Character Appeal

By Martha Reed

I’m afraid this blog might end up being a short one because even though I started out with the best of intention and planned on spending a couple of hours on it, real life has interrupted my discipline – my evil cohort at work, Star Wars Guy, brought me a present on Monday: The Second Season DVD set of Dexter and I can’t wait to get to it.

I even stopped at Labriola’s Market on my way home to buy dinner so I wouldn’t have to waste any time cooking it. (Not to mention that their roasted eggplant stuffed with ricotta is to die for and their Chicken Romano ain’t bad, either).

I’ve already explained in a previous blog how I discovered Dexter years ago in print, and how I had to keep Dexter a guilty secret indulgence because how on earth do you confess to admiring a character who is a serial killer? Honestly, though, Dexter the Showtime Series is so much more than that oversimplification and the cast does wonderful work fleshing out the story. (Is that the correct verb?) Michael C. Hall deserves an Emmy for his portrayal of Dexter but my current favorite character is the seriously flawed detective Angel Batista played by David Zayas. There is something in his portrayal that is very, very close to real pathos plus I love Angel’s collection of hats.

Here’s a killer sample of the very human Angel:



But the question I want to post today is: have you ever read a story and then had a dream where that character or set of characters came to life in it? I can remember one dream I had where Tom Berenger was a vampire Lord but I believe that one was based more on a personal preference than on any actual character I had read about. What I’m looking for today is something more than wishful thinking: an example of a written character who came to independent life during the course of a dream.


I know there must be at least one Heathcliff out there and hopefully no one has stumbled into Hannibal Lecter. I look forward to reading your answers!

A Slice of Life - Charting Dexter

By Martha Reed

I’ve found the best way to watch TV is to turn off your television.

When you hear about a great cable series like Sex and the City or The Sopranos, hold off on it until the DVD comes out and then schedule an indulgent weekend when you can watch three or four hours of straight programming free from commercial interruption. I usually wait until the middle of February, when the gutters are full of slush and it’s cold and nasty outside, and then I brew up a pot of tea and settle into my favorite comfy chair. It’s the best. I tried this a couple of years ago when I hosted my own personal Lost weekend, and now, this weekend past, I curled up and dug into the Showtime series Dexter.

Let me tell you first off that when I read the first two Dexter books I knew right away a whole lot of people weren’t going to be happy with the Dexter character. It’s hard to justify finding entertainment value in a hero who is a serial killer, and honestly, no one ever really tried it before except maybe - just maybe - when Thom Harris invented Hannibal Lecter. Oh sure, BH (before Hannibal) we had examples of human monsters like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho or the thrill killers in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 film Rope, but this type of psychopathic character was more fascinating as a paragon of deviant behavior than as any example of sly humor.

I’m willing to argue that there’s a tipping point in Silence of the Lambs where readers are so skillfully brought to the realization that there is a crazy kind of logic behind Hannibal’s insanity that they found themselves sympathizing with a monster. I know it happened to me, and I’ll admit I caught myself smiling when Hannibal decided to invite the despicable Dr. Chilton to (be) dinner. That precise moment, for me, was the beginning of what I now see being more fully explored in Dexter.

Yes, Dexter Morgan is a monster. He’s cold, he’s calculating, and he’s emotionally clueless, but the distinction that makes Dexter funny is that he knows he’s missing something vitally important – an intimate attachment to another human being - and he wants it (or at least that’s what he professes). He’s a Pinnochio, a wooden boy trying to be real, and the humor is in watching Dexter try.

Why is Dexter so popular? Is it because in him we feel some human hope that he might still be redeemable? Or do we laugh with Dexter because we are all still trying to figure it out, we all still present our own protective masks to the world and that perhaps in Dexter we recognize a piece of our own lonesome selves?