Dexter: Original Sin 1.5: Revelations and Relations

Dexter: Original Sin just keeps getting better and better, and that means powerful indeed, giving us everything we want in a story like this, a story about how a serial killer for the cause of justice came to be. But episode 1.5 has some special juice, because--

[Here I have to warn you about spoilers ahead .... ]

Last week's episode 1.4 concluded with young Dexter getting his man killed, but indirectly.  A car strikes him down after he breaks free of Dexter's restraints.  Harry is furious and worried when he finds out what happened, and grounds Dexter, and this sets in motion a whole series of revealing events ...

The most important is Dexter convincing Harry that Dexter is good to go as a serial killer with a white hat, and this leads to one of the most powerful scenes in all the Dexter series so far:  Harry winds up strapped on Dexter's table with his adopted son looking over him with a knife.  Dexter drugged Harry, already drunk and on his way to kill a killer whom the court set free because Harry messed up the previous process of apprehending the killer and getting him on trial.  Dexter of course doesn't kill Harry, but does convince Harry not to stop Dexter's crucial work -- crucial to Dexter and crucial to the world -- of killing killers that the justice system for whatever reason has been unable to stop.  This scene would have been crucial for that reason alone -- convincing Harry to accept and use Dexter's talents. But there was something else in that scene that was really bone-chilling.  The look on Dexter's face as he loomed over Harry with a knife, well, just cut to the quick: you could see Dexter resisting the impulse to kill the father he loved.  Yes, he loves Harry.  But he loves the gratification of killing even more, and it takes considerable effort from Dexter to control that lust.

Control of that lust is what Dexter's development and future life is all about.  The code itself is a series of rules which Dexter has to follow -- that is, rules that control Dexter's lust, so that he does the killings without getting caught, or harming the people he loves, etc.  Dexter: Original Sin is providing an excellent primer -- exciting, chilling, instructive -- on the final ways in which Harry, for better or worse, has been helping Dexter enact the code.

There were other notable things in this notable episode.  Deb in the car with her boyfriend.  I don't know why, and maybe it's just the over-protective father in me, but I have feeling something no good is going to come from that.  Also the developing relationship between Harry and Dexter's mother (in the past) was good to see.  We already knew that Harry's first son died in the swimming pool, and talking about it was one of the ways Harry and Laura (Dexter's mom) drew closer.

But in some ways the most interesting revelation in episode 1.5 comes from adult Dexter's voice narration (by Michael C. Hall) near the beginning of the episode, when adult Dexter says that back in 1991 Miami, the homicide squad's success rate was whatever.  What this tell us, of course, is that the adult Dexter's voice is coming from the future (indeed, as we learned in the first episode, after adult Dexter survives being shot by his son at the end of Dexter: New Blood).  I like the fact that Dexter's voice in Dexter: Original Sin comes from the future -- unlike Dexter's voice in all the original episodes of Dexter, which came from the present, and Deb's voice in Dexter: New Blood, which in effect came from the past. There's something, almost, time-travel-ly about that voice from the future.

See also Dexter: Original Sin 1.1: Activation of the Code ... 1.2-1.3: "The Finger Is Missing" ... 1.4: The Role of Luck in Dexter's Profession and Life

And see also Dexter: New Blood 1.1: Back with a Vengeance ... Dexter: New Blood 1.2: Dark Tendencies ... Dexter: New Blood 1.3: Fathers and Sons ... Dexter: New Blood 1.4: Harrison and Kurt ... Dexter New Blood: 1.5: No Satisfaction for Serial Killers ... Dexter: New Blood 1.6: Breaks and Arm Breaks ... Dexter: New Blood: 1.7: Dexter vs. Kurt ...Dexter: New Blood 1.8: The Hug in the Car ... Dexter: New Blood 1.9 One Down, One To Go ... Dexter: New Blood Finale: Superb, and I Didn't Like It All

And see also Dexter Season 8 Premiere: Mercury in Retrograde, Dexter Incandescent ... Dexter 8.2: The Gift ... Dexter 8.3: The Question and the Confession ... Dexter 8.4: The "Lab Rat" and Harry's Daughter ... Dexter 8.5: Just Like Family ... Dexter 8.6: The Protege ... Dexter 8.7: Two Different Codes? ... Dexter 8.8: "A Great Future" ... Dexter 8.9: The Psycho Son ... Dexter 8.10: Watch Out, Buenos Aires ... Dexter 8.11: "Not the Old Dexter" ... Dexter Series Finale: Solitude, Style, and a Modicum of Hope

And see also Dexter Season 7.1-3: Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 7.4: The Lesson in Speltzer's Smoke ... Dexter 7.5: Terminator Isaac ... Dexter 7.6: "Breaking and Entering" ... Dexter 7.7: Shakespearean Serial Killer Story ... Dexter 7.8: Love and Its Demands ... Dexter 7.9: Two Memorable Scenes and the Ascension of Isaac ... Dexter 7.11: The "Accident" ... Dexter Season 7 Finale: The Surviving Triangle

And see also Dexter Season 6 Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 6.4: Two Numbers and Two Killers Equals? ... Dexter 6.5 and 6.6: Decisive Sam ... Dexter 6.7: The State of Nebraska ... Dexter 6.8: Is Gellar Really Real? .... Dexter 6.9: And Geller Is ... ... Dexter's Take on Videogames in 6.10 ...Dexter and Debra:  Dexter 6.11 ... Dexter Season 6 Finale: Through the Eyes of a Different Love

And see also Dexter Season Five Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 5.4: Dexter's Conscience ...Dexter 5.8 and Lumen ... Dexter 5.9: He's Getting Healthier ... Dexter 5.10: Monsters -Worse and Better ... Dexter 5.11: Sneak Preview with Spoilers  ... Dexter Season 5 Finale: Behind the Curtain

And see also Dexter Season 4: Sneak Preview Review ... The Family Man on Dexter 4.5 ...Dexter on the Couch in 4.6 ... Dexter 4.7: 'He Can't Kill Bambi' ... Dexter 4.8: Great Mistakes ...4.9: Trinity's Surprising Daughter ... 4.10: More than Trinity ... 4.11: The "Soulless, Anti-Family Schmuck" ... 4.12: Revenges and Recapitulations

And see also reviews of Season 3: Season's Happy Endings? ... Double Surprise ... Psychotic Law vs. Sociopath Science ... The Bright, Elusive Butterfly of Dexter ... The True Nature of Miguel ...Si Se Puede on Dexter ... and Dexter 3: Sneak Preview Review

Reviews of Season 2: Dexter's Back: A Preview and Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out of This? and The Plot Gets Tighter and Sharper and Dex, Doakes, and Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and All's ... Well

See also about Season 1: First Place to Dexter 

Missing You: Don't Miss This Top-Notch Coben

I binged the five episodes of Harlan Coben's Missing You, which just went up on Netflix today.  I've watched who knows how many Coben stories on the screen -- if you want an idea of how many, just search on his name on this blog -- and I gotta say, I think Missing You is one his very best.  I know I say that about Coben's stories in just about every review of one of Coben's works brought to the screen, but that's because it's true every time I say it.

[And no warning about spoilers ahead, because there won't be any ... ]

First, the stars in this series include Rosalind Eleazar (Slow Horses), Richard Armitage (MI5), and James Nesbitt (Bloodlands), you can't go wrong with that.  And every other part in the series is well-acted, too.

Next, the story takes place in the UK.   When it comes to police detective stories, you usually can't go wrong with that, either.

The plot is classic Coben -- the series is taken from Coben's 2014 novel of the same name, which takes place in New York, and I haven't read -- with love affairs (frustrated and otherwise), complex parent-child relationships, cops of all ages and both genders, a loathsome villain, cold-blooded killers and killers who don't want to be -- all wrapped up in a plot that's seems so complex as to defy resolution, and yet--

Well, as I said, I don't want to give anything away.   I will mention that the story on the screen, whatever it may have been in the novel, is very woke, and that's fine with me.  The relationships, apparent and revealed, all make sense, and provide an excellent nesting and motivation for the story.

Last but not least, one of the things I most enjoy about Brit movies and TV series is picking up a phrase or two, the slanger the better, that I didn't know before.  Missing You delivers on that score as well, with a phrase for a certain part of the anatomy that was new to me.  So hey, I'm happy to say I learned something watching this short series, as well as very much enjoying it, on this first day of 2025