Dexter Season Two Review

• Release Date: August 19th, 2008
• Genre: Drama
• Price: $24.99 on Amazon
• Run Time: 636 minutes
• Publisher: Showtime/Paramount
• Starring: Michael C. Hall, Julie Benz, Jennifer Carpenter, Erik King, Lauren Velez, David Zayas, James Remar
• Special Features: Two episodes from Brotherhood Season Two, The Tudors Season Two, and Californication Season One; Michael C. Hall Podcast; Michael C. Hall Interview

Spoilers Ahead!!!! If you don’t want key plot points from season one to be spoiled you should avoid the third paragraph of this review.

Until recently I had actually not seen either season of Dexter. I don’t have Showtime so it is pretty hard to watch the show without getting the DVD sets. I had bought the first season a while ago but I could never get to watching it. When the second season arrived in the mail it gave me a reason to go back and watch the first season. I quickly went through the first season and I thought the season was strong even though the show is a little overrated in my opinion. So it was time to move onto the second season. After watching the second season I was left a little disappointed.

Season two begins right where the first season ended. Dexter had finally found the Ice Truck Killer (his brother) and killed him in order to stop him from killing Debra. After killing his brother Dexter has lost the thrill to kill the evil scum of the Earth. If that wasn’t hard enough, Doakes suspicions of him grow. The police also find Dexter’s dumping grounds so the FBI are onto Dexter (or his new name the Bay Harbor Butcher). Dexter’s relationship with Rita is also put on the rocks when Dexter finds a woman by the name of Lila who has much more in common with Dexter than Rita could ever imagine.

As you can tell from the description a lot of things have changed from the first season. Some of these are not bad changes but some of them contribute to Dexter season two being worse than the first season. We’ll begin with the changes that I liked. The first change that I liked is that the show really started to delve into the character of Dexter and why he does what he does. Dexter really starts to challenge who he has become. The other change that I liked was that the season long case was actually Dexter trying to cover up his own misdeeds. While I thought the Ice Truck Killer case was better it was nice to see a major murder case from the other side of the equation.

Some changes I did not agree with though. The first is that they all but abandoned the single episode cases where Dexter pursued his prey. While I personally am not a fan of one episodic storylines in most shows, I thought it kept Dexter together and made it run smoothly. Since the weekly “cases” were eliminated it lead to my second problem with the season. While I liked the character development of Dexter I really could care less for most of the character development that was given to the other characters especially at the police department. They aren’t bad characters but I don’t really care to learn much more about them.

While I am discussing the plot I have decided that it needs to be brought up that Dexter is definitely not a family show. It’s pretty obvious by the cover alone but I needed to bring it up for parents that weren’t familiar with the show. As with pretty much every other Showtime show, Dexter takes advantage of the fact that they are allowed to show much more than other TV stations. Dexter contains violence, adult themes, nudity and a bunch of swearing and none of it is appropriate for children in my opinion. If you are under 17 or 18 you shouldn’t be watching Dexter.

With that warning out of the way I will finish up the review by looking at the special features. I wasn’t really impressed with them. If you are interested in other Showtime shows it is nice that there are episodes from Brotherhood, The Tudors, and Californication in this DVD set. These episodes give you a brief look at Showtime’s other shows but if you aren’t interested in them or have already watched them these special features are totally pointless. Other than the episodes there is pretty much two interviews with Michael C. Hall (Dexter). Your enjoyment of these pretty much lie totally on whether you like interviews and how much you like the show. If you think favorably of both you will probably like them but you probably won’t if one or both aren’t favorable. I personally didn’t think the special features were that good and they definitely would not be a reason to purchase this DVD set.

So the second season of Dexter was disappointing but it was still very good. I thought the first season was better though since I didn’t agree with all the changes made in the second season. I personally would recommend that people pick up the second season of Dexter if they have watched the first season and they liked it. Since Dexter is a very serialized show it would be a good to watch the first season first. If you didn’t like the first season you won’t like the second season so I would only recommend that people who liked the first season pick up the second season. Overall I really enjoyed the second season of Dexter and it makes me regret not having Showtime since I won’t be able to see season three until that is released on DVD next year.

My Rating:

Didn’t like the First Season: