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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: June 29, 2016
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Dexter, “A Beautiful Day” (Season 8, Episode 1) [Stream on Netflix]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: Eight seasons is a LONG time for a television drama to run. Especially a television drama with a central concept as high-stakes as Dexter‘s was. If you don’t remember Dexter, Michael C. Hall played Dexter Morgan, a murderous sociopath (forged in childhood trauma after his mother was murdered in front of him) who was raised by a step-father, Harry (James Remar), who not only recognized his son’s burgeoning serial killer side but then gave him a code to live by — only kill other killers — so that his natural inclinations wouldn’t harm the innocent. As a result, Dexter Morgan became a kind of dark superhero, perfectly packaged for weekly TV viewing. Was there some cynicism to the way that Dexter oriented itself as a concept? Sure. There were leaps of faith aplenty necessary to wrap your head around the whole Harry’s Code aspect of the show. Were there really no other options to deal with a sociopathic child than to urge him to only kill other killers? Was this the road that Tilda Swinton failed to travel in We Need to Talk About Kevin?
The more that Dexter tried to wrangle with the moral and ethical implications of Harry’s Code, though, the worse the show got. For better or for worse, the enjoyment of watching Dexter was in watching bad guys get got by a serial killer we liked. Did that mean good things for the state of our moral souls? Almost certainly not! But the horror genre was never meant to let us take it easy on our own moral code. One of Dexter‘s great virtues was in making the audience complicit in its own way.
Again, though: EIGHT seasons. Eight seasons of the familiar cycle of Dexter killing some killers, Dexter coming close to getting caught, Dexter faced with the moral dilemma of killing an innocent in order to keep his secret, Dexter underestimating one particular killer who almost gets the jump on him, and finally Dexter escaping detection by the skin of his teeth. Season 8 was the final year, though, and for that final year the show brought on acclaimed actress Charlotte Rampling to play a doctor and expert in psychopaths, who ends up harboring a few dark secrets. One of them was that she helped Harry create his Code. Hey, sure, why not!
Adding Rampling to the cast for the final season of Dexter was a boon, if only because watching Rampling and Hall square off was a delight. And from the second she arrived, you knew she’d help set up the end game for Dexter. And after eight years, we desperately needed that end game. Sometimes it takes an Oscar-nominee.
