The darker the merrier: Dexter is a serial killer of serial killers in a cable television program that evokes the best elements of cinema's persistent pursuit of black comedy.

• Author: Gehring, Wes D.
• Position: Mass Media - Television program review

DEXTER MORGAN (Michael C. Hall) is a bloodstain pattern analyst for the Miami Metro Police Department in the Showtime series "Dexter." Imagine late artist Jackson Pollock moonlighting for your local homicide unit if you rived in a city where there was a rash of exotic serial killers. In fact, the seemingly emotionless Dexter experiences some rare early sexual passion for lovely but unhinged English abstract painter Lila Tournay (Jaime Murray) during season two. Her character is fascinated by the art-like nature of Dexter's blood splatter crime scene re-creations, and the kinky aura of his "Dark Passenger" (Dexter's name for an urge to kill). Oh yes, there is a modest added twist--Dexter is a serial killer (of serial killers).

While the subject matter of this critically acclaimed dark comedy series (now in its sixth season) sounds a trifle disturbing, "Dexter" is grounded in a number of earlier watershed movies, as well as the basic components of various genres, ranging from black humor to thriller and fantasy. Dexter anchors his vigilante justice in "Harry's Code," a philosophy or practice created by his adoptive father Harry Morgan (James Remar), a now-deceased Miami cop. Dexter's antisocial behavior allegedly is a product of (paging Dr. Sigmund Freud) young Morgan witnessing the chainsaw murder of his mother, and then being locked in a storage unit with her remains for several days.

The Code is not designed to correct Dexter's mental illness, but to put it to some positive good--erasing bad people, and trying to fit into what passes for normal society if you are blood splatter specialist). Like the novel, which inspired the series, Jeff Lindsay's Darkly Dreaming Dexter (2004), the series is peppered with Dexter's darkly comic voice-over narration.

For instance, here is an excerpt from the book that later appears in a slightly altered form in the series: "There is something strange and disarming about looking at a homicide scene in the bright daylight of the Miami sun. It makes the most grotesque killings look antiseptic, staged. Like you're in a new and daring section of Disney World. Dahmer Land."

Though Harry is used sparingly throughout the series, his relationship with Dexter is what drives the program. He represents a twisted "Father Knows Best" for the 21st century. During the first half of the series he only appears in flashbacks, guiding and advising his largely emotionless, killing machine son. Then Harry suddenly stops being a cautionary memory and morphs into some sort of a guardian angel cop, who periodically appears only to Dexter.

What had changed? At this time, viewers learn, ironically, that while Dad had programmed Dexter to kill only bad guys and drilled the youngster in the nuances of normalcy, when Dexter actually slays a deserving monster, Harry commits suicide. The situation is reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope" (1948, from the Patrick Hamilton play), which was inspired by the real-life 1920s Leopold-Loeb murder case. The film involves two young prep-school pals (John Dall and Farley Granger) who kill an acquaintance just for the fun of it. The catalyst for their actions is a Nietzsche-like former instructor (Jimmy Stewart), whose philosophy rejects absolute moral values (what Nietzsche describes as the...