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shadowkatHurrican Hannah has hit NY with drenching rain, so I decided to stay indoors and finish Season 2 of Dexter courtesy of Netflix. Just finished watching it and was incredibly impressed. Season 1 was pretty good, but also slow in places. Season 2 on the other hand is flawless, perhaps the best season of a series that I have seen since Season 1, BattleStar Galatica (the new version). Everything worked. All the characters evolved and were interacted in the plotline.
The series also played with a couple of rather complicated issues, such as the Death Penalty, in fact I'd have to say this was the most complex take I've seen on the Death Penalty, leaving the audience to make up its own mind. Usually, tv shows that tackle the Death Penalty either preach against or for it, and leave the viewer feeling a tad bored or hollow at the end. This one leaves you feeling itchy and uncertain.
It ends with a wonderful line quoted by the lead character, a serial killer who murders serial killers: "I have stopped asking myself if I am good or evil, because does anyone ever know for certain? Aren't we all a little of both?"
Worth contemplating I think. I remember sitting in a social psychology course a while back, discussing an experiment in which volunteers were asked to inflict pain on others as part of a teaching scenario. They were told that if the person answered the question wrong on repeated occassions, to administer an small electric shock, which would increase in intensity depending on how many answers the test-taker got wrong. In reality no shocks were being administered, but the volunteers did not know that. The experiment had surprising results.
90% of the people who volunteered from retired schoolteachers to longshormen, administered the shocks when they were calmly ordered to do so by the advisor. Why? Because they were told it helped the test-taker, that it would teach them to learn, that not administering the shocks would damage the experiment. A similar study was conducted several years later - where two groups of men were sequestered in an university basement, one group played the prisoners, one played the guards. The study was supposed to take place for a month, but was discontinued, because the guards got a bit too into their roles, frightening the social psychologists conducting the study. In my class, the teacher asked us what we thought. People had a variety of reactions. Most of us insisted that we would not do such a thing. But, the teacher, stated, in the study - it was made clear the volunteers stated much the same thing.
When they discovered they were wrong, several of the volunteers had nervous breakdowns and future studies were not permitted. She said - that this was proof that human beings need to feel good about themselves, we do not want to admit that we are capable of horrible things and we do committ horrible acts - we justify and rationalize them in order to stay sane and feel "good" about ourselves.
In Dexter - they say more or less the same things. Sergeant Doakes looks at Dexter Morgan and is understandly creeped out. As he states at one point, he looks at Dexter and sees the monster that he works hard to keep buried in himself. Dexter is in Doakes view his own monster unleashed. Then there is Debbie Morgan, Dexter's sister - who looks at the Bay Harbor Butcher - the serial killer (Dexter) who kills other serial killers - and wants him dead, because he is a killer. As Dexter tells Doakes at one point - how are we different? We are both killers. You just get paid for it. Doakes kills may be cleaner - a bullet or in self-defense after he's pushed the criminal to the wall - but he still has killed another human being. Is there a difference between shooting a man and chopping him up? Is there a difference between sentencing a man to death in a court of law and watching him electrocute or die by fatal injection and what Dexter does - tranquilizing them and killing them with a knife? In both cases the man or woman was a cold blooded killer, a serial killer, who had numerous people and would kill even more if Dexter hadn't put an end to them. If they were tried and sentenced they could get the same fate - except inflicted by the Federal Government.
How is this different from what Dexter is doing? It's a question Dexter himself asks.
The Death Penalty is an odd issue. Most of the people that I've discussed it with, don't know very much about it or for that matter our justice system outside of what they have read in books or seen on tv and the movies. Those who have done jury duty may have a bit of an idea.
I know more about the subject than I want to and it is in some respects one of the many reasons I decided not to practice law or at the very least not be a criminal attorney, even though I was pretty good at it in law school and most of my internships were related to it.
What people do not know about the death penalty is that it is seldom used on serial killers or individuals that are sociopathic or psychopathic and true dangers to society. In most cases it is used against people who are occused of felony murder (robbery murder) or killed a cop. Charles Manson for example is never going to get the death penalty. Ted Bunday sort of begged for it - they weren't planning on giving it to him. Also in most cases, the death penalty takes years to happen, people just wile away on death row, waiting - this is one of the reasons countries that enforce the death penalty are on Amnesty International's list of crimes against humanity or human rights infractions. Because sitting on death row, in solitary confinement, knowing any day someone may execute you somewhat painfully is like it or not torture. We justify the torture with the view that they deserve it. Even though many of the people on death row have been found to be innocent - their convictions overturned or they were falsely accused. Having gone to law school, participated in the litigation process and done jury duty, not to mention seen first hand how the police investigate a crime, this does not suprise me. I watched a jury give over 2 million dollars to man who had faked his injury and lied to the court two years ago. (I know it was fake, because he swore he had a bad hip and leg, yet opted to walk down five flights of steps on a 90 degree day as opposed to waiting for the elevator. I watched him do it, after he limped to a witness stand and pretended to be in pain. I was not allowed to mention what I saw to anyone because what jurors see outside the courtroom is inadmissible and because I was an alternate. I kept my mouth shut, hoping the other two jurors who witnessed it would make sure he didn't win.)
So yes, I know for a fact that innocent men are sentenced to death every day in this country and we not only allow it to happen, we deny it is true, or tell ourselves, well for every innocent, there are several horrible killers who get it too - so it is justified.
I remember discussing the topic with friends. Like abortion, this is not a topic that one can discuss rationally with people. Their argument, like all the pro-death penalty arguments I've heard is a very human one, and also evidence that there is a monster alive and well inside us all. We all have a Dexter Morgan living inside us, I think. Recently, I had a violently emotional discussion with a close friend about the same topic - she was insisting that there was nothing wrong with her using a gun or any means necessary to defend herself or her loved ones or me against a killer. "Wouldn't you rather I killed the person attacking and torturing you?" Of course. But that doesn't mean it is necessarily right. You are still taking a life.
On the senate floor in Kansas - people were quoting old testament verse and stating that God certainly told us that it was okay to kill those who harm us - an eye for an eye and all that. Or my friends who asked me - if I killed and raped your loved ones, wouldn't you want me dead? Again, of course I would. I'd want you tortured and in pain, hurting like I am. But that doesn't mean it's okay. And it doesn't mean that I should do it. The fact that I want to is troubling enough.
The death penalty accomplishes two things - one: it assuages our fears, we have killed the nasty spider that is giving us nightmares so we can be safe now, and two:retribution - we have killed the nasty spider that has hurt us, made them pay, so now we can go to sleep and not feel traumatized. If only it were that simple. In my opinion killing someone does not pay them back for hurting you - forcing them to face the fact that they did it on a daily basis works a lot better. On the other hand - I have to admit, I would feel more safe if Osama Bin Laden, Charles Manson and their ilk were dead and six feet in the ground.
Season 2 of Dexter plays with these desires, and asks difficult questions. There's a sort of cathartic thrill watching Dex kill his victims, evil people who torture him. Yet, as we watch those hunting him down, we can't help but root for them as well - to stop Dexter. We feel what Sgt. Doakes and Dexter's father Harry feels as they stumble upon Dexter's crimes, a sort of sick despair. It's so clinical, so cold, so like the death chair that Dexter himself both fears and to a degree may crave. Dexter struggles with what he does as well, noting that yes he has a conscience, a sliver of one, but his code manages to keep at bay, he feels justified in what he is doing. He does not kill innocents, until of course Doakes investigates him and in doing so puts himself in the line of fire. Now, Dex has a dilemma, does he kill Doaks and set Doaks up for his crimes or does he turn himself in? Doakes realizes the struggle, discovering that Dex has a conscience and can't kill him. Dex goes so far as to rescue Doakes from drug dealers who would have killed him and solved Dex's dilemma.
The other dilemma, Dex has is Lilah, who Dex sees as his own twisted creation. Although I think that's a tad egocentric. Lila was a sociopathic murderer way before Dex met her, burning down people's homes with them inside, and haunting recovery groups to find emotion. She and Dexter remind me a bit of the two addicts in David Finch's Fight Club, Helena Boheme Carter and Ed Norton who circle each other in their own somewhat twisted relationship. Lilah - Dex meets at an Addicts Recovery Group - which he is forced to attend by Rita, his girlfriend, who mistakenly assumes Dex's addiction is drugs. Dex is addicted to something alright but it ain't narcotics. He's bright enough not to tell Rita that. Lila appeals to Dex, she sees the dark side, the monster, flirts with it, and falls a little in love with it - not quite taking his warnings to stay away seriously. To his credit he tells her what he is.
That she should stay away from him. That she should not bring out the monster. But she in a way is just like him. Which he realizes, almost too late.
Lila and Doakes from the beginning of the season are on a collision course. When they met, the good and bad side of Dexter - the cop with a conscience and the soulful killer without one, things flare up. And Dex is no longer lost. He reverts in a way to his old self, yet at the same time is changed. He decides there is nothing wrong with him and is able to renew his romance with Rita, and get rid of Lila once and for all. Lila burns up Doakes metaphorically burning up the part of Dex that was beginning to question his path and what he was/is. Doakes has lost. Lila has won. Both are dead. Lila for killing Doakes and attempting to kill Rita's kids in a fiery inferno.
It's a chilling yet at the same time satisfying and sort of fun ending. Leaving us with the question - Are we good or evil, does any one of us ever know for certain? Or is this a daily battle that we fight with ourselves...until we are dead?
The series also played with a couple of rather complicated issues, such as the Death Penalty, in fact I'd have to say this was the most complex take I've seen on the Death Penalty, leaving the audience to make up its own mind. Usually, tv shows that tackle the Death Penalty either preach against or for it, and leave the viewer feeling a tad bored or hollow at the end. This one leaves you feeling itchy and uncertain.
It ends with a wonderful line quoted by the lead character, a serial killer who murders serial killers: "I have stopped asking myself if I am good or evil, because does anyone ever know for certain? Aren't we all a little of both?"
Worth contemplating I think. I remember sitting in a social psychology course a while back, discussing an experiment in which volunteers were asked to inflict pain on others as part of a teaching scenario. They were told that if the person answered the question wrong on repeated occassions, to administer an small electric shock, which would increase in intensity depending on how many answers the test-taker got wrong. In reality no shocks were being administered, but the volunteers did not know that. The experiment had surprising results.
90% of the people who volunteered from retired schoolteachers to longshormen, administered the shocks when they were calmly ordered to do so by the advisor. Why? Because they were told it helped the test-taker, that it would teach them to learn, that not administering the shocks would damage the experiment. A similar study was conducted several years later - where two groups of men were sequestered in an university basement, one group played the prisoners, one played the guards. The study was supposed to take place for a month, but was discontinued, because the guards got a bit too into their roles, frightening the social psychologists conducting the study. In my class, the teacher asked us what we thought. People had a variety of reactions. Most of us insisted that we would not do such a thing. But, the teacher, stated, in the study - it was made clear the volunteers stated much the same thing.
When they discovered they were wrong, several of the volunteers had nervous breakdowns and future studies were not permitted. She said - that this was proof that human beings need to feel good about themselves, we do not want to admit that we are capable of horrible things and we do committ horrible acts - we justify and rationalize them in order to stay sane and feel "good" about ourselves.
In Dexter - they say more or less the same things. Sergeant Doakes looks at Dexter Morgan and is understandly creeped out. As he states at one point, he looks at Dexter and sees the monster that he works hard to keep buried in himself. Dexter is in Doakes view his own monster unleashed. Then there is Debbie Morgan, Dexter's sister - who looks at the Bay Harbor Butcher - the serial killer (Dexter) who kills other serial killers - and wants him dead, because he is a killer. As Dexter tells Doakes at one point - how are we different? We are both killers. You just get paid for it. Doakes kills may be cleaner - a bullet or in self-defense after he's pushed the criminal to the wall - but he still has killed another human being. Is there a difference between shooting a man and chopping him up? Is there a difference between sentencing a man to death in a court of law and watching him electrocute or die by fatal injection and what Dexter does - tranquilizing them and killing them with a knife? In both cases the man or woman was a cold blooded killer, a serial killer, who had numerous people and would kill even more if Dexter hadn't put an end to them. If they were tried and sentenced they could get the same fate - except inflicted by the Federal Government.
How is this different from what Dexter is doing? It's a question Dexter himself asks.
The Death Penalty is an odd issue. Most of the people that I've discussed it with, don't know very much about it or for that matter our justice system outside of what they have read in books or seen on tv and the movies. Those who have done jury duty may have a bit of an idea.
I know more about the subject than I want to and it is in some respects one of the many reasons I decided not to practice law or at the very least not be a criminal attorney, even though I was pretty good at it in law school and most of my internships were related to it.
What people do not know about the death penalty is that it is seldom used on serial killers or individuals that are sociopathic or psychopathic and true dangers to society. In most cases it is used against people who are occused of felony murder (robbery murder) or killed a cop. Charles Manson for example is never going to get the death penalty. Ted Bunday sort of begged for it - they weren't planning on giving it to him. Also in most cases, the death penalty takes years to happen, people just wile away on death row, waiting - this is one of the reasons countries that enforce the death penalty are on Amnesty International's list of crimes against humanity or human rights infractions. Because sitting on death row, in solitary confinement, knowing any day someone may execute you somewhat painfully is like it or not torture. We justify the torture with the view that they deserve it. Even though many of the people on death row have been found to be innocent - their convictions overturned or they were falsely accused. Having gone to law school, participated in the litigation process and done jury duty, not to mention seen first hand how the police investigate a crime, this does not suprise me. I watched a jury give over 2 million dollars to man who had faked his injury and lied to the court two years ago. (I know it was fake, because he swore he had a bad hip and leg, yet opted to walk down five flights of steps on a 90 degree day as opposed to waiting for the elevator. I watched him do it, after he limped to a witness stand and pretended to be in pain. I was not allowed to mention what I saw to anyone because what jurors see outside the courtroom is inadmissible and because I was an alternate. I kept my mouth shut, hoping the other two jurors who witnessed it would make sure he didn't win.)
So yes, I know for a fact that innocent men are sentenced to death every day in this country and we not only allow it to happen, we deny it is true, or tell ourselves, well for every innocent, there are several horrible killers who get it too - so it is justified.
I remember discussing the topic with friends. Like abortion, this is not a topic that one can discuss rationally with people. Their argument, like all the pro-death penalty arguments I've heard is a very human one, and also evidence that there is a monster alive and well inside us all. We all have a Dexter Morgan living inside us, I think. Recently, I had a violently emotional discussion with a close friend about the same topic - she was insisting that there was nothing wrong with her using a gun or any means necessary to defend herself or her loved ones or me against a killer. "Wouldn't you rather I killed the person attacking and torturing you?" Of course. But that doesn't mean it is necessarily right. You are still taking a life.
On the senate floor in Kansas - people were quoting old testament verse and stating that God certainly told us that it was okay to kill those who harm us - an eye for an eye and all that. Or my friends who asked me - if I killed and raped your loved ones, wouldn't you want me dead? Again, of course I would. I'd want you tortured and in pain, hurting like I am. But that doesn't mean it's okay. And it doesn't mean that I should do it. The fact that I want to is troubling enough.
The death penalty accomplishes two things - one: it assuages our fears, we have killed the nasty spider that is giving us nightmares so we can be safe now, and two:retribution - we have killed the nasty spider that has hurt us, made them pay, so now we can go to sleep and not feel traumatized. If only it were that simple. In my opinion killing someone does not pay them back for hurting you - forcing them to face the fact that they did it on a daily basis works a lot better. On the other hand - I have to admit, I would feel more safe if Osama Bin Laden, Charles Manson and their ilk were dead and six feet in the ground.
Season 2 of Dexter plays with these desires, and asks difficult questions. There's a sort of cathartic thrill watching Dex kill his victims, evil people who torture him. Yet, as we watch those hunting him down, we can't help but root for them as well - to stop Dexter. We feel what Sgt. Doakes and Dexter's father Harry feels as they stumble upon Dexter's crimes, a sort of sick despair. It's so clinical, so cold, so like the death chair that Dexter himself both fears and to a degree may crave. Dexter struggles with what he does as well, noting that yes he has a conscience, a sliver of one, but his code manages to keep at bay, he feels justified in what he is doing. He does not kill innocents, until of course Doakes investigates him and in doing so puts himself in the line of fire. Now, Dex has a dilemma, does he kill Doaks and set Doaks up for his crimes or does he turn himself in? Doakes realizes the struggle, discovering that Dex has a conscience and can't kill him. Dex goes so far as to rescue Doakes from drug dealers who would have killed him and solved Dex's dilemma.
The other dilemma, Dex has is Lilah, who Dex sees as his own twisted creation. Although I think that's a tad egocentric. Lila was a sociopathic murderer way before Dex met her, burning down people's homes with them inside, and haunting recovery groups to find emotion. She and Dexter remind me a bit of the two addicts in David Finch's Fight Club, Helena Boheme Carter and Ed Norton who circle each other in their own somewhat twisted relationship. Lilah - Dex meets at an Addicts Recovery Group - which he is forced to attend by Rita, his girlfriend, who mistakenly assumes Dex's addiction is drugs. Dex is addicted to something alright but it ain't narcotics. He's bright enough not to tell Rita that. Lila appeals to Dex, she sees the dark side, the monster, flirts with it, and falls a little in love with it - not quite taking his warnings to stay away seriously. To his credit he tells her what he is.
That she should stay away from him. That she should not bring out the monster. But she in a way is just like him. Which he realizes, almost too late.
Lila and Doakes from the beginning of the season are on a collision course. When they met, the good and bad side of Dexter - the cop with a conscience and the soulful killer without one, things flare up. And Dex is no longer lost. He reverts in a way to his old self, yet at the same time is changed. He decides there is nothing wrong with him and is able to renew his romance with Rita, and get rid of Lila once and for all. Lila burns up Doakes metaphorically burning up the part of Dex that was beginning to question his path and what he was/is. Doakes has lost. Lila has won. Both are dead. Lila for killing Doakes and attempting to kill Rita's kids in a fiery inferno.
It's a chilling yet at the same time satisfying and sort of fun ending. Leaving us with the question - Are we good or evil, does any one of us ever know for certain? Or is this a daily battle that we fight with ourselves...until we are dead?
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Date: 2008-09-07 12:22 am (UTC)One of the things I love the most about Dexter is because all the areas are kept very gray... there is never any clear and easy right and wrong. I think it is the first episode of the 2nd season we see Doakes chase after a man and shoot him down under the over pass, but the police force drops the inquiry when they learn what a monster the victim really was (they didn't want to know if Doakes' shooting wasn't "clean"). The Super heroes we admire all commit a lot of violence and kill a lot (of course they are always VERY confident they are killing 'bad guys'). It is easy to be sure who is the bad guy when they have names like 'the Joker', but in the real world the whole gray area thing is hard to avoid....
I think I would be capable of killing. I don't think I'm capable of ever owning any weapons or planning on killing. But there are times I really do see red (I should mention that I have never ever hit people, only objects... I've broken lots of objects in my life).
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