Fly-By Post

Greta Christina has posted her own review of Dexter. She analyzes it more deeply than I did, and still manages to avoid any major spoilers.

I don't watch "Dexter" as an exploration of human nature.

I watch it as a truly astonishing narrative exercise.

The exercise: Can you make an audience care about a serial killer? Can you make them root for him? Can you make them sympathize with him, identify with him, want him to do well? Can you even make them sympathize enough with him that they want him to get what he wants... which is to kill people, and keep on killing people?

And the answer, astonishingly, is Yes.

That is probably the most fascinating aspect of the show: that it works as a show.