Dexter - a show that didn't understand moral dilemmas

[Music] ah dexter it's easy to forget that this was everyone's favorite show for a while which is understandable the series revolved around a great character and it had an awesome premise an unassuming forensic technician is secretly a serial killer who kills other serial killers the character was created by jeff lindsay in his book darkly dreaming dexter which i thoroughly enjoyed and which the first season followed fairly closely but after that first season the show's writers were able to do what the game of thrones writers never could they successfully went off book the second season of

dexter was even better than the first and the first is what got me and so many other people hooked the show seemed destined to be a classic yet despite that early success dexter never quite reached its full potential to understand why you need to understand the kind of story that dexter was telling you probably notice that every episode aside from the very first started with previously on dexter dexter is a serialization it tells one long continuous story you wouldn't want to watch the episodes of that story in the wrong order because if you did the

series wouldn't make sense but not all shows worked that way some are episodic one of my favorite episodic shows is poirot agatha christie's iconic detective who's been portrayed by many but none that can hold a candle to the great david suchet unlike dexter you can watch poirot in any order you want it makes almost no difference because at the end of every episode the show basically resets poirot never changes he has no reason to he doesn't have a specific goal that he's trying to achieve and he doesn't have a dark secret that he's trying to

conceal he's just an oddball detective who's good at solving murders that's it dexter however does have a dark secret he's trying to conceal he doesn't want people to know he's a serial killer his ongoing struggle to maintain that secret is a big part of what made the show exciting but it's also where the trouble began whoever was in charge of the show did not want dexter to change they wanted him to remain the good guy serial killer who never gets caught all the way up to and even including the very last episode which absolutely sucked

yet as terrible as the ending of dexter was the issues the show had were set in motion long before he became a lumberjack i actually think everything wrong with the show can be traced back to one fateful decision that occurred in season two which is arguably the show's best for the entirety of that season dexter has been trailed by dokes an excellent character himself played by eric king you give me a creeps you know that dexter yeah i know dokes always suspected something was off about dexter and is now convinced he was involved in the

ice truck murders of season one i know you're connected to the ice truck killer could you be more vague these two have several clashes and close calls along the way but things come to a head when doakes catches dexter red-handed jesus christ you're the bay harbour butcher i really hate that name now i'll admit it's kind of ridiculous that dokes who's some sort of ex-military specialist basically trips over himself allowing dexter to get his gun but as stupid as this is it still sets up an excellent moral dilemma one of dexter's defining features is that

he lives by a code one that was taught to him by his adopted father harry and that basically boils down to don't get caught and only kill people who deserve it this code is what keeps dexter safe and relatively ethical but more than that it's what keeps him him it's his identity dexter kills bad people and he doesn't get caught yet with dokes now locked in this makeshift prison how can dexter stick to his code if he lets dokes go doks will turn him in and if he kills dokes then he'll have killed someone who

didn't deserve it no matter what he chooses dexter won't be the same person afterwards it's hard to overstate just how pivotal this kind of decision is not just for dexter but for any character poirot for instance faced his own moral dilemma in murder on the orient express which has been adapted to the screen at least three times that i know of in each version the shady mr ratchet is found stabbed to death in an isolated train compartment and poirot has to figure out who amongst these 12 passengers is guilty after gathering the clues and interviewing

everyone he realizes they all are when the legal system failed to convict this child killer they took justice into their own hands now in possession of the truth poirot faces his dilemma ratchet may have deserved what he got but this group still committed premeditated murder unlike dexter poirot isn't really down with the whole vigilante thing it's a higher justice than the rule of law can you let god administering not you which is why he tells this group that he has every intention of turning them in yet when the time comes to tell the authorities he

instead makes it seem like the true culprit is still at large whereas the original movie with albert finney and the latest version with uh kenneth branagh both played up the comedic angle of poirot the show which unsurprisingly handled the story best drove home just how wrenching of a decision this was for him don't get me wrong poirot is a funny character but first and foremost he's a deeply moral person who's dedicated his life to justice something he pursues even when it's inconvenient he's convicted his own friends before and yet this time around he lies to

the police which in effect makes him an accomplice after doing so he clutches a rosary and fights back tears this is what makes moral dilemmas so compelling no matter what you choose the choice is going to cost you the cost for poirot is he feels like he's betrayed himself betrayed god even returning to dexter his dilemma is even more difficult poirot may have thought what he did was wrong but he at least believed he was doing it for the right reasons which were in no way selfish dexter however knows killing dokes would be wrong and

that it would be purely selfish and that it would completely violate his code since he doesn't want to do that he looks for a third option and he seems to find one when dokes unwittingly becomes the prime suspect in the fbi's search for the bay harbor butcher sergeant james doakes he fits the profile yes he has a need to dole out personal justice seizing the opportunity dexter plants evidence that further implicates dokes now if he lets doakes go then dokes will be blamed for the butcher murders and dexter won't have violated his code this is

really when dexter was at its best when neither dexter nor us the audience knew how he was going to get out of these dilemmas or if we should even want him to however just when the show was at its most compelling it made its biggest mistake before dexter could finalize his plan regarding dokes his insane ex-girlfriend lila showed up realized what was happening and killed doakes herself what the are you doing so why didn't this work from a narrative standpoint remember moral dilemmas are supposed to cost you something which begs the question what does this

cost dexter the answer is nothing he gets everything he wants dokes takes the fall for the butcher murders since he's dead he can't point the finger back at dexter since dexter didn't do the killing himself he never had to break his code and since lila is a violent sociopath dexter's able to kill her without violating his code thus tying off all loose ends he gets to remain the good guy serial killer who never gets caught and then come back the same person at the start of season 3 the same way poirot comes back the same

person at the start of every episode but again dexter isn't like poirot he's more like walter white breaking bad has lots of moral dilemmas to choose from but i'm just going to focus on this one that took place over the first few episodes when these rival drug dealers showed up to kill walter and jesse walter used the power of chemistry to fatally poison them except one of them didn't die with him now locked to a pole in jesse's garage walter faced his dilemma hope i'll make it easy and you just drop dead don't you hold

up kill me let me go what does he do with this guy he's afraid that if he lets him go the guy will just turn around and kill him but he doesn't want to kill the guy himself either yeah he tried to kill him before but that was in self-defense killing him like this would be an execution which goes against who walter thinks he is the same way killing dokes goes against who dexter thinks he is after agonizing over what to do walter decides he'll just have to let him go and hope that's the end

of it which he nearly does until he realizes the guy is holding a piece of broken glass that he plans to use as a lethal weapon the moment he's free so walter makes his choice he kills him and it's brutal unlike poirot walter definitely changes for the worse this is what a well-executed moral dilemma looks like nobody swooped in at the last second to save walter from making a difficult choice and from paying a price for it though breaking bad and poirot were obviously telling very different stories one critical factor they had in common was

they respected their characters enough to not bail them out from making difficult choices even if it meant we the audience might view them in a darker light that's why the resolution to dexter's moral dilemma is so disappointing unlike walter and poirot who both paid a heavy price for their decisions dexter wasn't even allowed to make one and as for the decision he was going to make before lila showed up to frame jokes let him go and then stick around to see what happens i refused to believe he'd actually do that think about it if his

plan worked dokes would die in prison and if it didn't which i find much more likely dexter would get caught he may be good at covering his tracks but the real reason he's able to get away with killing people for so long is because no one suspects him but if dokes told everyone including the fbi who the bay harbor butcher really is dexter would lose his most valuable asset the ability to hide in plain sight why would he voluntarily give that away for something that's going to break his code no matter what dexter's not stupid

he must know that if he wants to maintain his code there's only one way out of this dilemma he has to run which he doesn't want to do that's what's really at stake here he's caught between the code he lives by and the life and everyone in it that he cherishes he has to give one up that's the cost and though the show wouldn't allow dexter to make that choice there's nothing stopping us so what do you think the real dexter would do here the answer is up to you but as far as i'm concerned

he would have killed dokes yes dokes is a great character and the show's definitely better off with him in it but there's really no other alternative that works narratively with this dilemma the resolution with lila failed and if dexter runs then the show is over on the other hand if he killed someone he regarded as a good person for no other reason than to protect himself he'd have felt terrible like he betrayed who he really is and though we the audience would understand his actions we'd still be appalled in other words it would have been

great drama but instead whoever was in charge of the show was hell bent on preventing dexter from doing anything that might turn us the audience against him even if the alternative made him less interesting which is exactly what happened after this cop-out the quality of the show went way down even with john lithgow's stellar performance as the trinity killer the next four seasons all blended together and not in a good way it wasn't until season seven when deborah learned the awful truth and the net surrounding dexter seriously started to close that the show returned to

form are you a serial killer it was exciting it was heartbreaking and it ended with another great moral dilemma now under the most pressure he's ever faced dexter lured maria laguerda his longtime boss into the shipping container where he planned to kill her and make it look like someone else did he's doing this because maria who always thought dokes was innocent has finally figured out that dexter is really the butcher and she's on the verge of being able to prove it similar to dokes maria is forcing dexter to make an incredibly difficult choice does he

give up the life he loves and run or does he give up the code he lives by and kills someone who doesn't deserve it look where does an innocent she doesn't even begin to meet the code it's kind of fitting that the show's two best seasons both contain the show's best moral dilemmas and after season two botched its dilemma by having someone else make the choice for dexter five years later the show had a chance to redeem itself to let dexter decide his own fate and then bear the cost himself so what did the show

do it made the exact same mistake i don't get it why isn't dexter allowed to be bad he's a serial killer what's really painful about this is there was a good ending here i know there was not just to this season but to the entire show the abomination of season 8 never even needed to exist for instance what if dexter decided to run maybe he'd reunite with hannah somehow and they could live secretly ever after while i was watching the show that's honestly what i was hoping for the immediate issue with that ending is it's

not really dark enough it kind of lets dexter off the hook to address that he could straight up kill maria which would cost him whatever morality he has left and make it clear beyond any doubt that he's no longer a good guy serial killer he's just a killer that definitely could have worked and if dexter goes full evil then it sets up a potential showdown between him and deb but there is one more option even though i think dexter would have killed doakes in season 2 it's not guaranteed that he would have killed maria five

years later for one she doesn't fit the code for two unlike dokes maria has already publicly accused dexter of being the butcher if she wound up murdered right after this dexter would look pretty suspicious and lastly over the course of the series dexter develops more and more of a conscience somewhere along the line the fake life that we created as a cover for me to kill became real it's not fake to me anymore as he's preparing to kill maria his imaginary father asks him where does this end where will this end and dexter has no

answer deep down he likely knows that if he goes through with this it will never end he'll just keep killing whether it violates his code or not but what if at the crucial moment dexter realized he just couldn't do it if that happened he would in effect give himself up and maria could simply arrest him at that point dexter would lose everything and everyone that he cares about it'd be a sad ending for sure but justifiably so dexter's story has always been a tragedy he may have been ridding the world of bad people but he

destroyed a lot of good people along the way including those he loved if dexter had been allowed to choose one of these outcomes and then accept the consequences of his decision it would have been a fitting send-off to a great character but instead we got what we got two good seasons two mediocre ones two god-awful flaming piles of garbage and two almost great seasons that were both held back by a show that didn't understand moral dilemmas [Music]