Nov

18

The likable killer

Posted by dexterfan

November 18, 2008 |

My mom had a crush on Ted Bundy back in the late 1980s.

Well, that’s not really fair. My mom didn’t have a thing for horrific serial killers. She did have a thing for actor Mark Harmon, though. And Harmon did a pretty fair job portraying Bundy in the 1986 made-for-TV movie The Deliberate Stranger. Harmon managed to make a truly terrible human being seem charming and charismatic. It didn’t hurt, of course, that he looked like, well, Mark Harmon.

So, it shouldn’t be any surprise that so many of us like Dexter the character, not just Dexter the TV show.

Michael C. Hall does a great job in making Dexter a sympathetic character. Yes, he carves up countless people, and then dumps their bodies in the ocean. But … he is also the survivor of gruesome violence. And his victims all had it coming.

We can give credit to Hall for this, of course, but let’s not forget Dexter’s fine writers. They’re the ones who made us hate Sgt. James Doakes for tailing Dexter, for trying to figure out what it was about Dexter that just didn’t feel right. Think about that feat. The show’s writers had us for rooting for a guy who kills people over a cop who’s trying to catch a serial killer. That’s pretty powerful writing that can do that.

But as my mom would tell you, good writers can make you fall for any character, whether it be a serial killer with Mark Harmon’s face or one who headlines his own TV show.


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