Dexter: Back into the swing of things

Posted by Dan September 25th, 2008 at 11:23am In General

While most of the hubbub surrounding the new television season has been the return of shows severely impacted by the strike, there’s one show you might forget about: Dexter.

If you find yourself with a glut of time between now and the Sunday premiere, you can click here and watch it yourself (the password is “lady killer”). As I’ve been under the weather this first portion of the week, I encountered such a glut of time and took a quick peek at the preview (some spoilers below).

The season premiere finds Dexter functioning as well as he conceivably could. He has lots of crazy sex with Rita, but gets up in time to make star-shaped pancakes for her kids. Work’s going fine. Another day, another mangled corpse whose death he has to recreate. Of course, he hasn’t given up on his habit of being the dark vigilante of justice, either. In fact, he’s now owned the habit — no longer considering it an homage to his dearly departed father, but a quest of his own.

But, if the season is going to be interesting at all, something has to go wrong. And it does. En route to dispose of a teenager-murdering drug dealer, Dexter accidentally gets into a fight (and kills) a stranger at the scene of the crime. The stranger ends up being the little brother of a prominent assistant district attorney whose only crime appears to be being a mentor for wayward youth.

The DA is played by Jimmy “I’m latin” Smits, in full Cuban mode (following the decent, if unmoving, CBS drama Cane). Dexter has always embraced Miami’s latin flair, usually manifested by passing Spanish phrases and ending words with the diminutive “ito.” This season will likely be no different, as the shows Latin cast members are stepping further into the forefront.

What else can I say about the premiere of Dexter?

There are some way-graphic sex scenes with Dexter and Rita, during which all sorts of thoughts flooded through my head (“Holy crap! She’s totally naked and grinding on Michael C. Hall now — not just simulating it by rolling around on top of him under the covers while wearing a pair of baggy sweatpants.”; “Michael C. Hall’s abs are insane.”).

Aside from that, and a last-minute surprise, it seems like the third season is off to a somewhat slow start.  I’m sure, however, that if this season is anything like the first two, they’ll appear to write themselves into a corner as the season progresses and somehow pull off a reasonable resolution.