Pop Vultures

My television obsessions come and go, though I like to think that this is due less to a fickle nature than to the difficulty in maintaining a consistently good program over several years. My first obsession, the show that I refused to miss, was Twin Peaks. Fortunately, my friends shared this love, and we spent many a Saturday night in high school huddled around the television, practicing our best crazy-dwarf speech and competing to see who could freak the others out with the best Bob impression. This may be an excellent time to point out that I was something of a dork in high school. Of course, this tight-if-bizarre program quickly degenerated into David Lynch’s personal dreamscape, bless his demented soul, and the show vanished.

There have been others since then. Buffy the Vampire Slayer ruled my Tuesday nights. Season 2 of Alias spawned a still-unsatisfied desire for a massive wig collection and a hot but morally ambiguous mother. Battlestar Galactica made armageddon dirty sexy and dark as hell. Deadwood taught me that I actually don’t know how to curse like a sailor, and each episode I took dutiful notes to improve my foul-mouthed speech.

Most of those are gone now, and some had already lost my love before they went off the air. They took me for granted. The carefully wound stories with which they had romanced me on our first dates evolved into long, rambling anecdotes about their father issues. They started gaining weight, adding unnecessary characters and pointless scenes. It felt like they had stopped trying.

Which is why I look to my current obsession and can only beg, “Don’t ever change, Dexter.”

Yes, I’m involved with a bad boy. The hottest, scariest, smartest bad boy around. Momma warned me about them, but I’m a sucker for a TV show dressed in black leather that rolls up on its Harley, throws its cigarette to the ground and pulls me on to the back, then carries me off into the unknown night. I fucking love this show.

It’s exactly what contemporary noir should be. Recently, the television show Veronica Mars and the film Brick took noir into the high school, and that was an interesting fit. The themes of isolation, individualism and oppression by authority worked perfectly within the high school setting, but the duality that marks the best noir, the conflict between light and dark that defines the protagonist, was never fully developed with a seventeen-year-old character. However, make the hero a freaking serial killer trying to exist in society and you have taken the genre to its natural next step. Dexter is everything a noir anti-hero should be: clever, witty, charming, devious and oh, so dark.

The conventions of the genre are firmly in place: the high-contrast lighting, the odd camera angles, the voice-over narration. But it’s the exploration of the themes that make this show truly stand out. Unlike most films and television, it does not simply ask the viewer to observe the darkness from a safe distance. It demands a moral decision. We watch Dexter preparing for and committing his murders and wonder whether or not we should be cheering him on. Conveniently, he only kills other bad guys, and the character is so likable that we want him to get away with it. Though the ritual of the deaths makes me uneasy, I can’t stop watching. The show drags me into its morally gray world and makes me complicit in the murders, as I never want Dexter to get caught. Kill on, you sick bastard.

The show would not be half what it is without Michael C. Hall in the lead. He can show fear, amusement, dismay or excitement without appearing to move a single facial muscle. When I am queen of the world, he will be able to pave his driveway with Emmy awards. Until then, the best I can do is spread the word. Watch it. But don’t come crying to me if you find yourself a bit disturbed. You’ve been warned.