Harrington), the train wreck; and Vince (C.S. Lee), the perv. “Dexter†has always leavened its extreme morbidity with gutter humor, and avoided the common cable-drama outcomes of solemnity at one end or triviality at the other. Literate but not overly self-serious, it’s the closest thing on television to a good page-turner, and whether it ends well, we’ll feel a pang when we finish it.
