Dexter - Season 3

I blogged very briefly about this show in one of my first posts. In retrospect I should have written a lot more, since it was really awesome back then. Now, not so much.

The first two seasons were drop-dead fantastic, especially the first. The antagonists were clearly identified and given solidly appropriate background and motive. The acting on there parts was great. The stories were gripping. The action was exhilarating, and the tension often insurmountable. This time around each of these attributes was reduced by about half. The main antagonist, Miguel Estrada, is stupid. He thinks he's smart and once in a while does an inexplicably smart thing, but Dexter is a practiced serial killer. He should be able to see through this guy from the get-go. Okay, Dexter is flawed. We get it. Miguel still sucks. He's not likable. He's annoying; and yet Dexter sort of accepts him as a friend for a large part of the season just because the dude acts like he empathizes; Dexter should be able to spot an actor when he's constantly throwing up a façade of sanity. His motive isn't really identified until the last episode, and even then it isn't much of a revelation. It's just boring. They squeezed in a secondary antagonist that should have been expanded on, but in the end he seemed one-dimensional and peripheral, even though they left him for the "final battle."

Dexter's main thing (killing dudes) is largely neglected. This removes most of the tension and "edginess" that I love from the show. It's replaced with pretty boring friendship and marriage themes. Sure, they're trying to show that Dexter has to live through normal stuff like the rest of us, but it's just not entertaining. There isn't much action at all.

Okay, there were some good bits here and there, and overall most of the general quality found in the first two seasons is still there. It just took too long to get anywhere and was generally wishy-washy. That said, I enjoyed watching it because face it, Dexter is awesome.