Review: All Jekyll And No Hyde Makes "Dexter" A Jumpy Boy

That sucks for him. But it's pretty entertaining for us.

TV's favorite serial killer/forensic expert begins his second season of "Dexter" on Showtime this Sunday. And he's got a boatload of problems. He can't get it up. He can't kill. And a suspicious colleague is following him everywhere, so Dexter must try to look as normal as possible. He even joins the squad room bowling team. "What's disturbing is that I'm good at it," Dexter tells us in voiceover.

This is an absolutely riveting performance by Michael C. Hall, who had plenty of experience with sex and death on "Six Feet Under." Here he does an astonishing thing by making us root for the psychopath. Of course, that's partly because Dexter only kills bad guys. You could say he administers frontier justice. But still, when you see how he does it...Hall and the writers accomplish something pretty amazing by making us empathize with this guy despite the tape and the blades and the blood and the screaming. And you have to wonder, just because it's amazing, does that make it good, in the moral sense? Is exploring a human heart, even one this depraved, always a valid artistic exercise? Or are Dexter's traumas and his "rules" for who he kills simply window dressing as we all indulge our darker instincts?

No the time for deep thinking now, however. I just watched Sunday's and next week's episodes back-to-back. Somehow seeing the next "Dexter" seemed more important than reviewing the season premiere of "Brotherhood," which is also up Sunday. I am but one man. Dexter of course is at least two...

OK, so here come two bigass paragraphs of background for those of you who don't know anything about Dexter and the first season. Those who do, y'all can skip ahead.

Dexter is a blood spatter specialist for the crime scene department at the Metro Miami P.D. His colleagues marvel at his cool around corpses, unaware that he is in truth a hollow man. He does not feel things the way ordinary people do. By night he is a fearsome predator, roaming the streets and knocking off murderers of all stripes in a methodical, quasi-surgical ritual. He collects a single drop of each one's blood before dropping their dismembered corpse in the bay. It is a horrifying compulsion that he describes in often humorous tones in the self-aware voiceover. Dexter was raised to become what he is by his late foster father, a cop who trained him to harness his demons and kill only those deserve it. Dexter remains close to his foster sister, herself now a cop.

Over the course of the first season, Dexter found himself taunted - or perhaps courted - by a serial killer known as the Ice Truck Killer, while his sister enjoyed a new romance. Needless to say, his sister's beau and the I.T.K. turned out to be one and the same. But the real shock was that the I.T.K. was the brother Dexter never knew he had. We learned of the horrible trauma that bound them together - and twisted them into serial killers - when they were small boys. In the season finale, Dexter began to remember that bloody trauma, saved his foster sis and killed his brother. All the while keeping his own secrets...a hell of a high wire act.

Whew, and that's just the first season! OK, now on to Sunday's show. Spoilers ahead!

He's still keeping his act together as season two opens, but it's not easy. A minor annoyance in season one was the burly detective Sgt. Dokes,  the one person at police headquarters who knows on an instinctual level that Dexter just...ain't...right. Now Dokes is trailing Dexter 24/7, intent on catching him doing, well, whatever it is he does. And Dexter really, really needs to kill somebody soon or he's going to lose his shit.

Adding to the pressure: his traumatized sister is rooming with him, and his girlfriend is suddenly ready to have sex, a normal human activity for which Dexter just can't work up any enthusiasm. Finally Dokes drops his guard, and Dexter gets a chance to kill. Gets the vic all taped down and everything, but when he picks up the big knife, his hand shakes and he can't close the deal! Crap! What's wrong with me? Pretty soon he can't even bowl right!!

A chance for redemption comes with the brutal murder of a gangbanger. Dexter finds motivation  in the empty eyes of a traumatized child - he's been there, remember. And so he thinks he's ready to take out the baddie, a ginormous hitman for a Latin street gang. But apparently Dexter is still not quite on his game, because he doesn't use enough tape. D'oh!!!! The big guy gets up and runs. Can he ID Dexter? Will he try to kill him? Or will Dexter get a second chance to take him out first?

And while all this is going on, Dexter's sister is home watching the news. Seems a treasure-hunt scuba team found something they didn't expect on the floor of the bay - dozens of garbage bags containing body parts. Suddenly the whole city is talking about a new serial killer. And we know it's Dexter. Aiyeeeeeee!

Next week, the big bad comes to the police station, and the FBI comes to town, in the person of Keith Carradine, to help catch the "Butcher" who put all those body parts in the bay. This is going to be fun. At least until I start thinking those deep thoughts again. It's a compulsion of mine.

Tell us what you think of "Dexter" in the comments. No really, we want to hear. No revenge of any kind is contemplated...