Dexter Morgan returns for a touching farewell to fans and a ghostly chance for a happy life.
It's been 10 years since the final of the last season. After the death of his sister, Dexter (both charming and creepy Michael C Hall) left sunny Miami and went to live in gloomy and cold Iron Lake - a provincial town that boasts only forests and cozy streets. There are no maniacs here, which means that there is no temptation to release a dark companion - a bloodthirsty "I" thirsty for murder. The only crimes that are committed in Iron Lake are petty thefts, so the city police briskly retrained from law enforcement officers to idle friendly neighbors.
With one of them, local chef Angela Bishop, Jeff Lindsay (the name Dexter borrowed from the author of the novels on which the show is based) and tries to build a new life, not darkened by death. Every morning he comes to work in a small store and meticulously arranges goods on the shelves in anticipation of infrequent customers, and in the evenings he goes to smoky bars, walks with a girl along deserted alleys or sits at home talking with his dead sister Debra: she replaces Harry's father and gives important tips for arranging a happy life. Everything changes after a couple of accidents. First, Dexter is visited by his own son, whom the hero abandoned before leaving because of an oppressive guilt complex. And secondly, Morgan still manages to break loose: he kills a relative of a local rich man and frantically tries to hide the traces of the crime. But the grip is not the same.
The fact that "Dexter" returned to the screens, without exaggeration, the merit of loyal fans of the show. In general, 2021 runs the risk of becoming the year of geeks who defeated universal injustice: first, due to a flash mob on Twitter, Zach Snyder releases a remastered version of his movie comic strip, and now the creators of the first four seasons of the cult series about a maniac are trying to fix the fatal ending in order to pacify angry viewers. In fact, the problem then lay not in the denouement, where the authors cynically killed the hero's sister Debra, but turned the sociopathic hero into a depressed hermit.
It's just that over the past few years, Dexter hasn't been the show that we once loved: instead of charismatic murderers, family squabbles from soap operas came to the fore, and intriguing detective investigations were replaced by tabloid police stories, where the gardener always turns out to be the killer. The concept of the show, admittedly, turned out to be short-lived - and the more the writers of the last four seasons tried to postpone the hero's “death”, the more paradoxically they buried him in the ground. The final episodes were just the apogee of the accumulated discontent, which after 8 years will lead to the fact that producer Clyde Phillips will revive the project. And he will try to send Dexter to a decent retirement.
Although New Blood was initiated by a seemingly audience request, the series is not going to flirt with fan service. Of the familiar faces, except for the central one, of course, perhaps the phantom Deb, who now and then reads notations to Dexter. From the classic techniques - the cold voiceover of the hero-maniac, dexterous script cheating, which invariably helps to reveal the inner experiences of the protagonist.
At first, the first episode may generally scare connoisseurs of the series: in the windy and deserted Iron Lake there is not the slightest hint of a Miami criminal vibe - unbearable boredom, and nothing more. Latin American club music is supplanted by the oppressive lyrics of Leonard Cohen, the police station is a wooden shack on the outskirts, in which a lone sociopath lives. Yes, and Dexter himself, as they say, is no longer the same: too neat, fearful, wounded by the trauma of the past, which warn him against the mistakes of the future. Just a pitiful shadow of myself from the past.
But sometimes they come back. Dexter is a kind of Carpenter's "Thing", also, by an evil irony, stuck in the ice (in his case, however, metaphorically). As soon as the maniac remembers the taste of blood, his dark companion will begin to thaw a little, give signs of life and regain his sinister smile with an eerie look of a predator. And yet, in the first four episodes of New Blood, there are surprisingly few murders: the series, which once angered the audience with the amount and plausibility of violence, returned to the frank 20s with more restraint than before. Dexter has here, it's scary to imagine, while there is only one victim - and that gives him as much inconvenience as it once was from the most odious villains of the show.
If the new season is trying to argue with the classics in any way, it is its hyperrealism: Morgan, who has lost his grip, always makes mistakes, forgets about evidence and witnesses, and copters and service dogs are connected to the already difficult investigation of the disappearance of his victim. If you recall the old loopholes that Dexter found in the police system of the 00s, then his current unenviable position is comparable to the transition to the most hardcore level of the game: one mistake and you are a dead body, even the invisible hand of the scriptwriter will not help here.
Why, except for the fun of fan pride, is the return of Dexter necessary? This question is easier to answer than you think. The first four seasons are a caustic criminal satire on American commoners, the notorious Yankee normality, behind which lies the harsh childhood complexes, maniacal inclinations and intolerance. After a series of shocks (from satanic panic to 9/11), the States passed the point of no return - social neurosis reached such a limit that the enemy was no longer hiding from the outside, but among the same smiling neighbors from one-story districts. Trying to integrate into ordinary society, Dexter unexpectedly discovered for himself that it is not so difficult to be known as his own - you just need to skillfully pretend. There are a majority of people like him here.
And now Dexter's escape reached its logical conclusion. The hero is literally nowhere - in a godforsaken town, all alone, having crossed out all connections with the past. You can disguise yourself among normal people, but it won't work for a long time - it will surely come back to haunt your loved ones. But is it really possible to hide from yourself, from the eternal hunger for someone else's blood? From the son in whom you see your own reflection? And, more importantly, will it come out to earn forgiveness after so many innocent victims? Dexter Morgan obviously didn't close the gestalt. He returned exhausted, disappointed, and still seeking harmony.
"New Blood" as a separate series, of course, is a simple genre trinket: already one of the many reverse detectives, which intrigues not with the search for the killer, but with the anticipation of his (not) capture. And at the same time, in all honesty, it's hard to be a Dexter fan and not admit that at least the first 4 episodes of the return of your beloved hero are terribly insightful and touching: in an attempt to give his monster a second chance, Phillips gives everyone a second wind irrevocably gone 00 with their reflection of unhealed wounds and fears. Time has passed, but the ghosts of the past are desperate to merit forgiveness - who are we to take it away from them?
This article was sponsored by Leo Colmone
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