DEXTER’S OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE BLOOD LUST

The last season of Dexter’s series has just come out in his own mental genre. It is a big commercial operation. The original series was a success. The blood-shedding serial killer disguised as a cop and a Robin Hood catching up on various criminals, who on his own decision, executes them in cold blood, though the shedding of the blood is dealing with a very hot body fluid.

This justice-maker is fascinating for the audience that finds some relief in this orgy. Their death instinct, Thanatos if you prefer, is satisfied like the gods of the Mayas or the Aztecs when they received such human and bloody sacrifices. In a way, Pontius Pilate must have felt some pleasure and satisfaction in the blood of Jesus, though they did not shed his blood. Blood was not the stake. Suffering and dying very slowly in the burning sun on a cross were the entertaining spectacle.

This final season is the building of the serial-killing justice-maker the series needs and Dexter himself has become repetitive. But what about his son? That’s better. But how can Dexter be sure his son will be a serial killer? Only one way to know. Let’s see how he fulfills his first Rendez-Vous (yes, it is a love story) with his fate. And it has to be a killing that he will always wear, carry, trudge along with all his life, the killing of his own father.

Now we are waiting for the rebirth of the next generation, now the new blood has been shed and found. But to be creative after the long series with his father, the son will have to find new avenues, new exhilarating viciousness and cruelty to capture the audience which is slightly blasé with a déja-vu: a knife is a knife and killing with a knife is slightly humdrum.

2. BOOKS

JEFF LINDSAY – DEXTER, AN OMNIBUS :
DARKLY DREAMING DEXTER, DEARLY
DEVOTED DEXTER, DEXTER IN THE DARK

It is of course out of the question to summarize these books. They work well only if you do not know what
is coming. That is called suspense and Jeff Lindsay is a master in the way he can surprise us in new and
unforeseen developments, though of course we know Dexter is always alive and will always survive. The three
volumes each have a perfect unity brought by the arch enemy to which Dexter is confronted in each one of
them. The fact that he is a police blood spatter analyst by training is only an easy device to set him in the heart
of all serial killing cases.

The fact that he is a serial killer himself makes his life absolutely schizophrenic and he has to learn how
to live with that doppelganger of his. The fact that he is trying hard to be human, including by marrying
someone, is just some kind of bag of obstacles he has to solve and negotiate constantly, especially with the
two kids of his paramour and soon wife. The archenemy is self appointed and a real challenge for Dexter.
Each volume has its archenemy: sibling, colleague who becomes target, some old god’s – Moloch – illuminated
believers.

The originality of these novels is contained in that very fact. The various lines both complete and contradict
one another, always crisscross and mix into some Molotov cocktail of exotic killing and that is why we should
read these novels. Be careful about one detail: they have little to do with the TV series that are a perfect
adaptation, which means the TV series are the use of the character but not of the details of the cases. In fact,
the TV series is an absolutely new and creative story line built with the character Dexter. We find the same
outline as in the first volume, the sibling, at first, but extended and at once completely modified.

The second volume is estranged from its adaptation and the political context of the El Salvador dealings
of the US during the civil war there have been completely erased. The third volume has not even been hinted
at, and many crimes and cases and developments have been added that are not in the books. Some crucial
characters in the series are even dealt with and liquidated in the book as fast as fast can be. Do not imagine
you are going to find the verbose description of the action-packed events you have seen in the series. It is
something completely different in many ways. It is another and different experience worth reading for itself.

One note is interesting here. Dexter is schizophrenic for sure, but he is absolutely modern because he is
just pushing slightly further than ordinary people what is the very condition for survival in this modern world:
we need to be schizophrenic if we just want to be able to wake up tomorrow morning and face the world the
way it is. Dexter is our hidden side. Dark or full of light? Who knows? Who can know? But it sure is enjoyable.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

JEFF LINDSAY – DEXTER BY DESIGN, BAD
BLOOD RUNS DEEP

After the omnibus of the first three novels, I was looking forward to reading that fourth one and enjoy the
sequel of these very bloody but as clean as clean can be adventures of the most famous blood spatter
technician in the world. And I was not disappointed. Dexter is always running clandestine as an avenger in his
police department, though a black sergeant who has been seriously maimed in the previous, but one volume
is still running after him, with the help of some more curious baboons, like a couple of Internal Affairs officers
and FBI officers who are after Deborah who was nearly killed by the new serial killer at large in Miami.

But the new element is of course the third party in this deadly picnic, the criminal at large in Miami who is
defending the brand new modern artistic trend that is derived from snuff videos and snuff art: to maim living
human beings on the stage of the installation, or even better to self-maim yourself in front of your installation
audience. And then put up as an exhibit the amputated part of your body. Let’s note it is the fourth volume in

3. which that amputating, dismembering, and maiming of live subjects is used. Obviously, Jeff Lindsay knows his
classics. Frankenstein was horrible for building a body from spare parts recuperated from dead bodies, or, if
necessary, from freshly killed bodies.

Lindsay took the opposite stand: Dexter himself is a dismemberer, then his brother was an artistic
dismemberer with his elaborate installations of the body parts. Then we had that crazy doctor back from the
special forces in El Salvador who made it his trade to reduce a living human being to nothing but his head on
top of his trunk from shoulders to hips, all elements jutting out of it having been severed and disposed of. This
well done that human being still survives, even without eyelid nor tongue. Then you had that sect that burned
the bodies but severed the head, first, to display it somewhere public. This time the new serial killer, gay by
the way (let’s note this gay touch on that side of the criminal line reveals some kind of a slightly sexist element
in the novel because it has nothing to do with the crime itself, uses bodies as fruit and flower baskets to
enhance the touristic reputation of Miami.

This time the end is close because Dexter has more or less confessed to Deborah who is going to overlook
the fact, but the serial killer puts on the Internet some pictures that are more than dubious, that are frankly as
clear as spring water. And Deborah’s partner has managed to see the pictures by eavesdropping one night.
Unluckily for him he makes a mistake that will make him part of the final installation of the artistic serial killer
who will in fact himself be part of his own installation after a scuffle with our Rita who was just back from her
Paris honeymoon with Dexter when all that started. That was a very close case this time and every volume
brings the plot closer to a complete revelation. And during that time Rita’s two kids are getting more and more
insistent about doing some experimentation to learn the trade, be it only with a pencil, though a screwdriver is
a lot more interesting, but.

This writer reveals the deepest layers of our censored, repressed and blooming psyche. We all love that
because we all have experienced these drives in our subconscious or unconscious mind. That explains the
tremendous success of this author and the TV series inspired by his characters. We are expecting the next
volume ASAP or otherwise we would have to come out and do it ourselves, which would be slightly sloppy and
untidy, and that would not be in line with the author’s an*l or rec**l character. Sorry for the censorship but some
delicate ears may be reading our lines with their very fingers, and one has to keep one’s fingers away from
some bodily places, even if Dexter does not.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

JEFF LINDSAY – DEXTER DELICIOUS – THE
DEVIL IS IN THE DETAIL

This is the fifth novel in the series. It was clear that the series departed from the books rather early,
definitely in the second season. But this volume is a lot more radical since it starts exactly where the fourth
season of the series nearly ends (the blood bath of the Rita is not yet envisaged): the birth of Dexter’s child
with Rita. And the difference with the TV series becomes radical.

The child is not a boy but a girl, Lily Anne. You can’t be more different than that since the relation with the
girl is necessarily different and the future of the girl is definitely different too: ballet dancing rather than knife
swerving. Rita does not die in the hands of the trinity killer who is not even hinted at. What’s more Jeff Lindsay
brings Dexter’s brother back into the picture from the very start. He had disappeared at the end of the first
volume and season since he was the ice-truck killer, which makes his presence difficult since he must never
meet Deborah, he tried to have assassinated by Dexter in front of him.

And the crime story in this fifth volume is a coven of cannibals in Miami, something that is a lot larger than
what Dexter is generally dealing with. A whole band of cannibals led by a couple of people helped by half a
dozen second-rank aids.

In this novel Dexter is going to run risks and take risks more than ever and he will end up in the hands of
these cannibals a couple of times and will have to escape and in fact fail to escape for the story to go on. His
sister is playing a tremendously more dynamic role in the police, and she is dragging her brother into her own
police actions which are at times beyond Miranda, in other words illegal. The sister is also vastly restructured
as a lot more tense, with a regular boyfriend, a certain Chutsky who is coming from the past and she is
sentimentally involved with him.

4. I won’t say more than that about devilish details. But I want to say something about a couple of questions
that are raised in this novel.

The first question is whether there is no justice in Florida and probably in the US. If you are rich and can
afford the best lawyers, you will always walk free sooner or later and quite sooner than later. Anyone who has
followed the DSK case knows exactly what Jeff Lindsay means. The main criminals and cannibals in this story
are just the direct illustration of this simple fact: there is a justice for the rich in the US that has little to do with
the justice for the poor. If, what’s common in many cases, the rich criminal is also in some position of fame or
power, this double judicial divide is just severely amplified.



The second thing is that the protection that is due to private life, private enterprise, private meetings, etc.
is also the best protection for criminals to develop their criminal activities. They just have to respect the general
laws protecting privacy, private life and everything private in the US to set up a free enterprise that will be the
cover-up of their criminal activities. In this case a nightclub for would-be vampires can be the cloak hiding the
cannibals. And Jeff Lindsay insists on the fact that this business is so well protected that no police work is
possible. If the police want to do something, they have to step out of legal bounds, which they are not supposed
to do.

The third remark is about the economic dynamism of the USA. Jeff Lindsay insists on the dynamism of
these criminals who are able to develop very powerful economic tools that are untouchable because of their
economic power. This is a perversion of the economic system on which the USA is built because that very
system does not negate the social dimension of the economy which these people do: they only work for
themselves, their interests and their power. It is like a sort of cancer in the very heart of the system. In fact, we
can wonder if Jeff Lindsay is not giving a warped image of the USA since in this book he looks at a major
business (real estate), real businessmen, and he seems to make them irresponsible. Is it the result of the
housing bubble, the unacceptable mortgage practices of some real estate agents, the greed of real estate
agents who wanted to make a profit with unhealthy mortgages and loans?

At the same time Jeff Lindsay seems to be careful to under-mention the Cuban presence in Miami and
Florida, and that is a change because in the TV series the Cubans are everywhere including in the police,
Spanish is present in all episodes or nearly. This under-representation of Cubans in Florida seems to make
this volume, maybe all the novels, more WASP American than it should be to be realistic.

These remarks do not take any value from the book, which is a real thriller, well-built and with so much
suspense at crucial moments that it amounts to some torture from the author to his readers. He finds a real
pleasure in getting into some side remarks when the life of Dexter or his sister is at stake. We have to wait to
find out how it finally goes.

But I would like to close this review on the definition of freedom that is given in the book several times: “I
had no more choice than a man strapped into Old Sparky who is told he’s free to stay alive as long as he can
when they throw the switch” (p. 381) and again: “Freedom is really an illusion. Anytime we think we have a

5. real choice, it just means we haven’t seen the shotgun aimed at out navel.” (p. 399) We can hardly consider
this is a non-important side remark that has no general value. This vision of the world is all the more important
and effective in the readers when we know it is carried by Dexter himself, the character we are identifying with.

Enjoy the frightening yet maybe sometimes humoristic story.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

JEFF LINDSAY – DOUBLE DEXTER – HE’S
BACK AND DEADLIER THAN EVER

This one starts well and ends well, but in-between it is a real mess.

Dexter has become so soft in the head that he has lost his really deep nature and alertness. He is slow,
he is not able to anticipate what is coming, to be at least one shot ahead of the opponent and this time the
opponent is terrible.

The opponent is a frustrated man in all possible ways. He is a baseball player who did not even manage
to succeed in Little League. He is an expert in computer science and internet manipulation who is nevertheless
too slow and misses predicting what he is really causing himself. How could he ever think he could go through
tailing Dexter when he had done what was necessary for Sergeant Doakes, the mutilated monstrous anti-
Dexter cop, to be tailing Dexter too. Dexter cannot really survive with two tails: one has to get the other and
that is the end of it, of both of them I mean. That is in a way a guarantee for Dexter to succeed even when he
is at a disadvantage

That opponent is essentially someone who has no real personality, who hates his ex-wife who has
managed to make him hate her, but he made one mistake one day: he witnessed one of Dexter’s play games.
What a mistaken inspiration went through his head to be curious about a derelict car parked in a foreclosed
house! But he will pay for that, hard and sharp.

The worst part is that in fact he has no imagination, and he is a copycat. He copies Dexter with his own
ex-wife, but he does not have the talent. He uses a carpenter’s saw to slice up the body. He then copies
another criminal’s murders to put Dexter into real trouble with his own department, and he succeeds rather
well but his copycat copying is rather sloppy and signed by the use of a baseball bat instead of a special
hammer used by house demolition workers, some kind of sledgehammer. Killing on the first blow and breaking
the skin whereas the real psycho he is imitating was careful not to kill on the first blow to keep the victim alive
and suffering as long as possible and never breaking the skin not to spill one drop of blood: suffering, slow
death, entirely internal. Bad copycat.

In spite of the use by Dexter of Brian, his own brother, to clean up the plate, that criminal was intelligent
enough to escape that menace by being one person who was still alive and hence got the blow instead of him.
That leads to a marvelous finish in some Tortugas islands and Tortugas National Park, feeding sharks with
body parts, playing bathers with turbaned towels on their heads, driving speed boats if not small yachts, around
and so many fascinating vacation activities for the kids.

The final confrontation is deadly for the one you may expect, sends Dexter back into public oblivion,
enables Rita to buy a big, foreclosed house in an auction, provides the kids with a lot of fun, the family with a
deluxe and free suite in Key West and extra dinners for free too, and a lot of good recollections about that
month of July. At the same time, we can wonder if Dexter is not aging too fast and is not going to be overtaken
by his own kids. He still is vicious, insensitive, inhuman, very skilled, but he seems at times as if he had been
hit on the head with a cast iron skillet that made him slow.

This novel is funny but strange at times. The depicting of Rita is hilarious. She cannot finish one sentence
before starting another, uttering a completely incoherent discourse. She is in many ways depicted as a
caricature of sanity and organization, and yet an extremely over-effective roller-coaster of a housewife that
never ends worrying about others and bothering others, definitely obsessive and compulsive, in one word
OCD-ed to the heart and the core of the mind. Some will say that this female character only counterbalanced
by Dexter’s sister who is an OCD-ed police officer, reveals in a way the hostility of the author to women, not
sexist but at the level of what they are best in life: their supposed light-headedness and their real one-

6. pointedness, in life though not in discourse. Apparently, these female characters have not digested Hillary
Clinton as being representative of the female sex.

As for men, Dexter is so pretentious when he is not even justified in his pretention, so proud of his pride-
worthless life that he becomes slightly irritating. We will say it is his character, his personality. But a man like
that will not survive fifteen minutes in real life. The author must be conscious of this flaw and in this volume,
more than ever, he uses humor and irony to bring that pretentious pride down to earth. But at the same time,
he has to save the character for the next volume. He was in many ways a friendly character before, but he is
becoming slightly annoying now. He has to find some more human, let alone humane, dimension. That’s
urgent: he is becoming a pain in the mind, and his justifiable crimes are more and more tangential as for ethical
justice. Here he provokes a dissatisfied person to become a criminal by just involving him in one of his
episodes, an involvement that is un-willfully due to Dexter’s own sloppiness. A sloppy hero is not a hero at all,
especially when he cannot clean up his mess before it becomes a tsunami of blood and corpses.

The author also has some accounts to settle with Key West and the touristic industry in Florida. The page
about the hotel and how they buy the signature of a customer who should sue them all teeth and nails out with
miserable favors is superb, including the limitations of these favors: a dinner for the family, but beverages not
included (tap water will have to do), and they conclude the deal with accepting the request from Dexter of
banana splits for the kids and a bottle of Merlot wine for Rita. Stingy niggard misers. A good lawsuit would
have brought in quite a few thousands of dollars for the displeasure of finding a dead body in your suite,
brought up during breakfast time in broad daylight using the service elevator of the hotel by a sociopath. What
about security?

The best part of the book is the style, which is in itself suspenseful and humorous, provided you have a
rather black sense of humor.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

JEFF LINDSAY – DEXTER’S FINAL CUT – TV
MAKES DEXTER CRIMINALLY IMPOTENT

The author, Jeff Lindsay, sold his character to television wheree Dexter became the main hero of a
series that lasted seven seasons at the end of which he officially died, but did he really die or just disappear?
No one will ever know, except the audience if a new season appears one day.

It depends a lot on what is going to happen to Dexter in the meantime as a book character. And the
seventh book has just been released or has at least finally reached my desk in my distant mountains. The
title may mean he is going to be finished, our Dexter, and this volume is the last one. Or it may mean
something more down to earth as we are going to see.

Jeff Lindsay had already parted with the timeline and events or circumstances of the TV series in the
last volumes of his book series, and that was good though confusing since we had two Dexters. Now the TV
Dexter is dead Jeff Lindsay can recapture his character and go back to his own business. But this volume
has to settle accounts with TV.

Jeff Lindsay cannot obviously blow up the TV network that exploited his character to death (he made
quite a pile of green backs from the adventure), but he can bring a TV series in his book and settle accounts
with television in his book. Television and the series in the book are hijacking Dexter from his standard life
and his not so standard pastime and turn Dexter into a counsellor to some TV star, Robert Chase, chase me
if you can, and his sister into an assistant to the second TV star, Jackie Forrest, and don’t get lost in that
forest with two r’s.

Jackie Forrest is stalked by some criminal mind who becomes a serial killer to force Jackie Forrest to
see him with her own eyes and to accept to acknowledge his existence by becoming his object, his thing,
though he does not know exactly what he wants from her, except absolute servitude and submission. Dexter
then accepts to look after her, be her protective blanket, and sure enough he gets rid of the menace. But
another appears from inside the shooting perimeter, nothing to do with guns and everything to do with
cameras.

7. But things are vicious, and I won’t say more about that side of the book, except that Jeff Lindsay
eliminates the stars with a snuffer one after the other. But that is not enough as for vengeance. So, he
manages to depict the female star as being vain, superficial, self-centred, obsessed with sex and of course
she traps Dexter, and he falls, and he adds so many other qualities nurtured in her by her stardom that she
becomes a monster, and he piles up the incredibly non-ecological and uneconomical conditions that
surround her. He manages to add some paedophilia in the star system, a man liking little girls, and everyone
is blind to it because he is a star and has a high TVQ, he is popular, and he attracts a big audience. At the
same time the paedophile is a daily predator on all girls around and he has the bad taste and the silly idea to
capture Dexter’s own stepdaughter. Poor darling man, you’re dead, that’s for sure, when Dexter catches you.
I hope you can swim, or at least your body parts can.

Dexter appears here as having lost his main concentration and objective and he becomes the play toy
of a female star who promises to give him a career, at least for the time of the shooting with an under-five
part, and he is vain enough to dream he was going to have a career in Hollywood and why not an Oscar.
Ready to abandon everything and everyone to follow the call of the stars, at least till the kidnapping of his
stepdaughter calls him back to reality, the dusty and muddy reality of Miami.

If you want to know whether Dexter is dead or finished or terminated at the end of this volume, or
whether there will be another volume soon, you will have to read the book. In spite of the false tracks on
which Jeff Lindsay will set you, you can surmise or conjecture the truth rather fast, at least if you have some
practice in thriller-reading. I find the book at times slightly too slow, maybe even verbose, when Dexter loses
himself in his newly found human sentiments for the female star that tries to illuminate his vanity and capture
his attention.

But, well, it is funny in a way. I just hope there will be another volume, and it will be slightly more
dynamic. The final cut is of course the final “cut” order he gets from the director or showrunner or whoever
that man may be – and HE might be a woman seeing how much vodka HE drinks – at the end of the last
take of the last scene of his under-five part, and the book opens with that last cut. But that last cut will cut
Dexter to the bone for sure and that will be a good thing because he is really made dumb and besotted by
the skin, flesh and various body part of a female star-object, a perambulating inflatable doll in a way, inflated
by whatever TVQ the audience projects into the outside skin of that evanescent being.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

9. TV SERIES

DEXTER – SEASON ONE – 2006

This concerns only the first season of this series, and I know some of the things will not seem right to
those who have watched the next seasons. But that is just the point. The first season has characteristics that
will change later, and the meaning will change too. I will keep within the very limits of that first season. What
we gather from the first episodes is that this blood technician working for the Miami PD is the adopted son of
a police officer. He was adopted at the age of four by this police officer because he had been traumatized by
the killing of his mother with a chain saw by some drug dealers. At once the series insists on the fact that this
trauma caused an irreversible damage in the psyche of the child who is fascinated by death and needs killing
just like junkies need their drugs.

He is addicted to inflicting death to other people. We will only learn quite late in this season who his real
father was, after his death actually, so we will never know the man really. We will not be given in this season
any detail about the death of the mother beyond what I have said. And all the details that come up now and
then are always flashbacks in the memory of the child that Dexter was. Dexter recovers that memory little by
little just like any child or even adult would do in the case of a traumatic event. His foster father just tried to
bring this death impulse of his within some acceptable limits, within a certain code: you can kill but to survive
hence you have to kill people who are just plain dirty (I sort of remember this is the code of Anne Rice’s
vampires). And that’s what he has been taught and trained to do. First hide your impulse. Second, pick the
proper criminals.

Third, do it so professionally that you can never be suspected. This ideology then is very typical. You can
survive any trauma if you know what you are, if you accept what you are and if you find out why you are what
you are. When you finally know, then you are clear. The term comes from Hubbard, but it is the one that is
needed here. It may change later. This concept of clarity is doubled then with the Skinnerian concept of
absolute determination of your whole being and future by the mold into which you have been cast in the very
first years of your life. In this case, Dexter is a killer because of his trauma that happened when he was four,
hence he will be a killer all his life. No one can change that. One can only teach the kid a code, a method, an
art to do things along a certain ethical line and not to be caught.

That is pessimistic but that is not the main interest of this first season. The main interest is that another
serial killer, the Ice Truck Killer, though not being a copycat, is obviously aiming at this Dexter. And his crimes
that are very special in their style, method and delivery are there to titillate Dexter, to chase or bait Dexter into
a trap or a corner. Little by little we will learn the connection between the two and that I won’t reveal. In the
end Dexter will have the upper hand and kill his competitor, along his own method, more or less. The second
interest of this series is how Dexter can keep his secret for himself in his own private life, hiding it from the
women he is going along with, from his own sister (foster sister for sure but sister anyway), from his direct
colleagues, from his department, etc.

It is subtle and difficult and there the actor is doing quite a good job, though the series is more building
this meaning with the environment of the character than with the acting of the actor. As usual in American
series the actors are rather static and the stage director, the series director and the set designer are building
around him or her a composed visual moving environment that builds the meaning of the expression or speech
of the actor. Note in this case most of the discourse of the main actor is his own voice over the pictures. He is
telling us a story, and it is often a commentary of what we can see.

The next and essential quality of this series is of course the real artistic and artful suspense that is built in
each episode and in the twelve episodes of the season and that lets us absolutely breathless most of the time,
even when we finally know who the Ice Truck Killer is, and then the suspense does not go down one iota. In
other words, this series is so far, first season only, Dionysian, quick, fast, dense, exhilarating, inebriating,
intoxicating and many other things of that sort. In one word it is addictive and habit forming. You may, if you
have ten and a half hours at your disposal, watch the twelve episodes in one go and you will never be bored,
tired, or de-concentrated. Try it and you will like it, I am sure.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

DEXTER – SEASON TWO – 2007

10. Now his arch enemy is out, now he has killed and bled his own brother, though the real identity and even
existence of this brother remains kind of schizophrenic more than real, Dexter can concentrate on the business
at hand and how he can go on with his psychologically lucrative activity. But… That would be too simple. First
his girl friend is a weak woman who has been made afraid of her own shadow by her very mother who invades
her home after her own personal crisis, that of an uninspired school teacher who ends up hating the system
she has served all her life because it cannot change when she is aging, when she becomes unable to stand
young children and their disorganized way of discovering the world, life and knowledge.

That mother is a bloodsucker for her own daughter and grandchildren. That leads to Dexter being careless
and evoking his addiction, to death and killing of course, but his girl friend understands drugs, because of her
own first husband, and she pushes him into some Narcotics Anonymous where he is absolutely vampirized by
a British uncatchable praying manta that only wants to suck her men dry or dead or destroyed. That will lead
to the worst dramatic events ever in this season. But you will have to discover that all by yourself, like big boys
and big girls. But the black sergeant of his department at the Miami Metropolitan PD is becoming more than
suspicious. he tails him, he corners him, he provokes him, though he himself is not clean, with a couple of
shootings that are at least suspicious, and the last one is frankly clear as plain morning sunshine.

That leads to a conflict and that conflict will lead to the major bloody meat of this season. But once again,
go and discover it by yourself and don’t beg like puppies. It is great. The worst part for him is his inner voice
that is telling him crazy things, and yet so sensible now he has bled his brother to death in front of his own
eyes and with his own hands. This season is based on the idea that even Dexter can change. He sure can
change. He has great difficulties killing for a while, drops one case, who is blind and can’t recognize him, and
fails with another case to finally succeed but out of, I my by sheer, luck more than real art. He starts doubting
himself, and he is brought to thinking that his father actually committed suicide because he discovered that the
monster he had trained was a real monster and not only some kind of dreamer. That leads to his own desire
to end all that.

But his carnivorous vampire friend of a British girl convinces him of something else, that he can actually
become addicted to what she is addicted to, a minor addiction in his case, sex, and he does. But very fast he
realizes she is only sucking his marrow out of his bones. But he can’t get rid of her because she is destroying
everything and everyone around him, including the children of his girlfriend. She is an arsonist and she
manages with that great art of casting fire when necessary to capture his attention, then to liberate him of a
great danger, but to make him afraid more than ever, and finally to prove him that if she cannot eat him slice
by slice at her own speed and leisure she will spoil the meat for no one else to be able to approach it any more,
and a few other people close to him will be toasted dry and brittle at the same time. The third problem is the
FBI. It is a real problem with the first special agent who is FBI all right but careful and patient, and he falls in
temporary love with Dexter’s sister.

But the second one, the first one’s own boss, wants fast results at any cost and they satisfy themselves
with the Bay Harbor Butcher the arsonist is serving them on a charred platter. That’s good luck for Dexter. His
worst perils and hazards turn out to be good charms. So, his psychological dissolution is countered and
reversed into some more positive conviction that there is a god for the serial killers of his code and that he has
to go on, after getting rid of the British arsonist somewhere under the Eiffel Tower in Paris, of all possible
places. So, can he change? And the second season, after many hesitations, ends up with the same ideology
as before: he cannot change, not because he was educated as a monster, but because deep in himself he
has a divine soul that dictates his attitude and his action.

He gets independent, free from his father because he is able to climb a few ladder rungs towards a more
justified killing style and mode. He becomes some kind of archangel Michael or Gabriel who is killing the
dragons of evil in the ailing heart of our society. In other words, he is another Lestat de Lioncourt, a vampire
by profession, and Anne Rice’s darling creature and creation. The serial killer the social cereal that provides
society with the fiber, the bran it needs to evacuate its clogged intestines. He is the purge of evil. In one word,
he is the future. And he has a future for sure. Third season is coming soon. And will there be a fourth season
soon too? It is a shame the DVD’s bonuses did not include interviews of the important people on this series:
Michael C. Hall for one and the director for another who has chosen the cool and slow style of a voice-over to
tell us the story.

There would be a lot to say about that schizophrenic meaning. But who is schizophrenic? Dexter or the
director?

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

11. DEXTER – SEASON 3 – 2008

There is little to add after season 1 and season 2. It is going to still be the same. Well, you did not read
the books properly then or you did not watch the first two seasons properly. This one is entirely new and yet
still the same. That’s the miracle of this series: it seems to rejuvenate itself by getting older. So, what’s new
that is not so new after all. First, he got his Rita girlfriend pregnant. No surprise since he went to it bareback
and there never was the slightest innuendo or plain detail about covering up before going out. Sooner or
later with a woman who already has two kids! And of course, she forgot the pill one night or something like
that. Bound to happen, Sir.

And it did happen. But you should see the fertile dog who is kind of wailing and whimpering in front of
the reality he loves and desires more than anything else, but he can’t admit it even to himself. It is true,
morning sickness and all the rest on Rita’s side, and the rest is a lot, like buying a new home, a wedding
dress, choose between chocolate or hazelnut for the wedding cake, buying an engagement ring and all the
rest, that can give you a vertigo. It is true an engagement ring looks like the receipt you get from the parking
machine that gives you one hour’s parking time, but well that is generally done, isn’t it? New and not so new
is his sister who falls in love with a local black singer, details in the series, look for them. This time he is not
from Philadelphia or even farther away, and he is not the age of her father. It is true he is black, and he is a
little bit wrapped up, but that’s only muscle, isn’t it?

No, no, she is not getting that old yet and maybe in next season we’ll have another family affair. Ah!
Those Dexters! Quite new is the fact that Dexter gets a partner. In other words, parallel to his wife to be he
gets some kind of professional attraction to some one of the same sex who is not a cop. But how can that
work? Dexter is a solitary animal, like a spider, and it eats its partners after the dual carriageway trip, that
spidery and long-legged insect that is not an insect. So how is the spider going to accept a partnership and
yet keep his plate clean and his little secret night adventures for himself. And what about after the marriage?
Well, that will be for next season. You already know I guess, but I prefer waiting for the DVD. You can
already pre-order it, with one click at Amazon if you are trustworthy, financially I mean.

But as they say the apprentice gets always worse than the sorcerer. Remember Fantazia? You’re going
to say that is such a cliché. But it is so effective, but well at times we dream of the reverse, but then I am told
it becomes a serial killer, not a serial justice cleanser. And then you do have some more details about the
various polices that fight for a tidbit of macadam here and there, the Vice Squad, the Miami Dade Police
Department and the Miami Sheriff’s office. A little more about grossness but this time in a way with some
reserve. There is a little bit less blood. That’s maybe a good thing for the audience and the watching rates,
but it takes some real gross horror out of the series.

Dexter is becoming more civilized in a way. No real blood display like a bed floating in blood or a blood
shower when opening the toilet door. But this season is definitely growing up to something that is or should
be disquieting. Killing is becoming some kind of hobby, not a possession, not a deep impulse, not at all, just
something you have to do everyday like washing your teeth or brushing your feet, or the reverse. No public
outcry at the latest victims. No outcry at all at the disappearing hoodlums, or district attorney as for that.
Though I must say the skinner is by far the vest invention in that season. It holds us firmly from the beginning
to the end including the kidnaping. But hush, you are going to give away a spoiler. So, enjoy it all in one go.
It’s only about ten hours of TV.

A good, nice night with some booze and peanuts, not too much popcorn though, especially since the
price of cereal products is going to go up this year after the forest fires in Russia.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

DEXTER FOURTH SEASON – 2009

Amazing fourth season. If I had to watch it all by itself and without knowing that something is coming next,
I would say this season is by far the best because it is entirely, from beginning to end, a full cycle centering on
one serial killer chased by Dexter and chasing Dexter. And that is excellent. The construction of this whole
season is perfect and in the style of Stephen King’s Dark Tower. The end is the beginning, and the last scene
can only bring Dexter back to his very first cry in his life and in the first episode of the first season. This closing
of the cycle is so beautifully made that it would be the perfect ending for the saga, just like the last page of

12. The Dark Tower is just the same as the first page of The Dark Tower. Life is the most beautiful thing there
is to live in this world just because it is always the same, and yet always a new beginning. The sun rises every
morning, and the moon rises every evening, or nearly so. The variations are themselves cyclical. It is absolutely
state of the art primeval pleasure. The serial killer behind this whole season is a cyclical man too, but a double
cyclical killer who kills every so often along a cyclical need and always the very same cycle of victims in very
set circumstances and very set time spans.

The key to this season is that we all know about FBI profiling, so it becomes funny and strange when that
profiling fails to be true and is in fact totally wrong. And this time twice again, because it is superficially wrong,
the man is not a solitary cat that kills to satisfy his need to have human contact, but the alternative to which
Dexter comes is also false because it is only an appearance. That serial killer is keeping appearances, to even
kill better and more easily. The series also settles some accounts with the paparazzi, those fake journalists
who gather any information and spill it around with no conscience whatsoever and without the slightest pang
of conscience about the potential victims the people they expose become. And what if that nosy journalist were
a killer herself?

And the plot can sicken a little bit more when Rita kisses the neighbor. What a horrible thing to happen,
and she is shocked when Dexter does not react the way she expects him to react, so that he has to do
something about it, and apologize to the brutalized neighbor on the following morning, I guess. This season
also gives the dead father an ever more important role to play. He is Dexter’s permanent and privileged
interlocutor. Then the action is always as packed as usual, though Dexter does not buy donuts for his
colleagues every morning as he used to.

That’s a shame. I liked that habit, but I guess everyone on the team has to watch their waistline and
weight. They are getting old in other words. But be sure to get the fifth season, before cancer, or his sister,
takes Dexter away, and you may find out if the last scene is a real scene or a nightmare. I have my idea about
that but let you enjoy the suspense.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

DEXTER – THE FIFTH SEASON – 2010

A new season, just like a new book, about Dexter or by his dear author, are treats that have the essence
of pleasure and the texture of bliss and happiness. This fifth season is no exception especially with the final
image of the previous season of Dexter’s son, Harrison, in the blood of his mother and wife, respectively and
backwardly, killed by the Trinity Killer just before he was abducted and liquidated if not terminated by Dexter
who did not know what this trinity Killer had just done.

From this traumatic scene opening this season we move onto another serial killer or rather a gang of
serial killers who have been operating since high school or so and are still operating under the supervision and
guidance of a TV positive thinker, one of these new prophets of the post-God era. These gurus who more or
less mesmerize their clients into doing what they, the gurus, want them, the clients, to do in their, the guru’s,
places. It is tempting to have an inner circle of disciples with whom you share your real power, I mean the guru
has the full power and the others execute the deepest bleakest darkest blackest desires the guru has and has
been able to suggest or extract from the unconscious minds of the followers.

It sounds religious, Christian in fact, but they push slightly further the parallelism and that gang of If-you-
want-something-take-it-ters project the Christian nature onto their victims who are sacrificed in the perfect
number of thirteen, the thirteenth victim evading the lot and the curse, so that we drop back to twelve, the
proper number with the thirteenth traitor who will turn against the guru, and will be coming back with a dark
angel to execute and terminate all the members of that gang, one by one. In fact, it is even more vicious
because the first victim has been mesmerized into accepting her link with the guru and she survived. That
makes fourteen victims, the first surviving like a sort of Holy Virgin and even helping along, twelve dead after
torture and a few other niceties, the last one surviving and treacherously coming back to bring justice, like the
archangel Gabriel, the executor of God’s sentences, with I guess the archangel Michael, the liquidator of
dragons.

This series does not work as a common thriller and what is important is not to learn who the real criminal
is, why Dexter is going to execute this one or that one. We know that straight away, from the very start. The
point here is to know how Dexter is going to get out of the intricate complicated and very obscure and
precarious situations he is putting himself in. And this season is great for that. But I am not going to reveal
these details.

13. What is more interesting is that the thirteenth victim and Dexter are going to be fellow-travelers on the
dark passage of the dark passenger. But is it going to be the meeting of one’s lifetime or is it going to be
transient and evanescent? Is she going to be the new woman in his life? On the other side Harrison has to be
taken care of, and he is growing. The problem is the nanny because he needs a nanny since his grand parents
have taken the other older two children and can’t take this one, and since Deborah has a full-time job at the
Miami Metropolitan Police. But that’s a small complication in the life of a really busy young man who has two
professions, both exacting and demanding.

The best part of this series is that we have divided loyalties. We are absolutely on the side of the police
and Deborah who are for catching criminals and bringing them to justice, but at the same time we are absolutely
behind Dexter who considers that we are supposed to save taxpayer money and avoid bringing those criminals
to justice. But, if we are for that kind of a twist in the fabric of justice and law-enforcement, we are well obliged
to be on the side of the small or big twists in police work to simplify a situation that is too complicated for a
colleague, who is innocent of course of any crime, just awkwardly compromised by his or her lack of swiftness,
or to decide to let some criminals run because they are just cleaning up the dirty place in which we live and
this is ethical, cheap and efficacious. What’s more it attacks most of the time, in this case particularly, people
who have the necessary means to have the best lawyers and evade criminal justice like a certain DSK in New
York.

One thing is sure: quite a few people disappear in the USA without leaving any tracks or footprints behind
and no one seems to care about it, provided these disappearing characters are proved to be vicious criminals
of any type. This seems to reveal something about the American-ness of this series. The objective is to catch
the criminals – if the police and justice can – or to let some vigilante liquidate them – if the police or justice are
too slow. This is typically American efficiency and practicality: the objective is to reach the target and the goal
at the lowest price possible and in the shortest time possible and with as few collateral damage as possible.
At times this practicality and efficiency create impossible situations like in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan, but
there is always a rub somewhere in the carpet of life.

But the best part remains the opening credits that have not changed from the very first episode, especially
the admirable mechanical mosquito, and the music of the whole series. Long live our Dexter International,
registered and unlicensable trademark and copyrighted character. After all he could be some night partner of
ours on some winter nights when we are alone and cold in our beds and need some distraction, more than
entertainment. And distracted you will be by this aging young man who manipulates knives like a magician as
if they were pencils or toothpicks.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

14. DEXTER – THE SIXTH SEASON – 2011

This sixth season counts twelve episodes, which is fitting since it is based on the Christian Apocalypse,
in fact not the one in John’s Book of Revelation, but another reconstructed version widely enriched with the
numerous apocalypses that exist or existed in the Levant and even the Middle East traditions, going back to
the Zoroastrians and the Babylonians, hence to the old apocalyptic visions we can find in old Sumerian
documents (clay tablets) and Zoroastrian stories that are as old as the Sanskrit Vedas, if not even older. But
altogether we remain within the vast tradition of the three originally-if-not-still-Semitic religions.

It is a fad today, and has been for quite a while, to integrate the Apocalypse in TV series. I can just
quote the most famous ones like “Supernatural” in the USA (WB TV) and “Being Human” in Great Britain
(BBC). And of course, we have to think of the secular vision or rewriting of it in the long series of “Terminator”
and the “Sarah Connors chronicles.” But “Supernatural” is seen from the point of view of the monster hunters
who try to prevent the coming of the apocalypse that is programmed in an inescapable way, and yet, there is
always a way out when there is a way in. On the other hand, “Being Human” is the apocalypse seen from the
point of view of vampires and it is again the attempt to stop it by blocking the taking over of the earth by the
Old Ones (the vampires from the original millennia of humanity). This sixth season of “Dexter” takes the
apocalypse from the point of view of a deranged, fundamentalist Christian zealot who thinks that by enacting
the prediction you could bring the end of the world. Dexter is thus the one who is trying to stop the criminal
and that is not easy.



If you consider the apocalypse and all the religious bull that goes along with it in the minds of all latter
night (not to speak of days) prophets, read my lips to see who I mean, is undrinkable, just avoid this season.
If on the other side you are only interested in serial killers and catching them, what’s more if you believe in
one serial killer being able to catch all the serial killers and pass them to the other side of the transatlantic
Gulf Stream back to Europe where they probably or obviously belong, then welcome to this season.

But there is a lot more than that.

The series this season definitely defends the idea that you have to believe in some kind of higher force
behind the universe. It ridicules the fundamentalist zealots of the three originally-if-not-still-Semite religions
for sure. But it states very clearly these people are dangerous.

In the same way it ridicules the fundamentalist zealots of the evolutionary theory that can only impose
their stuff with harsh and purely rhetorical attacks on the creationist point of view, hence the zealot
fundamentalist originally-if-not-still-Semite beliefs. Rhetoric is not an argument and certainly not evidence or
proof of anything. It is nothing but play on words and superficial semantic jingling juggling. In fact, there is no
proof of any sort on either side.

15. On one hand the question “Who created the universe?” and the answer “God.” will bring the next
question: “Who created God?” And there is no end in that direction except the crazy science fiction of Ron L.
Hubbard and Scientology that we are nothing but the rejects of an extra-terrestrial civilization that existed
zillion, zillion, zillion, zillion, zillion years ago. And then “Who created these extra-terrestrials?”

On the other hand, if you are on the side of evolution and science, nothing comes from nothing. We can
say the beginning of the universe we know is a famous “big bang” but then since nothing comes from nothing
(Lavoisier among others in the 18
th
century) that “big bang” came from something, there was something
before that “big bang”. Then what was it and where did that come from? Evolution is a theory that perfectly
explains life, in fact not only vegetal and animal life but also mineral and cosmic life, the way we know it and
over a very long period of time, knowing that what we see at the outer limits of the visible universe (with
modern technology) is what it was billions of years ago and we have no way to know what it is today, except
through speculation and reconstruction.

In the same way this season uses a lot of symbols in the most irritating way, especially the alpha and
the omega, the beginning and the end. It is written somewhere: “I am the alpha and the omega” but it is in
fact slightly more than that: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, saith the Lord God, who is and who was and
who is to come, the Almighty.” (Bible, Revelation 1:8, Standard American Version). The first part states that
there was no time before the beginning, and states that there will be no time after the end. That led Saint
Augustine to considering that eternity, before the creation and after the end of this world is timelessness. But
then how can the past “was,” the present “is,” and the future “is to come,” not be seen as contradictory,
except if you play on words and consider that verbal tenses refer to time and hence there is no past and no
future before and after the creation and the end of it. “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; vanity of
vanities, all is vanity.” (Bible, Ecclesiastes, 1:2, Standard American Version) Just as if the eclipse of the last
episode was the end of the world. How naïve!

As entertainment this season is great, even maybe greater than the previous ones because there are a
fairly tighter unity of the twelve episodes and a fairly ugly fight for power at the head of the Miami Metro
Police Department. But as for the ideology and the ideas it transports and even bombards onto you it is
slightly naïve and definitely over-powerful. We are not supposed to think about all those theories and political
or ideological ideas, but at the very same time it is unfair to crush the audience with such heavy-weight
hammers and expect the audience to say thank you and not be in anyway influenced by it. Luckily the
classification of the season is -18, “suitable only for persons of 18 years and over” and “not to be supplied to
anyone under that age,” but even so how can we assume that over 18-year-old people can be un-influenced
by such heavy at least graphic arguments.

In fact, it is not the apocalypse per se that is at stake here but the exclusive reference to the three
originally-if-not-still-Semite religions. “Supernatural” is careful to refer to a lot of religions and other beliefs.
“Being Human” is careful to refer to a lot of theories that have nothing to do with the three afore-mentioned
religions. But this season of “Dexter” is extremely narrowly targeting that particular vision in the three afore-
said religions. At least the Buddhist can have a great laugh at it. But is it so for everyone else?

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

DEXTER – THE SEVENTH SEASON – 2012

This season takes Deb down into the deepest layers of hell. It starts with Deb falling upon Dexter’s
killing a Christian serial killer in his church and it ends with an even grosser and more deliriously crazy crime.
Dexter used to be more or less manipulated by his Dark Passenger, by a need he had to satisfy, an impulse
he had to follow, but little by little he realizes that there is no dark passenger and that he is entirely
responsible for his crimes and that leads to the idea that he is killing to survive, and eventually to avenge the
killing of his mother.

As soon as this idea that survival is the main objective Dexter becomes a plain ordinary simple and
banal serial killer. He does not kill dangerous people, I mean dangerous for society because they are serial
killers themselves, but he kills because he feels menaced. His killing is no longer an act of vigilante justice
but an act of pure fear, the fear to be taken, and when his sister is totally involved, the fear she might get
caught or that she might become the target of some other criminal, and little by little of the police itself. It is
no longer awesome, but it has become awful.

The psychological level of the characters, Dexter among them, then loses a lot of its appeal. Dexter is a
monster, a self-centred, egocentric, selfish monster. He has not one ounce of humanity left. He has become

16. a danger for society by not being a scavenger that takes care of mental rubbish and social garbage. Then
the suspense in the series is no longer only about when and how he is going to be caught but rather how he
is going to get out of his mess by killing whom, when, where, how. Up to now there was an ethical dimension
he called a code in that appeal. Now it is purely morbid and nothing but morbid.

The series uses some circumstantial subjects to build some kind of setting and environment to the
predator’s hunt. The Ukrainian mafia in Miami opens night clubs with Ukrainian dancers who are essentially
strippers and pole dancers, in other words something close to prostitution that is more or less tolerated, but
the Ukrainian mafia uses that cover to import all kinds of highly profitable drugs. This clandestine commerce
then comes to a direct clash with the Colombian drug mafia that tries to defend their territory. But that
transforms the series again into a simple criminal action film like so many others.

The series tries to widen Dexter’s scope by making him fall in love with another criminal who has killed
exclusively to protect herself from all kinds of ills, a father first who was brutal, a gambler, a child molester,
etc, and then juvenile institutions and then the serial killer she makes an escape at 15 with and whose
crimes she shares, apparently with a lot of zeal but her lawyer manages to get her some immunity for these
crimes because she was considered to be a hostage more than an accomplice. She knows what killing
means, and she is in poison, and she understands Dexter and Dexter understands her. They fall in love, real
love, not some social convenient arrangement like with Rita. But she menaces Deb who is trying to step
between her and Dexter. Then Dexter has to get her in prison for one crime he had covered up.

But she escapes. Food for the next season.

Then this season revives Maria La Guardia, the Captain, and her love affair with Dokes, a Haitian
sergeant who hated Dexter and had seen him through, and her obsession, in continuation of Dokes’s own
obsession, against Dexter and she brings back out of the boxes the case of the Bay Harbor Butcher, but
things have become tricky and since Dexter promised Deb not to compete with the police any more, he has
to find other solutions than killing people and he becomes very good at framing them. He thus frames Maria
who has tried and is trying to frame him. These two framers and their accomplices are like writing the new
constitution of the Crime Republic, but that is easy, that is not even respectable, nor believable. And the
framers lose their frames in the meantime and have to come back to the radical solution: dispose of the
menace.

I am afraid I have to say this season is packed with action and dynamic intrigue, but the main and most
successful actor has become the mosquito in the very opening credit sequence, even if its life is very short-
lived. Even the love of Deb for Dexter is turned into something perverse and sickening. Crime corrupts and
absolute crime corrupts absolutely.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

DEXTER – EIGHTH AND FINAL SEASON –
2013

To wrap up the story in twelve episodes or chapters, that’s short, that’s fast, but that’s radical, à la
Dexter. He manages to solve a ton of problems in these twelve episodes.

First, he finds a surrogate mother for Harrison, which was difficult. Luckily, the only woman he had loved
and who was still alive, apart from his sister, turns up and reactivates some fundamental mechanisms. And
Harrison likes her. She is very special, but she wants to become a good girl.

He manages to solve the problem of his father, and how his father, a good cop, could accept his
adoptive son to be, more than to become, a criminal, how he managed to come up with the code, etc. In fact,
the symbolic mother surrogate of his, of Dexter, comes up to him and reveals who she is and what she did.
She reveals that his father OD’ed on his heart drug when he could not stand what Dexter had become
anymore. Dexter hates that Doctor Vogel, who has nothing of a bird in that story, at most a vulture, which is
no bird you try to attract in your garden with a bird feed and a bird bath.

He has to solve the last case of a serial killer who is aiming at both him and Doctor Vogel. Her past is
revealed, and she becomes extremely dark and deep with one son killed by another, you know the story of
Cain and Abel. And the killing son is sent to East of Eden in some institution in England, or something far

17. away to the East. And there he is tortured into medical blankness since he is a criminal who deserves to be
punished, even if it is with drugs or some archaic violent treatment like electric shocks or other forceful
manipulations of the body or the brain, and why not the mind and the imagination.

Of course the dear son who was sort-of buried alive in this institution plans a good case of arson, with
seven dead people in the wing that burns, and himself among these seven, officially, because’ in fact, he
manages to get out, change identities and then move on, looking for mummy, Doctor Vogel, and all those
she preferred to him, and first of all Dexter. And the blood trail can start under the police identity of the “brain
surgeon” because he saws up the skulls of his victims in a very special way, scoops out one very precise
section of the brain, and delivers these extracted sections to his mummy. A yummy appetizer for Christmas
dinner or Thanksgiving celebrations.

He, of course, has to save his sister from private investigation and then to make her a star in the Police
Department. So, he finally comes over his need to kill with his last victim, and he gives him over to Deborah
for her to arrest him. But a Federal Marshall comes up, and he completely messes the case, frees the
criminal who kills him straight away, takes his gun, shoots Deborah, who shoots at him but in vain. And
things will not turn honky dory, and there will be some complications. Dexter then has to close up the file and
clean up the plate. Deborah disappears in a hurricane.

Finally, he has to take care of himself and protect Harrison and the substitute mother who has taken the
boy to South America, and there is only one way. So, he disappears with his boat into the hurricane. A
tempestuous ending, but it works.

And yet they more or less kept one card up their sleeves, I mean the producers, for a sequel in let’s say
five or ten years, when Harrison reaches his teenage years and starts moving towards finding his father and
recuperating the father model he needs and remembers from his tumultuous first four years. Check it all by
yourselves with the DVDs, how they manage to keep one bun in the oven in slow gestation.

You can always dream. But it is sure the author of the book series will be able to go on working with
Dexter if he wants, though the last volume was announced a long time ago and will maybe finally come out
next March (2014), and it is supposed to be entitled Dexter’s Final Cut, which promises quite some blood.

We’ll see. Que sera sera. Will I be pretty? Will I be rich? What will be, will be!

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

DEXTER – THE ULTIMATE SEASON
– DEXTER NEW BLOOD – 2025

This final season, ultimate final season, is even more disappointing than the seventh season. The
objective and target seem to be purely commercial. To bring Dexter’s son out of oblivion. He was a child who
was traumatized, or should have been, since he was abandoned as an infant in the blood of his own mother,
flowing from the bathtub where she had been assassinated.

At the age of 19 or so, he reappeared in the life of Dexter, who had escaped and faked his own death to
be able to remain incognito anywhere. But not really, since his son found him. He denies at first, and then he
engages his own son in his own project since this son seems to be a fair candidate for his succession. But it
is difficult to make him worth it. First of all, he has to discover the serial killer of the village or small town who
has kidnapped and made a good twenty or more women disappear.

Imagine the shock for Dexter Junior when he discovers all these women cleaned up and preserved in
an underground gallery. Trophies and keepsakes for the serial killer who is, of course, the most important –
economically – person in the village. When Dexter Junior has been introduced to this gallery, when Dexter
senior has caught up on this serial killer and has shown Dexter Junior how to deal with him, with the pieces
of his body, and how to burn them all in some furnace, which is not exactly clear, but it is impressive, when

18. Dexter senior has managed to manipulate Dexter Junior hard enough to force the Junior to kill the Senior,
then, he knows the trauma is big enough to turn his son into the next serial killer able to survive as many
bodies as he can even imagine or count with a standard highschool education and an AI-smartphone.

And that’s all. Then wait and hope there will be a new Dexter Junior series, though his specialty will
have to be particularly subtle, refined, and gross to last seven full seasons. Maybe he should contact the ex-
TV-comedian who is acting as President of Ukraine right now, as his sponsor and master in lasting horror,
like the … – is it 600 or 800 million euros or dollars that have disappeared from the military funds of the war,
embezzled in some juicy corruption, now the parliamentary commission fighting against corruption has been
dismissed hardly six months ago.

Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU

VERSION FRANÇAISE – POUR LA ROUTE

DEXTER – L'ULTIME SAISON – DEXTER
DU SANG NEUF

Cette dernière saison, ultime et finale saison, est encore plus décevante que la septième. L'objectif
semble purement commercial : sortir le fils de Dexter de l'oubli. C'était un enfant traumatisé, ou qui aurait dû
l'être, puisqu'il avait été abandonné tout petit dans le sang de sa propre mère, coulant de la baignoire où elle
avait été assassinée.

À l'âge de 19 ans environ, il réapparaît dans la vie de Dexter, qui s'était échappé et avait simulé sa
propre mort pour pouvoir rester incognito où que ce soit. Mais pas vraiment, puisque son fils l'a retrouvé. Il
nie d'abord, puis il engage son propre fils dans son propre projet, car ce fils semble être un candidat sérieux
à sa succession. Mais il est difficile de le convaincre. Il doit d'abord découvrir le tueur en série du village ou
de la petite ville qui a kidnappé et fait disparaître une bonne vingtaine de femmes.

Imaginez le choc de Dexter Junior lorsqu'il découvre toutes ces femmes nettoyées et préservées dans
une galerie souterraine. Des trophées et des souvenirs pour le tueur en série qui est, bien sûr, la personne
la plus importante – économiquement – du village. Lorsque Dexter Junior découvre cette galerie, lorsque
Dexter Senior a rattrapé ce tueur en série et lui montre comment s'en occuper, ainsi que les morceaux de
son corps, et comment les brûler dans un four – un four qui n'est pas très clair, mais c'est plus
qu’impressionnant –, lorsque Dexter Senior parvient à manipuler Dexter Junior suffisamment pour le forcer à
tuer le Senior, il sait que le traumatisme est suffisamment important pour faire de son fils le prochain tueur
en série capable de survivre à autant de cadavres qu'il peut imaginer ou compter avec une éducation
secondaire standard et un smartphone doté d'une intelligence artificielle.

Et c'est tout. Ensuite, il ne reste plus qu'à attendre et espérer une nouvelle série sur Dexter Junior,
même si sa spécialité devra être particulièrement subtile, raffinée et cruelle pour durer sept saisons
complètes. Peut-être devrait-il contacter l'ancien humoriste de télévision qui assure actuellement la
présidence de l'Ukraine, et en faire son parrain et maître en horreur durable, comme…, d’ailleurs s'agit-il de
600 ou 800 millions d'euros ou de dollars qui ont disparu des fonds militaires de la guerre, détournés grâce
une corruption juteuse ? La commission parlementaire de lutte contre la corruption a été dissoute il n’y a pas
six mois.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU