My Dying Love For a Serial Killer

Like most passionate, long-term relationships, my love affair with Dexter evolved along a well-worn, familiar path.  At first, there was merely curiosity.  A serial killer that’s the hero of a TV show?  Intriguing.  I casually checked out a few episodes and immediately liked the show.  And really, what’s not to like?  Dexter is young, smart, good-looking, successful, and has a badass boat.  So what if he primarily uses it to dispose of bloody limbs wrapped in garbage bags?  Nobody’s perfect.

I became a fan, and before long it became very obvious that my “like” had grown into something much more.  I was in love.  I’d look back on other shows that I’d watched regularly in the same way I look back on the girls I dated in junior high.  Sure, they were all great and it was fun for a while…but this was different.  The show had a power over me.  It combined police work, vigilantism, sex, subtle humor, and just enough bloody dispatching of bad guys to remind you that there is something very different and special about Dexter.

Things were great.  I would see Dexter every week, and even though our time together was limited, it gave meaning to my life.  Sunday nights just weren’t the same without him and just when I thought things couldn’t get better, they always did.  Like a giddy schoolgirl, I would talk my friends‘ ears off about how awesome Dexter was.  They’d listen patiently, nod their head, and usually reply with a lukewarm “That’s nice.”  This would always irritate me.  Why couldn’t they just be happy for me?

Years passed.  Seasons changed and though I was still enjoying the relationship, I began to get the nagging feeling that something was different.  I don’t remember exactly what it was.  The novelty had worn off.  I began to feel about Dexter the same way that married couples start to feel towards one another when the magic fades.  They start to tell a story and it’s one you’ve heard before – maybe a dozen different times.  You take for granted all the things that made you love them in the first place.  You’ve come to know all of their tricks, and what was initially a funny little quirk slowly begins to annoy you.

See, the tricky thing about making a TV show (or a relationship) last is holding on dearly to those things that make it so great, while adding enough of the unexpected to keep things from getting dull.  This is, admittedly, extremely difficult to do.  And the show has tried, I’ll give it that.  Fans have seen Dexter change from being a single guy, to having a girlfriend, to being married and a father…back to being single.

The other characters, however, remain fairly one-dimensional.  Debra is, and always will be, the potty-mouth sister who has an incredibly difficult time maintaining a relationship with a man – usually because they end up dead.  Dexter’s fellow lab geek Vince Masuka is a bit of a pervert, but ultimately harmless.  Harry still shows up from time to time to give Dexter some fatherly words of wisdom from beyond the grave.

I guess I’m just wondering where all this is going.  Is this what we can expect every season?  Dexter pursuing a serial killer, killing a few bad guys along the way, nearly getting killed / discovered by the authorities and finally finding a way to pull through?  That was great three years ago.  But it feels tired now.  Old.  And while a part of me may still love Dexter, a bigger part knows, deep down, that I’m no longer “in love”.

Relationships take work and I’m willing to do my part.  I’ve invested much of my time and energy and I’ll continue to because I hate to see a good thing end.  But part of me knows, in a way, it already has.

– Bill Henry