David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place. “Dexter:” Sanitized for your protection?
When “Dexter” migrates from premium cable to CBS on Sunday, you’ll still see Dexter (Michael C. Hall) menace his victims, killers who have slipped through the cracks of the justice system, their nude bodies bound to tables by Saran Wrap (discreet lighting obscuring their privates). You’ll still see the sadistically dismembered bodies of prostitutes, the work of a serial killer playing a cat-and-mouse game with Dex. Tonight’s episode concludes with a woman’s decapitated head bouncing off his car windshield.
So, what won’t you see? The opening title sequence, which won an Emmy – that’s been excised.
“Dexter’s” title sequence is up there with “The Sopranos,” “Six Feet Under” “nip/tuck” and “Mad Men” in beautifully and thoroughly evoking the show’s sensibility. As Rolfe Kent’s droll theme plays, incredibly tight close-ups follow Dexter through his morning routine: smashing a mosquito that alights upon his arm; cutting himself while scraping his razor across his rough whiskers; slicing and frying up a bright pink cut of ham; cracking open an egg, cooking it sunny side up, then slicing into the oozing yolk; grinding coffee beans; pulping an orange, its juice spraying; binding floss tightly around his fingers as he cleans his teeth. The images are taut miniatures of symbolic bloodletting; sadism, sunny side up. (Although the final shot of Dexter leaving his apartment, stylish stubble covering his face, belies the fact that he, uh, just shaved.)
The title sequence was probably lopped off to save time – episodes on Showtime ran longer than they can on CBS, where 15 minutes of the hour must be devoted to commercials. Otherwise, the trims and image manipulations aren’t too terribly obvious. The language has been more obviously altered, with stronger epithets getting watered down to mere “damns” and “hells;” the silliest bit of dialogue-tidying comes when Dexter’s nemesis Doakes (Erik King) warns him, “I’m watching you, mother-lover!” Isn’t loving one’s mother supposed to be a good thing?
“NCIS” and the “CSI’s” also revel in trucking in gory imagery, so what you see in “Dexter” is only maybe a smidgen more extreme. The difference comes in the show’s tone, and no amount of editing could change that: “Dexter” is nihilistic, if whimsically so, depicting an amoral, off-kilter world where a serial killer preying on the wicked qualifies as a just cause.
Will “Dexter” work on CBS? Hard to say, as these episodes were first seen on Showtime in 2006 and the DVD has been available since last August; one might presume that most people who’d be interested in this has already heard about and investigated it. (NBC will transport USA cable hits “Monk” and “Psycho” to its airwaves, but those are both more network-friendly series presenting more recent episodes.) If it doesn’t click, its twisted nature won’t necessarily be to blame.
- “Dexter” (season one): 10 p.m. Sunday, CBS Channel 2.