Word: dexterous
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...who’s had some face time on HBO. Did Michael C. Hall creep you out more than a little on “Six Feet Under”? He’ll do that role one better as the titular serial killer on “Dexter.” Loved Mary-Louise Parker’s nervy energy in “Angels in America”? Wait until you see her in the pressure cooker that is “Weeds”!The latest in this cavalcade of premise-heavy, actor’s-delight...
...Dexter is also an exploration of what morality is. Is Dexter truly a moral person or an animal who's learned a sophisticated trick? "People fake a lot of human interactions," he says, "but I feel like I fake them all. And I fake them very well." Unlike CSI, Dexter is informed by a philosophical question: whether humanity is more than the sum of one's outward actions...
...kids? And whose? A 6-year-old? Of course not. But some teens are ready to empathize with killers in novels like Crime and Punishment and The Stranger--assigned by high schools, which have greater coercive power than even Viacom does. Others are barely ready for young-adult fiction. Dexter is not The Stranger, but it's not Saw either. Decency protests, however, don't make such distinctions. Killers are killers. One slice fits...
...what most bothers parents today is the pop-culture ambush: the dirty ad in a football game, the gruesome trailer at a family comedy, the R-rated movie on a plane. The responsible answer is respect for context from entertainment megacorporations and more information for audiences. With Dexter, which carries a "mature themes" advisory before each episode, everyone knows what's coming. But to the PTC, as Winter says, "airing something more explicit with a better warning" is not enough...
Ironically, when it's not trying to get shows off the air, the PTC runs a very good online program that reviews shows for family-friendliness. This kind of effort--which enables choice rather than limiting it--might recognize Dexter as an intelligent, dark show for grownups and maybe mature youths (many of whom would probably rather watch it unedited anyway). Making those educated choices can be overwhelming for parents, it's true. But it's in the spirit of democracy, where ideas are life or death...