Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dexter’ On Netflix, Where Michael C. Hall Is A Serial Killer Of Serial Killers

Since 2020, the only place fans of Dexter, or people coming to the show for the first time, were able to see the original 2006-13 run of the series was to watch it on Paramount+. Netflix had the show for a long time prior to that, but by 2020 every new service was pulling back shows their parent companies licensed to the streaming giant in order to have exclusives. Now, we’re in a new era where those parent companies find value in those licensing fees, so after three-and-a-half years, Dexter is back on Netflix. Let’s take a look back at its 2006 premiere, shall we?

DEXTER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) drives on a street in Miami’s South Beach. “Tonight’s the night. And it’s going to happen again and again. Has to happen,” we hear Dexter say in voice over.

The Gist: What Dexter is doing is going to an appearance by what looks to be a well-known Miami politician. But Dexter knows who he really is, and ambushes the man in his car, pressing a cord against his neck. He tells the man to drive where he tells him to.

When they get there, Dexter shows the man the decomposed bodies of two of the children he killed. This is when Dexter does what he does; he drugs the killer, then straps them naked to a table using tight plastic wrap. When he wakes up, Dexter slices his cheek and puts a drop of his blood on a slide, which he’ll store away at his apartment. Dexter then starts to chop the killer up while he is still conscious.

Yes, Dexter is a serial killer. But his victims are always murderers, more often than not fellow serial killers. We see flashbacks to him as a kid, when he first had these murderous stirrings within him. His foster father, Harry (James Remar), knew early on that Dexter had this in him, so the Miami cop tells the teenage Dexter how to “channel” these urges by killing only bad people, and teaches him how to cover his tracks.

We hear Dexter’s thoughts, where he admits he’s a sociopath who puts on the charm to make people think that he’s “normal.” He’s a forensic specialist for the Miami Metro PD, with his specialty being the study of blood splatter evidence (of course). The only person on the planet he may even think about loving is his foster sister Debra (Jennifer Carpenter), a patrol officer for MMPD who often asks for his insight on cases she works.

Deb calls Dexter to a no-tell motel where she’s working undercover as a hooker; a body was found in the drained pool there. When Dexter gets there, he’s ready to look for blood spatter, when his fellow forensic team members, Angel Batista (David Zayas) and Vince Masuka (C.S. Lee) tell him there is no blood. Just a body neatly cut in a number of pieces and then reassembled. Dexter is fascinated and impressed with what this killer was able to accomplish.

That killer’s proficiency is on Dexter’s mind as he goes on a date with his girlfriend, Rita Bennett (Julie Benz); they’ve been dating for six weeks and she’s perfect, because she was so traumatized by her abusive ex-husband she doesn’t want to have sex. But he comes into her house and is great with her kids and seems to be a great guy.

On a date with Rita, he sees police activity, and sees Batista hovering over another neatly cut-up body, this time one that’s headless. As he continues to figure out how this killer did it, he makes plans to take care of another murderer.

After Deb mentions something about “cell crystallization,” Dexter has an epiphany: The killer is using a refrigerated truck. He tells her to propose this to her boss, Lt. Maria LaGuerta (Luna Lauren Velez), but the lieutenant would probably rather hear it from Dexter, given the way she looks at him. A late-night incident with an ice truck, however, cements the theory with both Dexter and the MMPD.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The first episode of Dexter is very 2006, if there is such a thing. It certainly plays as the kind of show that was borne out of the “golden age of cable dramas” that started with The Sopranos in 1999 and would peak with Mad Men and Breaking Bad in the years following Dexter‘s debut.

Our Take: Believe it or not, I’m a newbie to Dexter. Back when it premiered in 2006, I was just at the beginning of my entertainment journalism career, had yet to enjoy blanket access to screeners and was too cheap to pay for premium channels like Showtime. Besides, back then, there was still plenty of great shows on broadcast networks and basic cable to write about.

From what I’ve gathered over time, the early seasons of Dexter were the ones I likely missed the boat on, with the later seasons — especially the series finale — showing that the series had stayed around a few years more than it should have (something Showtime was guilty of a lot in the 2010s).

Developed by James Manos, Jr. from Jeff Lindsay’s novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter, the first episode and first season was more the vision of Clyde Phillips, who came on board as the showrunner. Viewed through the lens of the time, it was certainly an innovative story. Think about it: Dexter is a serial killer with a moral code, someone who only murders other killers. Had we seen a character like Dexter before 2006? Probably not. But we were deep into the era of the antihero, and a depraved killer with a moral code was about as antihero as it gets.

But what really stood out was Hall’s performance. At the time, he was coming off of Six Feet Under, so fans of his knew that he could pull off Dexter’s mordant and sociopathic side, but what he was able to do was make Dexter believable as both the sociopathic killer that’s his true personality as well as the gregarious guy who is so good at masking his sociopathy that he is actually well-liked by his fellow coworkers at the MMPD, and has an absolutely devoted sister in Deb.

Are there stylistic touches on the show that scream “2006 prestige drama”? Absolutely. Camera angles and zooms that are likely not necessary now are used liberally throughout the first episode. The voice over seems gimmicky eighteen years later, though it does provide insight into the mind of a guy who is so good at hiding who he really is, and it’s a part of the show that Hall took very seriously, laying in the voice overs after shooting the episode, to match it up to the tenor of a particular shot or scene.

But the idea that Dexter, trained by his father, is so good at covering his tracks, makes the idea of him being a killer of killers so intriguing. As the show goes on, he’ll get married to Rita, and at some point, those closest to him will know about his “hobby.” But what is even more intriguing is that he plays cat and mouse with a new killer every season, with the first season being the Ice Truck Killer.

Knowing all this, it’s not a surprise that the show was so well received, especially during its first four seasons. You just wish that the show didn’t end up running for eight seasons.

Sex and Skin: Naked dead bodies in the first episode.

Parting Shot: The Ice Truck Killer knows that Dexter is after them, and leaves a chopped-up Barbie-type doll in Dexter’s freezer. He looks in the mirror the doll’s hand is holding, and instead of being violated, “I think this is a friendly message, kind of like, ‘Hey, want to play?’ Yes, I do. I really, really do.” Then Dexter looks in the direction of the camera.

Sleeper Star: Erik King is Sgt. James Doakes, the only detective at the MMPD who thinks Dexter has something off about him. Dexter has a great line about that: “The question I have is why, in a building full of cops, all supposedly with a keen insight into the human soul, is Doakes the only one who gets the creeps from me?”

Most Pilot-y Line: When the guy driving the ice truck tosses the head of his last victim in the direction of Dexter’s car, the head doesn’t look real. Of course, that could be because it was so bloodlessly preserved in the ice truck.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Dexter is about a killer, which means there’s a lot of blood and body parts. But it’s also a story that hadn’t really been told on TV at the time, and Michael C. Hall puts in a dynamic performance as the killer with something resembling a conscience.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.