I don’t give
extra credit in my reviews but if nothing else Original Sin would earn
at least an extra half a star for being, three episodes in, pretty close to
what I was hoping for when I wrote my article as to why I was planning to watch
it. In an article I published prior to the season premiere I said that I was
hoping that the prequel could be something very close to Bates Motel meets
Better Call Saul. I wanted to know how he put up the mask that fooled
everyone at Miami Metro even more than how he became a serial killer, that I was
far more curious about the younger versions of the detectives who would become
part of Dexter’s work family and the backstories of his adopted family, particularly
to see Harry beyond being a ghost and the voice in Dexter’s head and how the
two of them related to Deb.
And the opening
credits for Original Sin make it clear in a sense that’s what we’re
going to get. Yes the opening has the same music and Easter eggs to every
aspect of the original opening but the difference its taking place in the
Morgan household and a young Deb and Harry are doing variations on the same
things Michael C. Hall did. This isn’t just a nod and wink to fans: it
indicates that this show is going to be about Dexter’s family as much as it the
teenage Dexter.
The series shows a different world from the one we got
from Michael C. Hall’s version. Unlike our past perception where we assumed
Harry trained Dexter to follow a code and become the killer he was, this version
shows a Harry who clearly doesn’t want Dexter to be who he will end up being.
Dexter (Patrick Gibson here) is attending pre-med clearly at the desire of his
father (Christian Slater here) who thinks that working on the dead will help
him channel his urges. Teenage Dexter knows better by now but Harry is clearly
fighting it.
We saw Dexter’s first kill in the original series when
Harry ended up in the hospital and Dexter found out that Nurse Mary was actually
killing him. She was his first kill and in Season 1 we assumed Harry had
approved it. Now we see it from a different perspective and it actually makes
it clear that Dexter may have been trying to earn his father’s tacit approval in
a way that could save his father’s life and satisfy his urges.
Original Sin also
did what the best prequels do and fill in gaps the original left out. This
version is far more sympathetic to the teenage Deb (Mollie Brown is superb). We
see from the start that Harry’s almost single-minded focus on Dexter has led
him to ignore Deb entirely. She’s an angry teenage girl trying everything in
her power to earn her father’s attention and affection and as we see over and
over, he clearly can’t connect with her. When her father suffers his heart attack
Deb is clearly affected by it and does everything in her power to make her
father have a healthy diet to keep him alive and Harry is a bad patient. In the
second episode he tries awkwardly to reach out to her anger and Deb, completely
justifiably, argues that he spends all his time with her brother. She feels
isolated, more so since her mother died. Watching the show you see that Harry believes
security equals love but that Deb clearly doesn’t feel that way.
And this series gives us something the original show
couldn’t – insight into Harry Morgan. We learn that there was a child before Dexter
and Deb in the Morgan household – and that the toddler drowning in the swimming
pool while Harry was distracted. During this same period Harry began to work on
bringing down a Colombian Cartel which brought him into contact with Laura
Moser, whose arrest and being turned into an informant we see for the first
time. Critically he comes home to tell his wife this, only to learn she can’t
have children. Not long after that we see him meeting the young Brian and
Dexter for the first time. It’s worth noting Brian looks at Harry suspiciously
the first time he sees him; perhaps he knows what a threat Harry is.
The show is fun in many ways in parts of Dexter’s backstory:
it shows a teenager who just isn’t that good in the first kills he makes and
who doesn’t quite have the ability to be a good actor. There’s also a possibility
that much of Dexter’s early awkwardness was written off as being an awkward
teenager, at least at first. Dexter ends up getting an internship at Miami
Metro when he goes to a career fair and meets the young Vince Masuka. Vince is
the one character who doesn’t seem to have the same depth as any of the other
ones we meet in the prequel, though it’s worth noting it actually seems more
palatable in the teenage version of. A lot of us are sexual obsessives at this
age; it’s just not clear that Vince grew out of who he was. (But to be fair,
neither did Dexter.)
What is clear is that Dexter was a prodigy when it
came to recognizing spatter patterns when he was young and that registers first
with Vince and then Tanya, the head of forensics. Sarah Michelle Gellar is only
a guest star as Tanya and doesn’t have as much presence as the other co-stars.
But as always Gellar makes her scenes count, particularly prior to their meeting,
we know that Tanya is as good at her job as Dexter will be. This is the 1990s
and we are in a male-dominated field but it’s clear from an opening crime scene
when Miami Metro is dealing with a home invasion series of murders that Tanya
is treated with a respect equal to the detectives.
We also get a clear sense of something I was hoping
for: Harry on the job. It’s clear from the start he has earned his place in
Miami Metro and is respected both as a cop and as a friend. Detective Batista
(James Martinez in this version) clearly looks up to him, we meet his partner
going back to the Moser bust (Reno Wilson) and Captain Stamper (Patrick Dempsey
is a world away from McDreamy here). There’s clear camaraderie and respect that
when Dexter walks into his father’s world for the first time he is astonished
by. “My father had many friends, and I didn’t,” the voice of Michael C. Hall
says.
There’s also signs that Harry may actually be a better
cop that some people there. In the third episode we meet Maria LaGuerta (Christina
Milan) for the first time. Stamper who has seemed like a stand-up guy before
goes out of his way to publicly shame Maria because she did the unforgivable
and openly criticized the racist patriarchy of the police force. Stamper
assigns her to cold case clearly as punishment and insists Harry keep an eye on
her. “She’s a climber,” he tells her in no uncertain terms.
LaGuerta is, in many ways, the most interesting member
of both series we meet here. The younger Maria is clearly angry at the system
of policing and she is clearly a victim of the sexism of the time. Harry tries
to bond with her over coffee while sending a warning signal and Maria tells him
outright that it’s very clear the victims who matter in this squad and who
doesn’t. He tells her when she goes on a witness hunt that they told his
partner and her they didn’t see anything. But at the end of the episode
LaGuerta, clearly by the advantage of her race and gender, has managed to get a
witness to give them a lead. Harry admits he’s wrong for the first time.
This is actually something I’d like to see the show
pursue: how did the characters we see here become who they are in the original
series? LaGuerta’s the most interesting version because by the time we meet her,
she’s purely a political animal and has become far more interested in results
and the chain of command then getting cases solved. And it’s worth noting that
Deb is equally interesting here because in a sense she’s like the character we
see in the original series: she just wants to be loved and she knows that her
family is keeping secrets from her. The show also makes it clear that at this
point Dexter and Deb aren’t nearly as close as they would be as adults: on the
contrary Deb can’t stand her brother and Dexter can’t connect with her. But it’s
clear as the series progresses that this is something she desperately wants to
do – and in an odd way Dexter wants to help.
I haven’t talked much about the actual caliber of the
acting and writing of Original Sin itself so let me just say right now
that the entire cast is superb. With the exception of Brown all of the younger versions
of the original characters act and gesture like the ones we already know but
there are subtleties that the original missed. Patrick Gibson is clearly more
open in a way that Michael C. Hall isn’t and more awkward then the original.
Cristina Milan wears the heels and earrings of Lauren Velez but there’s more of
a sign the confidence she carries is more of a front. James Martinez has the
fedora and goatee of Angel as well as the connection to the Cubano community
but he’s also clearly still wet behind the ears. (He’s also clearly not married
yet; the first time he meets with LaGuerta he tries to chat her up.) And
Christian Slater comes off by far the best because his Harry is finally allowed
to be three-dimensional, someone who was carrying the burden of his family long
before he even met Laura. The show implies even more than the original did that
much of Harry’s bad habits can be blamed on having to carry the weight of
Dexter on him, and there’s a strong implication that even if he hadn’t taken
action into his own hands, the drinking and smoking he had to deal with as a
result of the guilt might have carried him anyway.
The show also gives hints at characters that I hoped
would show up in some form, including in the second episode Dexter’s first
meeting with a younger Camilla in the records department. Interestingly the
major angels of Dexter’s nature in Original Sin are also all women. Here
we see Camilla, showing Dexter that the best way to bond with your colleagues is
not with a vegetable plate but with doughnuts. Here is Tanya, giving Dexter a
hazing ritual but also being willing to listen to him when he comes up with
theories about a murder that turns out to be accurate. And here we clearly see
his first real efforts to be a good brother to Deb even though, in keeping with
the original series, we know up front theirs blood and deception involved.
And while we know he can’t get caught in this version
of events the show makes it very clear that Dexter is at best an amateur when
it comes to feeding his hunger. The first time, he takes a trophy from Nurse
Mary that ends up on the ears of one of Deb’s friends. The second time, he
manages to get rid of everything but a severed leg pops up to the surface of
the swamps where he’s disposed the body. We know, given the way the show works,
that someone is going to come close to who Dexter is and may very well end up
paying the price. We know who it can’t be but there are a lot of possibilities.
Original Sin does
much to go beyond the idea of a serial killer origin story and then some. I suspect
its only a one time thing (there seem to be plans for a Resurrection in
the summer) but I can’t help but think I’d rather spend as much time as
possible in the world of Original Sin. I’m not interesting in Dexter’s
future as we already know where it leads. One of the teasers says that ‘It
Takes a Village to Raise a Killer.” I’m interested in the killer to be sure,
but a part of me wouldn’t mind spending as much time in the village as
possible.
My score: 4.5 stars.
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