Dexter

After trying to sell my friends and family on everything from Thomas Pynchon to Farscape and suffering scorn and ridicule to no end, I realized that my taste is so off the radar that I should never recommend anything to anyone. However, I saw recently that the writers strike is bringing Dexter to CBS, and I had to talk about it. I am relatively new to the show, but it fascinates me. First of all, Michael C. Hall from Six Feet Under and Julie Benz from Buffy and Angel are main characters, and I loved those shows to the point of obsession - the show hooked me simply with their presence. But the idea of a serial killer vigilante. . . when I was a teenager, I was a huge comic book geek. And while I loved the superhero stuff - who am I kidding I still love the superhero stuff - the Punisher was a book that always demanded my attention. Anyone with a basic education in economics will remember Keynes - the idea that government intervention can smooth the cyclical nature of laissez-faire philosophy, and that the lags and gaps that cause unemployment, inflation, etc., in a market economy can only be assuaged by public money. What if this theory can be applied to criminal justice? What if the faults of our system, the gaps and lags that occur because of overzealous lawyers, naive jurors, handcuffed law enforcement, and amoral media, can be assuaged by a Frank Castle figure? Obviously the comic book version is fantasy, but Dexter is a real world study of this idea. Dexter is unsavory and disgusting, but could a man like him play a role in keeping the scales of justice from tipping in the wrong direction? If this idea gets your motor running, I would suggest checking the show out. Bring a barf bag, it doesn't blanch from violence . . .