It's difficult to explain to someone who has never seen Showtime's "Dexter" why it is currently the most riveting and addictive show on television. When you try, you tend to sound a tiny bit psychotic.
"It's about this guy named Dexter who works as a blood splatter analyst for the Miami Police Department but is also secretly a serial killer," you say, adding quickly, "except he only kills bad people, the kind the law can't touch. He has this code of honor and he's played by Michael C. Hall, who is just amazing because he makes Dexter kind of lovable and, well, you just have to watch it."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday, October 31, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 1 inches; 32 words Type of Material: Correction
"Dexter": A review of "Dexter" in Thursday's Calendar section said John Lithgow's character had killed a woman by slashing her throat. The character cut her femoral artery, which runs into the thigh.
You finish lamely, and your friend takes a couple steps back.
Fortunately, as "Dexter" wades deeper into its fourth season, there aren't too many people who haven't at least heard of it. Hall's recent marriage to Jennifer Carpenter, who plays Dexter's foul-mouthed, unlucky-in-love detective sister Debra, prompted a few headlines, and then Hall was nominated for another Emmy.
Now, the show has the added mainstream credibility of John Lithgow, beloved star of stage, screen and the children's book/CD circuit. Lithgow plays the Trinity Killer, a serial murderer as methodical and duplicitous as our man Dexter. The season opened, in fact, with a woman coming home to find Lithgow, stark naked, heaven help us, in her bathroom. He later cradled her terror-shaken body in the water and cut her throat, holding up a hand mirror so she could watch herself die.
Chilling and yet perversely beautiful, it promised a most electric season, which as we head into the sixth episode, the show has more than delivered; with some 2 million viewers, Sunday's episode was the most watched in the series' history.
The viewership jump may be due to the recent cliffhanger in which Debra and her off-again/on-again lover Frank Lundy (Keith Carradine) wound up shot in a parking lot or it may be Lithgow once again channeling creepy duplicity. But more probably it's just the natural order of things -- inevitably, you must surrender to "Dexter" because it keeps doing things you don't think you will be able to watch in such a way that you simply must.
