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Well, it’s that time of year again. Halloween is in the air, people are in the mood for scary stories, and everyone’s favorite friendly serial killer is once again stalking the sinners amongst us on the streets of Long Beach…I mean Miami. Dexter is back again and, as usual, Harry’s code faces a new challenge.

Usual. There’s a word that has come to define Dexter. Thing about the show is that, as it ages, it becomes more and more clear that, for such a morally ambiguous theme, this is a series that plays it pretty safe. Though not quite as formulaic as say Dr. House’s weekly diagnoses, the structure of any given season of Dexter is pretty predictable and rote by this point in its lifespan.

I remember the halcyon days of Dexter Season Two, when the typical grumbling suffered by any freshman phenom program in its sophomore year began. “Oh, the show isn’t what it once was. Season One, now THAT’S when Dexter was something to behold.” Thing is, for my part, Season Two is about as brilliant as Dexter ever got.

It builds off of the first season, making all of Dexter’s past circle around to haunt him as he struggles to keep his co-workers from discovering that he himself is the serial killer of the season. This is what I like, a show that remembers its own history, making the main players experience the consequences of their actions.

Since then, however, Dexter has settled into a seasonal routine. Changes happen, of course, most notably Dexter’s ever-evolving marital/parental status, but none of the subsequent seasons fold back upon the prior quite like the second does, forcing us to look at the first with a new perspective. They’re pretty self-contained stories with one or two big changes that carry over to the next year. Much like House does weekly, Dexter has a seasonal reset, Rita’s (spoiler) death notwithstanding.

This unwillingness to shake up the status quo, frustrated me no more than at the end of last season. The previous year ended with Dexter’s wife Rita (again, spoiler - last warning) slaughtered in her bath tub. Tragic though it may be, from a story-telling standpoint, it’s just exhilarating. This is an incident that could shake the very foundation of the show. And then it doesn’t.

Dexter mopes for an episode, kills a jerk in a bathroom, seems to be under suspicion, then goes back to having standard Dexter adventures while battling the serial-killer-of-the-season. The bright spot of the season (no pun intended-I swear it) is Julia Stiles’ character Lumen. At first seeming to be a bit of a retread of Miguel Prado, a sidekick for Dexter, she soon develops probably the best chemistry with Michael C. Hall that pretty much any actor has throughout the entire run of the show. Again, there are exhilarating possibilities. And then there aren’t.

Lumen decides to go home at the end of the season. This choice deflates all of the potential the show builds over the course of the year. As a Robin to Dexter’s Batman, the narrative would open a whole new direction, putting Harry’s code in serious jeopardy. But a change of this magnitude would have tinkered with the very DNA of the show, a risk the producers weren’t willing to take. (To be fair, maybe Julia Stiles wasn’t willing to either, but I’ll ignore that very real possibility, since it doesn’t back up my argument)

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