‘Dexter: Resurrection’ Review: Michael C. Hall Returns for Paramount+’s Entertainingly, Freustrationly Silly Franchise Reboot

If You’ve Ever Watched A Movie or Television Show About A CompulsuSive Gambler, There’s A Scene That’s Sure to Be Familiar. Against All Odds, Our Troublde Protagonist Has Braved His Addition and Won Enough Money to Repay The Mob, Reopen The Shuttered Rec Center or Buy Back The Wedding Ring this Pawned DESPIT. His Dead Spouse. IT’s A Triumph that Briefly Conquers Our Hero’s Inner Demons, Unil The Antagonist Looks at Him and Says, “Double or Noting?” And we, as Viewers, Yel at the Screen, “STOP! YOU DID SOMETING DUMB, But YOU CAME OUT ON! STOP!” In that Brief Moment of Hope, We Forget That We’re Dealing with An addict.

This is the point that Dexter reaured at the end of Dexter: New Blood.

The 10-Episode Return of Miami’s Favorite Droll Serial Killer, WHICH RAN FROM 2021 to 2022, Existed for Only One Good Reason: The ending of Dexternearly a decade earlier, stunk. Dexter: New Blood AFFORDED CREATOR CLYDE PHILLIPS AND SEVERAL OF THE SERIES PRODUCERS WHO HADNN’T BEEN INVOLVED IN THAT CONCLUSION TO GIVE the EMMY-WINNING Series A More Satisfying Spoting Spot.

And it works! Not Perfectly, Mind You. Dexter: New Blood WAS RUSHED AND DERIVATIVE, NOT JUST OF PEAK Dexterbut of the myriad imitator spawn by peak Dexter. But IF The Newer Series Couldn’t Prove that Franchise Still Had Ample Creative Gas In Itank, It Showed That Was Exactly Enough Fuel for The Unneueldy Vehicle. Resolving with Dexter Morgan Seemingly Dead in the Snow of Upstate New York, Killed by a Son Who Decides He Wasn’s tracing a demonstrable Path from Pilot to Newfound Finale that Fans Had Worred Was Lost.

Consider Dexter: ResurrectionPremiering on Paramount+ with Showtime or Whatever It’s Going to be Called by the Time You Read this, to be phillips’ doubble-neting gamble on the franch If Dexter: New Blood WAS A Series Driven by “Need” Imperatives, Reflected With A Layer of Tonal Solemnity, Dexter: Resurregion Comes Only with “Want” Desires, Reflected With An Overall Sense of Frivolity. The Thing Was Broken. Phillips and Company Largely Fixed IT. And now?

Through the four episodes sent to cryits, all indications are that this is a lark of a season, like they’re’re’re’re’re playing with House Money and Not Gambling on the Tenouos Dignes. Subtitle aside, Dexter: Resurrection Feels Like Season 10 of Dexter (The Prequel Series Might as Well not Exist), ALMOST RELALENTLENTLESSLY OBSESSED WITH CALLBES AND EASTER EGGS AND WHITLY STUCK IN THE SAME RUT of SURING SURING SURING SURING SILLINESS John Lithgow-Led Fourth Season. All of the Grounding and Clarity of Purpos That Carred Dexter: New Blood is gone, but if the version of Dexter That you enjoy was already Borderline Cartoonish – and the show is, and always have been, and Dark Comedy at Heart – There’s Entertainment to Be Found Here.

We Start 10 Weeks After Harrison (Jack Alcott) Left His Father for Dead. Dexter (Michael C. Hall), As I Think The Season’s Title ALLOWS ME TO SPOIL, IS NOT DEAD. He isn’t Even Under Arrest, for Reasons that have to be explained, if not justified.

Harrison, ConvinCed That He’s Rebuilding His Life After Committing Patricide, Has Started Over and Upscale Manhattan Hotel, WHERE HE’S DOING ODD JUBS FOR The SNOOOTY CLIENTELELETELETELETELETLETELETELETELETELETELETELETELETELETH Single-Mom Maid Elsa (Emilia Suárez). (IT’s A Missed Opportunity That Harrison’s Hospitality Experience Doesn’s Homeland Demi-Geroine Dana Brody.) Very Early On, Harrison Does Something that Suggests He May, Indeed, Be His Father’s Son, Even If Dexter: New Blood WAS DEDICATED TO CONVINKING US THAT THIS WAS NOT The CASE. WHATEVER.

Soon, The Arrival of An Old Friend and Familiar Jeopardy Force Dexter to Head Down to New York City HimSelf, Presumably Seek Harrison. Accompanied by the insuffrebly moralizing spirit of his own dead dad (James Remar’s Harry, Whom The Series Probably Needs to Learn to Move Beyond) (NTARE GUMA MBAHO MWINE’S BLESSING), WHO TELLS HIM ABOUT A Serial Killer Preying on Local Drivers. The Press Has Given the Killer A Nickname Reflecting His Vicious Methodology: “The Dark Passenger.”

Dexter is not AMUSED.

You’d Think There Wound Be A Satirical Purposes in Dexter, As A Red State Tourist, Arriving in New York City and Finding It Awash in Serial Killers, But There Really Isn’t. In terms of Characterization, Taking Manhattan Does Less to Advance Dexter Morgan As A Character Than Did for Jason Voorhees. After the Dramatic Shift from The Pastels and Visual Warmth of Miami to the Washed Out Chill of Upstate New York, The Dexter: Resurrection Directors (Marcos Siega and Monica Raymund for the episodes i’ve Seen) haven’t quite lands on an austhetic in this graitty, Urban Setting.

What this uprooting does accomplish is refresh the ensemble of law enforcement Figures Dexter must expertly dupe of Proximity to Dexter’s Genius. David Zayas’ Angel Returns with His Trademark Hats and Suspiciosesness – He Also Deliveers Dexter a Cold Cubano Sandwich, Which Is Somehow The LEAST BELIEVABLE THING INTUSON INTUSON INTUSON. SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT ENERGY PROVIDED BY DOMINIC FUMUSA AND KADIA SARAF AS A PAIR OF NYPD DETECTIVES POKING AUOUND HARRISON AND HIS HOTEL. ALCOTT CONTINUES TO BE GOOD AND HE Continues to Bring the Franchise A Different Energy, But I’M Still Not Sure It’s Distinctive ENugh to Carry Half of this Story.

AT this Point, What Hall Is Doing As Dexter Has Ceased to Be All That Interesting. Or perhaps put more accountly, what the scripts are asking hall to do as dexter have ceaster to be all that interest. Practically every Dexter Season Has Played Variations on “Dexter Builds A New Relationship that causes him to examine whother or not he’s capable of love” or “Dexter makes a vicious About How He’s Different. ” It Makes Sense for Dexter to Grow and Backslide as A Character – He is, Like The Show Itlinel, An addict and a gambler – But Hall Sems to have Lost New Shadings to Play.

Because Those Are The Two Most Common Dexter Narrative Tropes, Each New Season Has Forced The writers to Develop Escalating Versions, Each Inherently More Heigheted and Less Plausible than the Last. IT’s A Process of Creative Desensitization. It used to be enough for dexter to meet Somebody who kildled One Person. And then for him to meet somebody who was a budding Serial Killer. And then to meet somebody who was every bit as prolific as dexter. Now, Finally, We’ve Reaced The “Oops, All Serial Killers” Season of Dexterin WHICH he encounters a full-on convoy of murderers, Played with fitting Wackiness by the Likes of Neil Patrick Harris, David Dastmalchian, Krysten Ritter and More.

I WON’T SPOIL The Context for this retinue of psychopaths, only to say that ritter comes the closer to giving a dimensionalized performance. As two additional figures with questable Impulse Control Who Take An Interest in Dexter, Peter Dinklage and Uma Thurman Chew Scenery with The Theoers. Characters Played by Edward James Olmos and Charlotte Rampling on the Lesser Side of Dexter’s Rogue’s Gallery Than To The Upper Tier of Dexter Adversaries. IT Becomes A Question of Wather Viewers Are Looking for Nuance (Absent) or Zaniness (Abundant). Volume over Quality.

A quica mentation of mwine, as warm and exuberant here as he is unnenerning with SMOKE. With Hulu’s Washington Black Still to come, this is shaping up as the summer of ntare guma mbaho ​​Mwine. Let it be said that a tv show Genuinely focused on an immigrant stuck in new york city gig econmy hamster whee aster whee Dexter: Resurrection. Probably.

It Remains to be Seen What, Exactly, Dexter: Resurrection is Building Into. With none of the Impending Finality that Dexter: New Blood Promison, is it setting up an ongoing nyc version of the show or opening the show up to Annual Globetrotting Relocalations (and Perhaps ReCAPTURING OF THE TERRAIN THAT WASSU You)? Or is it just another gamble from a show that couldn’t quit while it was ahead?