Re: Dexter: Original Sin season 1 (spoilers)

On 2025-02-17 12:07 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

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 This is largely continuing story with only a few killers of the week.
 The whole series is backstroy to the original series, with "present" set
in 1991, plus backstory within backstory telling of Harry's affair with
Laura Moser, in which she has a five year old son Brian, and three year
old Dexter. Harry, Dexter's father, had an affair with Laura, whom he
made a C.I. to take down a drug trafficker with... no preparation
whatsoever. How might this possibly go wrong?
 

You're not trying to say that Harry is the father of Brian or Dexter are you? Because I distinctly remember a scene where Harry drops Laura off at her home and meets both Brian and Dexter, apparently for the first time. Or did you see something that made you believe Harry and Laura had been intimate previously and that Harry had fathered both boys?

It's been close to two decades since Dexter. We saw, in Dexter's
recollection, his "birth in blood" -- his mother's -- by himself, but
he's forgotten his older brother. In Dexter season 1, the Ice Truck
Killer was Brian, trying to get Dexter's attention.

Season 1? I thought we met Brian in Season 2. I could be wrong!

 I had completely forgotten Brian too.
 At times, we see yet another backstory, Brian committing crimes, going
after people who "wronged him", backstory within that backstory.
 LaGuerta (Christina Milian brilliantly emulating Lauren Velez)
investigates a series of murders that she complains are too low profile;
she gets Harry assigned to her cases to appease her.
 Dexter, having a nose for serial killers (and having read ahead in the
scripts) spot a pattern even though there's no pattern; all of
LaGuerta's cases are linked, AND it turns out these are Brian's crimes.
Harry, in files of a dead psychiatrist (which you'd think would have
been a higher profile investigation) outside Miami Metro, learns that
Brian was a patient, then spotted Brian at photos taken of gawkers at
crime scenes.
 He tries to hide it from LaGuerta by... leaving the file on top in the
vehicle, knowing LaGuerta will look inside.
 Brian's killings are left unresolved at the end of the season.
 Earlier in the season, Harry disgraces himself by blowing a high-profile
case, confronted at trial during cross examination about failure to
obtain a search warrant (I think but I've forgotten). In real life, there
would have been a separate evidentiary hearing or at least a hearing on
a suppression motion during trial, but it would NOT have been in front
of the jury.
 As I generally disliked Grey's Anatomy, especially Dr. McDreary, I've
only liked a few Patrick Dempsey performances. I liked him on the
British series Devils (playing, heh, Harry Morgan), and I liked him in
this as the police captain revealed to be the child kidnapper/torturer
and murderer. Dexter spots him, well, there's blood evidence. Harry
won't believe Dexter as this is his best friend. Turns out he went after
other children to hide that the target was his own son, whom he
kidnapped and tortured to spite his ex-wife after a bad divorce. Father
of the year, he ain't.
 

In the final episode, we see that he has serious doubts about being the father of his son, implying that his wife's affair was a long-standing one. Killing the boy seems to be his ultimate revenge on his wife's betrayal.

Deb (Molly Brown, making the character her own as she gets several
emotional scenes she does well that Jennifer Carpeter never got) goes
through an incredibly fast maturing. Her mother Doris has just died, she
loses a boy and breaks up with her best friend as she then dates him,
she tries to get Dexter to date a high-school girl (utterly ridiculous
that Harry wouldn't put a stop to it), and suddenly coming down with
daddy issues, dates a wealthy man. He's apparently a drug trafficker
(and I've got to believe his off-screen father is a major gangster)
and, worse still, about to get married.
 She beats up a girl, loses then regains a volleyball scholarship
(because REASONS), and then suddenly decides to become a police officer
after a non-pep talk from LaGuerta.
 Harry, as played by Christian Slater, is a very different character than
the character played in the backstory in the original series by James
Remar.
 The timelines between the two series are twisted. In Harry's backstory
in the original series, we see him raising Dexter as a teenager in the
years BEFORE this series is set.
 Now we get into the massive retcon.
 Over the seasons of the original, the viewer came to realize that "inner
Dexter" was a false narrator, and Harry was a manipulative bastard.
 Dexter had killed some pets in the backstory of the original story;
Harry decided that Dexter was incorrigible and a potential psychotic
murderer, having been "born in blood".
 What we saw was Harry giving Dexter "The Code" to "properly" channel his
aggressions, but Harry felt weak as certain criminal were beyond the
reach of law. He decided to train his own son in vengeance.
 Dexter claimed he made no human connections and wasn't empathetic, but
the audience saw a character who had normal emotions, deeply repressed.

In the prequel, we also saw that Dexter saved Nicky at the risk of exposure - Nicky might well have recognized Dexter from the police station but they staged things such that Nicky was mostly unconscious during Dexter's rescue - even though he must have had a huge hunger for killing the murderous captain.

 In the original, Dexter didn't start out as a serial killer whose worst
impulses were in control. Instead, we came to realize that Harry's
manipulation of Dexter encouraged his worst impulses, brought them to
the forefront, then channeled them.

The original series is distant enough that my memory is somewhat hazy now. I truly don't remember Harry actually encouraging Dexter to kill anyone specific. In the prequel though, Harry specifically green-lighted the killing of the nurse and, I think, some others.

 In this series, Harry has second thoughts about having given Dexter "The
Code". Harry isn't feeling vengeful, and he tries to prevent Dexter from
making his first kill.
 Dexter, instead, manipulates Harry, gets him to approve the kill while
Harry is literally weak from his first major heart attack, and their
encounter with a nurse who treats patients with serious disease with
murder.
 Later murders committed by Dexter? Not at Harry's direction. In fact,
once Capt. Spencer's guilt is established, Harry admits that Dexter's
instincts were spot on.
 Therefore, at no point during this series did we see Dexter killing on
Harry's instructions, which is a massive retcon.
 I liked Slater's performance despite the huge changes.
 The series was entertaining.

I watched this prequel as it aired and agree that it was worth my time. The one major question I still have about it is whether this prequel is over now or might we expect more seasons of Original Sin? I'm not clear if this is a "one-season-and-done" like 1883 or something meant to be ongoing.
I know that there is another Dexter series, called Dexter: Resurrection, starting in a few months with some of the original cast back, especially Michael C. Hall. I'm curious whether we can expect *both* to be ongoing.
--
Rhino