So much of the
Television of the 21st Century is summed up as series that were
centered on the White Male Antihero trope. While descriptive it omits that by
an large you could just as easily add two words: Horrible Father.
Its not like
the writers did much to hide that fact with all of these series; I suspect it
may have been used as a contrast to the horrible things they did onscreen. Loving
husband and father, monstrous human being. But anyone who watched the show
knows that in part of the reason they were so horrible was because they were
horrible as father figures and husbands.
We started out
with Tony Soprano at one end; at the other was Logan Roy and in between we had
so many other monsters, from Vic Mackey to Walter White doing horrible things
ostensibly for their families (and losing them by the end of the shows); Don
Draper’s indifference to his wive (s) and children and Marty Byrde
demonstrating that he cared more about money then being a good husband and
father even though he was faithful to them.
And that’s
without counting how many dramas dealt with characters dealing with the fallout
from a bad father. As Michael C. Hall knows all too well, Nathaniel Fisher was
apparently such a neglectful father that it wasn’t until he was hit by a car
that seems to have started to regularly spend time with his children. Everyone
in Westeros was battling with issues with their fathers as much as they were
for the Iron Throne. And it seems that perhaps the biggest force that drove
everybody to the island in Lost had to as much with a horrible father as
it did a mystic figure in white who seemed to be guiding them there. (And not
to give anything away in this guide, but it turned out he was the victim
of family issues himself.)
It's not that
this era was entirely made of bad parents, of course. No matter how bad each
day Jack Bauer had was he still did love his daughter. Tim Taylor was one of
the best surrogate fathers because he was a great actual father. There were no
bad parents in the Braverman clan and that carried out for three generations.
And shows like Alias and Fringe were as much about a father
trying to make things right with a neglected child as they were saving the
world. But by and large bad fathers were the order of the day by the time Dexter
debuted in 2006 and in large part it may have been for that reason that
when the show was at its peak – the first four seasons – we would see Dexter
trying to find a way to be a good father,
first as a surrogate to Astor and Cody, and then to his own child with Rita.
Fans of Dexter
won’t argue the most important figure in his life was Harry Morgan (played
by James Remar in the original series; Christian Slater in Original Sin).
Dexter clearly spent the entire series based as much as Harry’s perception of
him as anything else. He was, after all, following Harry’s code and as we saw
in the first two seasons Harry was clearly recognized who he was and tried to
force his evils into a constructive purpose. That’s why, after Season 2, we saw
Harry as the face of Dexter’s moral code: even after he learned the truth about
the lies Harry told him, he couldn’t escape Harry’s vision of him.
And I think its
critical that Harry spent as much time chastising Dexter about what he couldn’t
be as he was guiding him to seek his next target. In Season 3 when Dexter was
dealing with Rita’s pregnancy and his friendship with Miguel Prado, Harry kept
warning him about the dangers of both. In Season 4 when Dexter was dealing with
being a husband and father, Harry repeatedly told him this was a good cover but
he shouldn’t give in to the deception. The fact that this was just Dexter
talking to himself doesn’t change the fact that it’s Harry saying these
words: Dexter clearly knows in his heart that for all Harry did for him he
never let him forget that he wasn’t normal.
Perhaps that’s
why during the first few seasons Dexter keeps seeking approval from father
figures he knows he should avoid. He spends as much time talking with Special
Agent Lundy (Keith Carradine) in Season 2 because even though the man is
charged to put the ‘Bay Harbor Butcher’ in prison, he admires the man’s way of
thinking and there’s a part of him that wants his respect. In Season 3 he forms
a relationship with Miguel Prado (Jimmy Smits) and while the two try to be friends the fact that Miguel is a bit
older than him does show him trying to find a way to bond with him that he and
his father never could. Looking at the growth of their relationship, so much of
it seems to be him trying to go on these father-son missions that Harry never
approved of even as he designed a code. And in what is the greatest foe he ever
faced Trinity (John Lithgow in an Emmy winning performance) the main reason he
doesn’t kill him when he has the chance is when he learns Arthur Mitchell is ‘a
husband…a father. He’s like me.” He wants to learn from Trinity because he
thinks he can be the spiritual father he never had – and only when he gets
invited to Thanksgiving he learns what a horrible father Arthur really is.
By that point
in Dexter we already know that Harry’s paternal skills are, at best,
deeply flawed. We know that by focusing all of his energy on his adopted son,
Deb has spent her entire life feeling neglected by him and has essentially
become a cop to win his approval. By the end of Season 1 we know that Dexter
was the victim of a massacre that led to the death of his birth mother Laura
Moser and that left him in blood for three days until Harry found him and took
Dexter in. He chose to ignore the older brother Brian and eventually he became
the Ice Truck Killer and has revealed those evils to him.
In Season 2, we
learn even more about the malfeasance of Harry. We learned he’d hidden any
record of Laura from Miami Metro and made sure there was no police record of
him, something that Camilla went out of her way to bury. Then we learned that
Laura Moser was actually one of Harry’s informants on a drug case and that by
keeping her off the books, he ended up getting her killed – and that was
because he was having an affair with her. Finally we learned that Harry had not
died of blocked arteries but had committed suicide when he saw the evidence of
who his son was for the first time – and couldn’t live with it. Dexter makes a
break with his father in the aftermath of Doakes’s being framed as the Bay
Harbor Butcher and from that point on, makes his own code.
None of that is
inclined to think very highly of Harry even before Original Sin begins
which covers much of the territory of the flashbacks of Season 1 when it
comes to Dexter’s first kills. What is different is that the series spends as
much time with Harry’s history as it does Dexter’s – and the picture it paints
of Harry makes the viewer truly wonder for the first time how much of the blood
that was spilled in Dexter is Harry’s fault – not merely for how he
raised Dexter, but because we are beginning to wonder if the lies Harry told
were not so much to protect himself.
Original Sin spends much of
its run showing us Harry’s backstory through flashbacks. And it makes Harry
look worse illustrating a man who is willing to manipulate Laura Moser for his
own purposes and increasingly chooses to ignore his own wife. Much of this is
no doubt out of the guilt he feels because of a story that we were unaware of
in the original series. The Morgans had a child and Harry was watching a
football game and when he did, his toddler son drowned in their pool.
It is implied
that Harry threw himself into his work to escape his guilt and as a result
seized upon an attempt to fight the cartels in Miami which led him to meet
Laura and her family. While this was going on Doris (basically unseen to this
point on the show) learned that it would take a miracle to have a child. As a
result Harry chose to get closer to Laura and her family, crossing lines no
detective should. This led him to meet both Dexter and Brian for the first time
and it’s clear in these scenes Dexter is fond of him.
But by this
point Harry is openly having an affair with Laura, even though he knows it’s
wrong. Simultaneously he learns that Doris is pregnant with Deb. When he learns
about this in episode 5 his reaction is not joy or surprise but a bizarre
guilt. Was he thinking of leaving his wife for Laura and Deb was a burden on
him made that impossible?
We eventually
see that in fact Doris knows about the affair he has been having though not the
full details. She will convince him to end it after Deb is born but he
continues to see Laura long after it and push her to continue working with
Estrada even though it is increasingly dangerous. Eventually he is spotted by
Estrada’s men and that leads to their exposure – and everything that happens
since
What is already
clear is that Harry spends much of the first season refusing to admit who
Dexter is and pushing violently back against his sons first kills. This already
pushes back hard on what Dexter saw in him in the original series and we’re
already seeing him spending much of the series trying very hard to make sure
Dexter never learns the truth about where he came from.
This leads to
one of the most telling scenes in Original Sin. At the end of Episode 5 Dexter
goes to the headstone of his mother and recants a painful memory. He says that
he once heard Doris talking about him around age 13, suggesting he get
psychological help. At the time he thought Dexter believed she was afraid of
him – now he realizes Doris did it because she saw something in him that Harry
clearly never did.
This throws
everything we know about Dexter into question. Throughout the original series
we saw the signs of the caring man he could be but believes is a mask. We also
see it in his scenes with Chief Stamper’s son when his parents come into fight
over their divorce. It’s one of the first times we see Dexter where he looks
completely natural, that’s he almost like a normal person. And combined with
the scenes of Dexter as a toddler in the flashbacks – where he clearly seems to
be mourning over dead insects and is kindly drawing a picture – we wonder
something we haven’t in nearly twenty years – did Dexter become who he was not
only because of what happened to him in the shipping container but because of
Harry?
We know that
Harry took Dexter in out of a sense of responsibility because of Laura’s
massacre and pointedly refused to take in Brian. We saw the consequences of
that play out in the original series and the implication at the time was that
Harry had been able to tame Dexter’s monster and make it serve a purpose. But
he also never told any details about Dexter’s childhood while he was growing up
and every time Dexter showed signs of darkness, he essentially tried to control
his urges by taking him on hunting trips.
We thought that
was signs of a caring father. In the context of Original Sin, it’s
starting to look like guilt. Harry felt a responsibility to Laura and took
Dexter in and has decided to keep Dexter safe. As a result he put all his
energy on Dexter as part of that responsibility and as a result Deb was
completely neglected. This was clear in the original series and its just as
clear in Original Sin, if not more so. Everything he has done, he says,
is to keep his kids safe.
But is it? Had
Harry been willing to have Dexter undergo counseling, Dexter could have gotten
the help he needed. It would have taken work and might have been difficult but
given what we know about Dexter as a grown up, not impossible. But if he had
done so Dexter might have learned what he did when he went to a therapist in
Season 1 (to kill him, of course) and that would have led to questions about
who he was and why.
Those questions
would have come back to Harry. And even if they hadn’t, eventually Doris might
have asked those questions herself. Either way the cost of Dexter being a
healthy functioning member of society might very well have cost Harry his
badge, his marriage and possibly his family.
And it’s clear
in a subplot that is going on during Original Sin that the consequences are
deeper than he thinks. Early in the season he and LaGuerta find a case that
seems the example of a young serial killer who is slowly moving finding his
sweet spot. Harry and LaGuerta end up going on a trip to Tampa and find that
their suspect is a child psychiatrist – who was murdered and his files were
stolen.
It doesn’t come
as much of a shock that one of the patients the doctor is seeing is Brian
Moser, Dexter’s brother who will one day become the Ice Truck Killer. The file
reveals some of what is canon and more – Brian not only knows about Harry’s
relationship to Laura but that the two were having an affair. It also makes it
clear that Harry is aware of this connection – and then hides the files from
LaGuerta. And by the end it’s clear Harry has far more blood on his hands. He
learns the truth about Brian Moser by the season finale when he sees one of the
most recent victims was the woman who separated Brian and Dexter – on Harry’s
orders. Then he encounters Brian on the top of a roof, who confronts him on
what he has done – and he lets him go. Those who will defend Harry will say
he’s not a killer except we saw he was more than willing to commit murder
before his son interrupted him on far less shaky ground. Now he knows what
Brian Moser is capable of and he lets him live. What happens in Season 1 is the
consequences of it. He also has another chance to tell Dexter what happened and
again he ignores it. The blood of everyone who dies at the hands of Brian and
everything that happens to Deb is on his hands as well.
Even after we
realize all of this makes him very directly responsible for so much about what
Deb’s future will be its clear that at the end of the day Harry’s idea of being
a good dad is buried in some old form. He’s never been a good father to Deb and
he essentially orders Dexter to follow up on Deb, essentially handing parental
duties of his birth daughter to his foster son. By this point it’s already
clear that Dexter has an awareness of darkness in others that Harry is
unwilling to see – and by that point, another massacre has taken place and many
more people have died. (I’ll have more on that in a separate article on the end
of the series.)
Christian
Slater’s Harry shows a man who is increasingly afraid about what his son is
becoming. And we see a man who doesn’t like that he’s created a monster. But is
it because he has no taste for the kind of blunt justice Dexter dashes out? In
Episode 5, after a procedural blunder on Harry’s part in court leads to a
serial killer going free, Harry gets drunk and starts stalking that same man,
clearly with the intention of killing him. Only Dexter’s intervention
(humorously) leads to Harry not executing the man in cold blood.
By this point
we don’t even know if Harry even meets the standard of a good cop. In the past
he’s had an affair with his informant which got her killed. In the present he’s
covering up for a serial killer to ostensibly protect his son but really to
protect himself. And he refuses to even acknowledge that a man he’s known for
thirty years is capable of doing horrible things – something that Dexter has
figured out on his own.
At the halfway
point of Original Sin, everything we thought we knew about Harry has
been thrown into sharp relief and it is horrifying what we see. We’ve already
known Harry wasn’t a perfect husband and he was a neglectful father to his
birth child and lied constantly to his adopted son about every part of who he
was. Harry has no stomach for the violence Dexter unleashed but we now know
that’s basically just the pot calling the kettle black. Now there’s an
excellent chance that even the one thing we all thought was the good he did – training Dexter to follow a code –
may have been done entirely to escape any responsibility for his own lies, and
solely to protect the image he has among his fellow detectives and his family –
including Dexter himself.
The first rule
of the code that Harry taught Dexter was: “Don’t get caught.” Original Sin implies
that applied to Harry himself as much as Dexter and that everything part of his
parenting was designed so that Harry avoided responsibility for his own
malfeasance and lies. That Dexter very likely became a monster as a result of
this shows the deeper tragedy of the character and makes it clear that Harry,
for all his guidance and support, was as bad a father as any we saw during the
era of Peak TV. That his behavior was that of omission rather than cruelty does
not make him any less a monster than Tony Soprano or Walter White – just
another kind.
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