Dexter: a darkly dreaming post for #Halloween

via youtube.com

I had fond memories of Dexter's Laboratory and was more than pleased to share this cartoon gem with my 21-month-old daughter on the tube. Imagine our surprise when we clicked on the show Dexter and...
...I'm totally just kidding. I can tell the difference (could you imagine, though? I wonder if the show's creators had banked on that kind of snafu...).

I started watching Dexter this fall.
I watched the first 3 episodes of Season 1, then read the plot synopses through Season 6, then watched the Season 7 premier. It was a neat way to go. I was so very glad to see the title sequence had remained the tight-focused innuendo-laden visual (the video posted above) since the beginning. Also, Season 7 ended with the biggest of big reveals (I'll not spoil it if you've yet to catch it...).

In a small nutshell: Dexter is a blood splatter expert for the Miami Police Dep't. He's also a closet serial killer, using his "gift" to moonlight as a killer of other killers. 

Dexter's very much an ordinary guy, just with a talent and unusual affinity for homicide. Not that it makes it hugely forgiveable, but he's become very neat and efficient at it. And therein lies the crux of a fascinating premise: the primal urge for eye-for-eye justice is expressed in fighting darkness with equal and opposite darkness. In the show, it occasionally works out neatly but very often, in individual cases as well as in the overarching story, Dexter's private and public lives are an unbelievable mess to manage, with heart-wrenching collateral damage.

Dexter is based on a short story called Darkly Dreaming Dexter and those words resonate with the spirit of what it is, and with the spirit of today: we all have a dark side which is a bit more allowed to peer through on Hallowe'en.
Sometimes the release is healthy.
When it's out and/or acted upon too much, though, things can get real complicated.