Waiting for Dexter

The Parents’ Television Council doesn’t want you to watch “Dexter” on CBS.

Now, I don’t know that I’m going to watch “Dexter” on CBS. I have it about halfway down my Netflix queue (I don’t have any premium cable channels — but that’s a story for another day), and I kept it there even after the announcement was made that it would start airing on CBS on Sunday, February 17.

Now, I can’t believe I’m admitting this, but I sort of agree with the PTC.

(Did I actually just say that?)

Not the part about how we need to protect children and families from the evil, evil, badness that is television. On that count, they irritate the crap out of me. It’s all fine and good to have opinions about what is and is not appropriate for the general viewing audience. (And you know what they say about opinions...) But trying to inflict your views on others and decide what they see? Particularly when those others are adults? Not cool at all. You want facism and religious fanaticism? There are countries you can move to. Last I heard the First Amendment was still in place here (for the moment, anyway, until we decide our security and safety are more important than our freedoms).

But that’s not even the insidious part about the PTC. The worst part is the idea that anyone should adopt the barometer of a group like this (or anyone else), rather than making personal decisions. Sure, you don’t have to go out on much of a limb to think that “Dexter,” for example, is not an appropriate show for children. However, the “children” that we are always trying to protect have (at least theoretically) parents that are in charge in their own homes. With authority over what their children do and don’t watch. And child locks on their cable or satellite service (child locks are easy to operate — I used to set ours to irritate my father when I was 17). And the responsibility to monitor what their own children are watching, without going to the extreme of pulling a show from broadcast and preventing others from watching it.

Yes, I know. Not all parents care enough to worry about what their children are watching. But maybe we should protect those kids from their neglectful parents, rather than from the television show itself?

The only thing I agree with the PTC about in this situation is that “Dexter” is probably too violent and dark for network television. It is, after all, about an avenging serial killer — so damaged in childhood that he carries the irresistible urge to kill, but killing only those whose crimes are worse than his, thanks to the guidance of his foster father, a police detective. I have recently read (and quite enjoyed) the books that this series is based on (Darkly Dreaming Dexter, Dearly Devoted Dexter, and Dexter in the Dark, by Jeff Lindsay — I highly recommend them all), and the storyline in the books is apparently too dark even for Showtime, and has already been heavily edited.

I have seen one episode — enough to know that if the show were to be edited even further for network broadcast (for language, violence, and gore), honestly, I’m not sure how you would even have enough left to fill an hour. And even if you managed to salvage the forty-five or so minutes needed (after commercials), the bleeping would be very, very distracting.

So, as much as I hate to admit it, I’m going along with the PTC on this one. Not for the reasons they suggest, but because I want to experience this story in its entirety, as it was intended.

I think I’ll leave the slashing to Dexter — oddly enough, I trust him more than I trust the CBS censors. Or any other censors, for that matter.