DEXTER is the soap opera you’re embarrassed to love.

I mean, a show featuring a serial killer who carves up bodies like a surgeon sounds kind of weird, right?

Only the strong of stomach need turn it on.

Deftly written with excellent characterization, seasons 1 & 2 are available on DVD.

With beautiful views of Miami underscoring the plot, Dexter has more intrigue than a Roman circus as comic-book-noir characters (read big muscled and cartoonish) fuck, kill, and backstab one another ceaselessly.

Dexter emerges, ironically, possessing the best sense of morality of them all.

He satisfies his bloody urges only by killing bad people. At times the people of Miami love him for his homicidal deeds.

The full range of Dexter’s character is expertly crafted in an arc worthy of Shakespeare.

In the first Dexter we encounter a sociopathic Frankenstein, interested only in artful killing and living by a cold-hearted code.

But soon his character is challenged. He delves more and more into the history of his deceased father, a high-ranking cop who recognized his son’s bloody urges and steered him in the path of vigilantism.  But what Dexter learns about his father forces him to reconsider this man he has placed on a pedestal as well as his code of morality.

Dexter in many ways is just a shy guy.

Cool and detached, he kills so he can feel intensely. He hates his lack of emotion. Through a series of sexual and familial relationships he begins to come out of his shell and this is fun to watch.

Dexter even develops regret and contemplates giving up his artful killing. But this is only one twist in a list of many.

I can easily watch six, seven shows in a row.

Oh, God, is that creepy? Am I going to turn into a serial killer?