S01.E01: And in the beginning...

[AnimeMania]

Young Dexter Morgan struggles to keep his urges in check. 

Premiere Date: December 13, 2024  Paramount+

[CarpeFelis]

They did a great job casting younger versions of Dexter, Deb, Angel, and Masuka.  Though young Dexter doesn’t seem to have that feline way of moving that IMO is part of the appeal of Michael C. Hall’s Dexter. (Let’s face it, if someone lacking Hall’s charisma had been cast as Dexter, the original series probably would have bombed.)

But… nothing against Christian Slater, happy to see him, but why the heck didn’t they find a Harry who resembles James Remar? The lack of resemblance pulls me right out of the episode.

And another question:

Spoiler

I could swear I recall someone in the original series making a comment wondering why Dexter works in forensics when he was at the top of his class in med school. So is this show doing a retcon where he skipped med school? Or is he going to go when this internship is over and return to Miami Metro later?

And the pre-med thing. It annoys me that SO MANY SHOWS do this: some college student knows almost as much as an actual doctor or knows how to do procedures that med students don’t learn until at least their third year if not later, and says it’s because they’re pre-med. This is ridiculous! Pre-med is college, not med school. I was pre-med in college and I sure as hell never performed an  autopsy like Dexter did (in fact, from that scene I assumed he was about to graduate from med school, not college). Closest I ever got to that was having to clamp a flowmeter around a dog’s carotid artery in a senior year biomedical engineering lab. And we students were not responsible for opening or closing.

[Snazzy Daisy]

It’s not an enticing premiere. Nothing revelatory about Dexter's lore, so it feels uninspired.

Patrick Gibson lacks charisma that Michael C Hall brought to OG Dexter. And I still don’t like Debra Morgan regardless of who the actresses are.

It’s kind of sentimental that Dexter’s first kill is about saving his dad while satisfying his urges. But this story is rushed and unsatisfying. The writers make Nurse Mary a cartoonish character. Unfortunately, Dexter’s first kill won’t be a memorable one.

Dexter takes Nurse Mary’s earrings as his trophy.

Spoiler

I wonder at what point and why he changes to blood slides later on. 

The Miami Metro’s story feels shoehorned especially with a case that’s quickly solved.

Will Tanya Martin be the one who can see right through Dexter’s mask of normality? She is his mentor and will be working closely with him. She’s the Forensics boss with eyes for details. 🤔   
 

[Chaos Theory]

This  was never going to be to the level of Dexter at its prime.   Very few prequels are.  The ones that do manage to be good don't use the lead characters (like Better Call Saul) or do a shit load of retconning (Like Young Sheldon).  It looks like Original sin is going with the retconning approach.   That being said I like most of the characters.  I am enjoying Sarah Michelle Geller and keep thinking that  Buffy could so take Dexter in a fight.    I do like that the original idea was to send Dexter to med school in the hopes that cutting into bodies would be enough to satisfy is dark passenger but he chose to go into law enforcement and no one though much of it because Harry was such a well liked cop.

[Valny]

On 12/13/2024 at 5:23 PM, Snazzy Daisy said:

 The writers make Nurse Mary a cartoonish character. Unfortunately, Dexter’s first kill won’t be a memorable one.

 

  Reveal spoiler

I wonder at what point and why he changes to blood slides later on. 

 
 

Right.  and even though the nurse was doing unconscionable things to patients, for some reason she never felt that evil to me, and maybe I am not remembering that well,but I think  Dexter's victims in the original series were people we could really hate/despise for any of their horrific actions/murders. You wanted to see them get their comeuppance on his death table. I guess because the nurse's story just wasn't built up or given much screentime since they have limited story time to give,especially on a first ep.  

I will keep watching for sure. I am so glad we didn't have to see that horrible wig on the actor Dexter by end of the ep.

Angel and Musaka great younger matches.

[CarpeFelis]

18 hours ago, Valny said:

Right.  and even though the nurse was doing unconscionable things to patients, for some reason she never felt that evil to me, and maybe I am not remembering that well,but I think  Dexter's victims in the original series were people we could really hate/despise for any of their horrific actions/murders. You wanted to see them get their comeuppance on his death table. I guess because the nurse's story just wasn't built up or given much screentime since they have limited story time to give,especially on a first ep.

 Trying to kill Harry was plenty evil enough to me.

[Rushmoras]

I personally liked this episode one whole lot better than Dexter: New Blood, but, then again, it was probably due to the fact that they took their own spin on that Harry versus killer nurse story during the original series way back when. So, now, I'm kinda sceptical of how Dexter will be stalking those that escape the law. Maybe, Harry will help him? I don't know, but ep 1 was, yah, for me, way better than the majority of New Blood.

[ShadowHunter]

3 hours ago, Rushmoras said:

I personally liked this episode one whole lot better than Dexter: New Blood, but, then again, it was probably due to the fact that they took their own spin on that Harry versus killer nurse story during the original series way back when. So, now, I'm kinda sceptical of how Dexter will be stalking those that escape the law. Maybe, Harry will help him? I don't know, but ep 1 was, yah, for me, way better than the majority of New Blood.

I agree this was better and more fun compared to New Blood. At least this did pick up right after New Blood because being cheated of a confrontation between Dexter and Batista was a major complaint from fans in the finale. I assume that will happen in Dexter New Blood or the end of this series. Great hearing those 90s songs again. I swear the music was better back in the day lol. 

I think they did a good job with casting the younger versions. I liked the way Dexter moved to protect Deb. The way he said "Which room" you could hear the anger in his voice. I didn't know Dexter watched Wrestlemania lol. 

Between this Thanksgiving and maybe Scream 7 I like that  Patrick Dempsey has settled in the Horror community. Been watching SMG since All My Children so always great seeing her. I wonder if she figure him out though.

 

[Elizzikra]

Quote

even though the nurse was doing unconscionable things to patients, for some reason she never felt that evil to me, and maybe I am not remembering that well,but I think  Dexter's victims in the original series were people we could really hate/despise for any of their horrific actions/murders. 

I think there might have been a little more overt evil to her that ended up being cut. She was an angel of death but unlike a lot of the "angel of death" nurses, she was judg-y, choosing to kill patients that she felt had made bad health decisions throughout their lives. In her estimation, they didn't deserve to live.

Pet peeve - Mary is his ER nurse. And his ICU nurse. Granted, given the shortage of inpatient hospital beds, more and more patients are "boarded" in the ER and spend days there. But that was not the norm in the 90's and should not be the norm now. Harry would have been admitted to a cardiac ICU and done his inpatient stay there (and ideally not discharged straight from the ICU but gone from ICU to step-down to home). In other words, he really shouldn't have been in Mary's care again after his stay in the ER.

Quote

They did a great job casting younger versions of Dexter, Deb, Angel, and Masuka.

Yes. But I also have to say that I think that the actors playing young Dexter and young Deb have managed to capture the ...  I don't know how to say it - vocal patterns? of the original characters. Not just Deb's cussing; I'll get to that in a minute. But the sort of choppy way that Deb talks and a sort of accent she has when she says "Dex" that is remniscent of Jennifer Carpenter's Deb. 

Speaking of Deb... how I miss Jennifer Carpenter's Deb. I didn't always like her, but I loved her. Her cussing was prolific and creative. She didn't just repeatedly say "fuck;" multiple cusses were strung together in new and inventive ways. When she was angry they just sort of exploded out of her. They made me laugh out loud more than once. I often wondered how much of that was the writers and how much they just put "string of cuss words" in the script and Jennifer Carpenter just had a gift for ad libbing that particular type of dialogue. In New Blood and now, Deb's penchant for filthy language is reduced to just "fuck" over and over again. It saddens me.

[Elizzikra]

Another question - when Dex is driving home from Alligator Alley, he says that Mary's earrings were his first trophy and that was a "huge mistake." Then he turns into his block, sees the cops and we believe for a moment that they are there for him. We then learn they are stocking the fridge.

So that was a little cliffhanger, right? We didn't learn later this episode why keeping the earrings was a "huge mistake?" I'm guessing we will learn that later and perhaps that mistake is the reason he started keeping the blood slides?

[Chicago Redshirt]

4 hours ago, Elizzikra said:

Another question - when Dex is driving home from Alligator Alley, he says that Mary's earrings were his first trophy and that was a "huge mistake." Then he turns into his block, sees the cops and we believe for a moment that they are there for him. We then learn they are stocking the fridge.

So that was a little cliffhanger, right? We didn't learn later this episode why keeping the earrings was a "huge mistake?" I'm guessing we will learn that later and perhaps that mistake is the reason he started keeping the blood slides?

It seems obvious that the earrings will be discovered by someone at some point this season and that person will become suspicious but somehow get sidetracked from realizing their true significance. It comes down to who will discover them. My money is on either Deb or Laguerta. 

It is all too easy to realize the earrings don't belong to Dexter -- he doesn't have a girlfriend, he doesn't have piercings as far as we know. So if/when someone were to come upon them, what's his explanation for having them? A potential gift for Deb, maybe?

Worse, they are something that could potentially be associated with Evil!Nurse by a layperson. They seemed relatively nondescript earrings at a glance to me, but maybe Evil!Nurse is known for wearing them, or they are in a picture/video from when she was last seen.

By contrast, Dexter's developed method of keeping blood-slide trophies is less obvious. You would need to test the slides to know that it was human blood, and do advanced testing to trace who the blood belonged to, if there are even comparators in the system to link the blood to his victims. There's a plausible cover story somewhere as to why a lab geek would have a bunch of slides with blood on them in his apartment. Indeed, he should have just hid the trophy slides in plain sight among innocuous slides rather than in his air conditioner, and nobody would be any the wiser.