Dexter meta: A Tale of Two Families
Dec. 23rd, 2006 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakDexter is a show which loves symmetry - of the Tiger, Tiger, burning bright sort and other variations - and one thing that strikes me is how perfectly matched the Morgans and the Mosers are.
One parent ever present in the memories, one parent there only in fragments or damm near invisible: it's Harry who counts for the Morgans, Dexter and Debra both. On her first date with "Rudy", Deb mentions her mother dying of cancer when she was 16, but it's her father she then talks about at length (and the longing for his attention; more about that in a moment). Mrs. Morgan hardly has any lines in Dexter's memories, though she's often visible on the periphery. Meanwhile, for the Mosers, the gender is reversed: it's Laura Moser who shows up in Dexter's early, surpressed memories once he starts to access them, her face, her voice, Laura and her dying command for him not to look (is that what caused the memory block, I wonder, because Dexter is ever so good listening to beloved parent figures?) and later her playing with her sons. The only memory he finally can manage of his biodad is silent, and a fragment (the tattoed arm). Brian does not talk about a father at all, either in disguise as Rudy or as himself; the one true thing he probably says to Deb before revealing himself is, during that same first date, that what made him who he is (a surgeon, she assumes) is the wish to put all the pieces of his mother back together again. Brian's victims, as opposed to Dexter's - who kills both men and women, with the men taking the lead judging by what we see - , are all female (save for Tony Tucci, who was meant to be Dexter's victim).
Both Harry and Laura Moser are dead before the story we see starts, but they're both immensely present in their children's minds. Harry gets introduced to us in pastel and sepia coloured flashbacks, and the visuals and the father-knows-best atmosphere of it all are a striking counterpart to what we actually see onfold: the care and breeding of a serial killer, if you like. As presented via flashbacks, Harry didn't get this idea at once. He notices Dexter killing animals as a child, and starts with the teaching of blending in techniques, but the suggestion that Dexter should channel his killing urges not on animals anymore but specifically on humans - other killers - does not come until Dexter is a teenager. And the flashbacks we get before that are important. A friend and collegue of Harry's has been shot; teen!Dexter asks what will happen, and Harry says justice will, the man will get judged and condemmed. One flashback later, and the guy in question has gotten off free, and we see Harry sitting in his car (apparantly picking up his son from school or sport or something like that), brooding, as Dexter asks, disbelieving, whether that is the end, that is all. Harry looks at him, and says those fatal words, "perhaps not". From this point onwards, Harry's lessons that we are shown include killing human techniques (and of course how to keep your crime scene clean). In the present day series, we get presented with Doakes going vigilante on a man he knows to be guilty of horrible crimes against humanity. Harry, on the other hand, apparantly never could bring himself to do this - but he did train and form his own avenging angel, essentially solving two problems one way: to keep Dexter out of prison - and to punish people that were and always would be untouchable to him as a cop.
It's one open question as to why Harry never tried therapy for Dexter. Originally, it might have been because he didn't believe that it would help, and would leave a record that made Dexter identifiable for the police later, but after a certain point, he probably didn't want to anymore, either. Mind you, all of this doesn't mean Harry's love for Dexter wasn't real. The whole reason why the code works - and continued to work after Harry's death - is because Harry did love Dexter. In that first flashback, when he asks Dexter whether Dexter ever wanted to kill something larger than an animal, the boy replies: "Yes." "Why didn't you?" Harry asks, and Dexter says: "Because you wouldn't like it." (Almost thirty years later, we hear Dexter think "I could make things so much easier for Rita - but Harry wouldn't like it".) Harry's interactions with Dexter are all gentle - we only see two occasions when he speaks harshly with him, once when they practice strangling ("this isn't a game!"), and once when he catches Dexter bullying someone ("firstly, it's wrong, and secondly, people remember a bully"). The fact that Dexter, despite his own beliefs, is able to form something like attachments - as opposed to Brian (in regards to people not Dexter) - is probably due to Harry. But at the same time, Harry is also responsible for Dexter's almost flawless serial killer career, and the fact Dexter believes no "normal" person could possibly handle the truth about himself.
"Your sister must never know," Harry says re: teenage Deb to Dexter, and goes on to say that this was how one kept one's loved ones safe: complete silence. Of course, Harry's silences and lies have had effects on Deb far other than protecting her. Just as Harry's decision to adopt one boy but not the other has its fatal effect on Deb's counterpart, Brian. "Dexter was the good one," Deb tells Rudy/Brian about her childhood, and confesses that her decision to become a cop, like Harry was, was an attempt to prove to Harry she was as good (in vain). Via flashbacks, we see Deb wanting to join her father and brother, being told that she can't (and disappoints Harry), and not understanding why. It's the elephant Harry put in the room, and as long as she doesn't know, she will not believe anything but not being good enough. Which directly led to present-day Deb's open vulnerability and need to be loved, which in turn leads her into the arms of Dexter's other sibling, that other child believing himself found not good enough by Harry.
Deb's open emotions, the counterpoint to Dexter's placid facade, can be uncomfortable to watch in their nakedness. They certainly can include selfishness, as in her panicked reaction to the post-mortem appearance of Dexter's bio-dad. Much like Brian, she wants to see her claim on Dexter as exclusive, not to be shared by others. They can also be very attractive; it's Deb's unfeigned gusto at life and ability to connect that charms Doakes' family (and Doakes himself, though he doesn't want to admit it), it's her compassion that leads her to come up with the ideal way to cheer up Tony Tucci, and Dexter, even in the pilot, admits in his restrained way that the fact she loves him and that he knows she loves him is something he values. It's interesting that Deb shows some sibling jealousy in the flashbacks but not as an adult, perhaps because Harry is no longer around to compete for; on the contrary, she seems to have transferred some of her feelings for her father to her brother. We see her long for Dexter's approval - she presents her beaus to him, the profiles she creates, the discoveries she makes as a cop, and when he doesn't approve, she's hurt (though goes along with her ideas anyway). And in the obvious situation where she could see herself as a rival to her brother - when Rudy/Brian prefers spending time with him to spending time with her - her jealousy is directed in the opposite reaction: it's Dexter opening up to her emotionally she wants, more than more time with "Rudy". When she is at her most shellshocked, in the finale, it's protectiveness for Dexter that snaps her out of it.
Perhaps the defining image of the surviving Morgans and Mosers comes in the ambulance car near the end: Deb tries to remove Rudy's ring from her finger, Dexter says she'll hurt herself and does it for her, and she embraces him fiercely, thanking him (and not for the ring removal), either.... whispering that Harry would be proud. You have real emotions, tenderness, claiming and misunderstanding and longing for the dead ones all in one package. That's who the Morgans are.
One parent ever present in the memories, one parent there only in fragments or damm near invisible: it's Harry who counts for the Morgans, Dexter and Debra both. On her first date with "Rudy", Deb mentions her mother dying of cancer when she was 16, but it's her father she then talks about at length (and the longing for his attention; more about that in a moment). Mrs. Morgan hardly has any lines in Dexter's memories, though she's often visible on the periphery. Meanwhile, for the Mosers, the gender is reversed: it's Laura Moser who shows up in Dexter's early, surpressed memories once he starts to access them, her face, her voice, Laura and her dying command for him not to look (is that what caused the memory block, I wonder, because Dexter is ever so good listening to beloved parent figures?) and later her playing with her sons. The only memory he finally can manage of his biodad is silent, and a fragment (the tattoed arm). Brian does not talk about a father at all, either in disguise as Rudy or as himself; the one true thing he probably says to Deb before revealing himself is, during that same first date, that what made him who he is (a surgeon, she assumes) is the wish to put all the pieces of his mother back together again. Brian's victims, as opposed to Dexter's - who kills both men and women, with the men taking the lead judging by what we see - , are all female (save for Tony Tucci, who was meant to be Dexter's victim).
Both Harry and Laura Moser are dead before the story we see starts, but they're both immensely present in their children's minds. Harry gets introduced to us in pastel and sepia coloured flashbacks, and the visuals and the father-knows-best atmosphere of it all are a striking counterpart to what we actually see onfold: the care and breeding of a serial killer, if you like. As presented via flashbacks, Harry didn't get this idea at once. He notices Dexter killing animals as a child, and starts with the teaching of blending in techniques, but the suggestion that Dexter should channel his killing urges not on animals anymore but specifically on humans - other killers - does not come until Dexter is a teenager. And the flashbacks we get before that are important. A friend and collegue of Harry's has been shot; teen!Dexter asks what will happen, and Harry says justice will, the man will get judged and condemmed. One flashback later, and the guy in question has gotten off free, and we see Harry sitting in his car (apparantly picking up his son from school or sport or something like that), brooding, as Dexter asks, disbelieving, whether that is the end, that is all. Harry looks at him, and says those fatal words, "perhaps not". From this point onwards, Harry's lessons that we are shown include killing human techniques (and of course how to keep your crime scene clean). In the present day series, we get presented with Doakes going vigilante on a man he knows to be guilty of horrible crimes against humanity. Harry, on the other hand, apparantly never could bring himself to do this - but he did train and form his own avenging angel, essentially solving two problems one way: to keep Dexter out of prison - and to punish people that were and always would be untouchable to him as a cop.
It's one open question as to why Harry never tried therapy for Dexter. Originally, it might have been because he didn't believe that it would help, and would leave a record that made Dexter identifiable for the police later, but after a certain point, he probably didn't want to anymore, either. Mind you, all of this doesn't mean Harry's love for Dexter wasn't real. The whole reason why the code works - and continued to work after Harry's death - is because Harry did love Dexter. In that first flashback, when he asks Dexter whether Dexter ever wanted to kill something larger than an animal, the boy replies: "Yes." "Why didn't you?" Harry asks, and Dexter says: "Because you wouldn't like it." (Almost thirty years later, we hear Dexter think "I could make things so much easier for Rita - but Harry wouldn't like it".) Harry's interactions with Dexter are all gentle - we only see two occasions when he speaks harshly with him, once when they practice strangling ("this isn't a game!"), and once when he catches Dexter bullying someone ("firstly, it's wrong, and secondly, people remember a bully"). The fact that Dexter, despite his own beliefs, is able to form something like attachments - as opposed to Brian (in regards to people not Dexter) - is probably due to Harry. But at the same time, Harry is also responsible for Dexter's almost flawless serial killer career, and the fact Dexter believes no "normal" person could possibly handle the truth about himself.
"Your sister must never know," Harry says re: teenage Deb to Dexter, and goes on to say that this was how one kept one's loved ones safe: complete silence. Of course, Harry's silences and lies have had effects on Deb far other than protecting her. Just as Harry's decision to adopt one boy but not the other has its fatal effect on Deb's counterpart, Brian. "Dexter was the good one," Deb tells Rudy/Brian about her childhood, and confesses that her decision to become a cop, like Harry was, was an attempt to prove to Harry she was as good (in vain). Via flashbacks, we see Deb wanting to join her father and brother, being told that she can't (and disappoints Harry), and not understanding why. It's the elephant Harry put in the room, and as long as she doesn't know, she will not believe anything but not being good enough. Which directly led to present-day Deb's open vulnerability and need to be loved, which in turn leads her into the arms of Dexter's other sibling, that other child believing himself found not good enough by Harry.
Deb's open emotions, the counterpoint to Dexter's placid facade, can be uncomfortable to watch in their nakedness. They certainly can include selfishness, as in her panicked reaction to the post-mortem appearance of Dexter's bio-dad. Much like Brian, she wants to see her claim on Dexter as exclusive, not to be shared by others. They can also be very attractive; it's Deb's unfeigned gusto at life and ability to connect that charms Doakes' family (and Doakes himself, though he doesn't want to admit it), it's her compassion that leads her to come up with the ideal way to cheer up Tony Tucci, and Dexter, even in the pilot, admits in his restrained way that the fact she loves him and that he knows she loves him is something he values. It's interesting that Deb shows some sibling jealousy in the flashbacks but not as an adult, perhaps because Harry is no longer around to compete for; on the contrary, she seems to have transferred some of her feelings for her father to her brother. We see her long for Dexter's approval - she presents her beaus to him, the profiles she creates, the discoveries she makes as a cop, and when he doesn't approve, she's hurt (though goes along with her ideas anyway). And in the obvious situation where she could see herself as a rival to her brother - when Rudy/Brian prefers spending time with him to spending time with her - her jealousy is directed in the opposite reaction: it's Dexter opening up to her emotionally she wants, more than more time with "Rudy". When she is at her most shellshocked, in the finale, it's protectiveness for Dexter that snaps her out of it.
Perhaps the defining image of the surviving Morgans and Mosers comes in the ambulance car near the end: Deb tries to remove Rudy's ring from her finger, Dexter says she'll hurt herself and does it for her, and she embraces him fiercely, thanking him (and not for the ring removal), either.... whispering that Harry would be proud. You have real emotions, tenderness, claiming and misunderstanding and longing for the dead ones all in one package. That's who the Morgans are.
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 03:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-24 12:33 am (UTC)BTW, who's the woman in your icon? She's pretty.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-24 06:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-24 05:35 pm (UTC)Anyway, so, yes, I'm rolling around gleefully in your Dexter commentaries. This one, of course, was one of the meatiest I'd read of yours, possibly because the Morgans are the shining pinnacle of humanity that Dexter tethers himself to, and therefore, what the show tethers itself to.
Harry kind of wigs me out. I feel for him and believe he loves Dex (and Deb, although he's made it obvious who his favorite is), but there's something really cold and sinister about him. I wonder if he envies Dexter's freedom from societal norms, even as he instructs him on how to exist within them. And then there are the lies... we're getting the slow reveal on several of Harry's innate character flaws, whereas our Hero has consistently deified him since the first episode. He's lied to Dexter (to Deb) more than once. He's shown himself capable and comfortable with keeping impossibly large and dangerous secrets. He's certainly brave and innovative in his methods, but, really, I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
How could he not pick up and hold that other child (Brian)? That's, as they say, COLD SHIT.
About Deb -- her character has been such a joy to watch. She's well-portrayed and well-written. She's believable and likable, even in her flaws, even in her immaturity. I over-identify with her because, well, I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to. I actually found myself crying (a little... don't tease me!) in disappointment for her as it was made explicitly clear to her who she was dating. (Although, not that explicit, I guess... she doesn't even know his real name.) Seriously, I teared up as Rudy/Brian fucked with her head on the yacht, appearing to break his own character in saying that he never meant to hurt her. She really WAS desperate to fall in love, to believe in someone, to be ...credible and important in someone else's eyes. When he tortured her by saying, "Do you want to hear more? Would it make it easier for you?" -- that's when I sort of brimmed up. If I were Deb in that situation, I'd feel like rolling over and giving up. Finding out that everything you like about your life (and she doesn't even know the HALF of it) is bullshit is the most brutal thing a woman can learn, I think.
I love the way your brain works, Selena, especially when it works around the context of what was my favorite show this season. I'd LOVE to read some Dexter fic of yours, if/when you ever get around to writing it. You have such a good handle on the characters.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 06:17 am (UTC)She's believable and likable, even in her flaws, even in her immaturity.
Sometimes, she reminds me of an older Kara (note to self: must send Ruth Dexter episodes). And yes, Deb is. That scene with Rudy/Brian was the most cruel mindgame a man played with a woman I've seen since Angelus gave Buffy the morning after.
There is some good Dexter fic in
no subject
Date: 2006-12-25 06:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 06:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-22 12:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-22 05:25 am (UTC)Harry: is definitely one of the most important characters of the show, through his impact on those three...
no subject
Date: 2008-03-16 04:16 am (UTC)Also, I think you're on to something theorizing that the reason Dexter blocks everything out is that his mother told him not to look. That boy is good at following the rules.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-16 05:52 am (UTC)I stand by my "don't look" causing the block-out theory, yes.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-16 06:07 am (UTC)Yay for Harry! And yes, I do have a plot bunny that involves Charles running into him somehow, and being simultaneously horrified and rather impressed ...
no subject
Date: 2008-03-16 06:32 am (UTC)