The Wire

Dexter Season 4: Sneak Preview Non-Spoiler Review: Fabulous!

Sun, Sep 13

Well, my wife and I saw the first four episodes of the new season of Dexter last night - season 4 - courtesy of Showtime's advance screener copy, and I'm bursting to tell how superb indeed this new season is, on its way to being perhaps the best season of Dexter yet (high praise indeed, because the first three seasons were outstanding), but I don't want to spoil any of this for you, so here instead are some non-specific highlights -

1. Dexter as a new father is sleep deprived. Watch for all kinds of consequences from that. He's now essentially juggling three jobs - blood specialist for the police, serial killer, and dad.

2. Super-agent serial-killer hunter Frank Lundy is back. Debra has feelings for him, even though she's in a relationship with Anton, and Lundy has feelings for Debra. Watch for some real surprises here...

3. John Lithgow has joined the show as arch-villain. He's a soft-spoken, brutal serial killer, with almost nothing in common with Dex.

4. Romantic developments and surprises abound for several of the other major police characters. I'm especially glad to see one of them.

Dexter has become one of the titans of great contemporary television - right up there with Lost, The Sopranos, and The Wire. But unlike any of those other superb shows, Dexter features an utterly improbable yet thoroughly convincing chararacter - Dexter - whose stories are presented with airtight, exacting, thrilling precision.

See also reviews of Season 3: Season's Happy Endings? ... Double Surprise ... Psychotic Law vs. Sociopath Science ... The Bright, Elusive Butterfly of Dexter ... The True Nature of Miguel ... Si Se Puede on Dexter ... and Dexter 3: Sneak Preview Review

Reviews of Season 2: Dexter's Back: A Preview and Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out of This? and The Plot Gets Tighter and Sharper and Dex, Doakes, and Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and All's ... Well

See also about Season 1: First Place to Dexterlisten to Light On Light Through podcast also iTunes Paul Levinson's books