Original Sin’ Premiere Recap, Episode 1

Photo: Patrick Wymore/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME

The show that came to mind the most while I was watching Dexter: Original Sin — except of course Dexterthe original Showtime series that ran from 2006 to 2013 — was Muppet babies. Here in the new prequel are all the characters we know and love, except younger. There’s Dexter Morgan (Patrick Gibson) himself, a medical school graduate struggling to keep his Dark Passenger at bay. There’s his well-meaning (and still alive!) cop father, Harry (Christian Slater), and his obnoxious high school sister, Debra (Molly Brown). There are junior versions of our old friends in the Miami Metro Police Department, Angel Batista (James Martinez) and Vince Masuka (Alex Shimizu). We can never go back to 2006 – or to 1991 when Original sin takes place – but close your eyes and make believe, and you could be anywhere.

As shameless brand extensions go, this series feels mostly innocuous, and it’s off to a promising enough start that we can overlook how desperately Showtime is determined to squeeze the life out of this franchise. (Another spinoff, Dexter: Resurrectionpremieres next year.) In an era of infinite IP, Dexter: Original Sin is at least entertaining, and that’s more than can be said for countless other recent cashes. But before we get to the fun stuff, we need to reconstruct the 2022 final Dexter: New bloodwhere our favorite serial killer was shot and killed by his grown son, Harrison (Jack Alcott). Or was he? Original sin begins with grown-up Dexter (Michael C. Hall) somehow clinging to life while being treated for his wounds, which also allows for a useful frame narrative to justify the trip back to the ’90s. “It really is as they say,” Hall’s familiar narrative tells us. “Your life flashes before your eyes.”

Cut to the opening credits, a clever riff on the original Dexter credits, this time with Gibson as the title character and Harry and Deb included. When we touch on young Dex, he’s closing his medical career, and probably just in time: His classmates have already identified him as a callous freak. When he’s told to smile for his graduation picture, he imagines something that makes him happy: Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho. (Dexter will one day use Patrick Bateman as an alias.) Dexter’s narration in these scenes — it’s always Hall doing it, presumably from the future where he’s bleeding out — is just as silly as it was in the original series . It’s not clear how deliberately funny that’s meant to be, but when he calls a body “heartless like the Tin Man, and maybe … like me,” I think it’s safe to say there’s some deliberate camp going on here.

The Morgan home is probably as peaceful as it could be under the circumstances (overworked single dad, psychopath son). Harry does his best to stop Dexter from killing people, though Dex recognizes that cutting up carcasses and going on hunting trips doesn’t really cut it when it comes to suppressing his urges. We know much of this backstory from Dexter‘s original run — it was an overwhelmingly flashback-heavy show — but Gibson and Slater do a good job of keeping the father-son dynamic fresh, even with Gibson doing an eerily accurate Michael C. Hall impression much of the time . Thankfully, we’re spared any of the horrible flashback wigs that were a hallmark of the OG series. Debra is a more challenging character to connect with, which has been pretty consistent across this franchise. Brown does the best she can, but it’s a lot of cursing and whining in the series premiere. Her central conflict here is that she wants to be a normal teenager and is being held back by her quirky brother. Example: Harry will let her go to a college party if she brings Dexter.

Meanwhile, Harry has worries outside of his would-be serial killer at home – there is one active serial killer who invades homes and murders families. 1991’s Miami Metro brings us some new characters, including Harry’s partner and best friend, Bobby Watt (Reno Wilson), and no-nonsense police captain Aaron Spencer (Patrick Dempsey). Dempsey has proven adept at playing over-the-top in recent years, whether in Ridley Scott’s Ferrari or Eli Roth’s Thanksgivingand his Original sin chewing scenery is a blessing for this show. It helps that he gets lines like, “I’m not a proud mother, guys; I’m an outraged menopausal bitch.” (It’s the ’90s!) We also meet Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Tanya Martin, introduced by Masuka as “the chief lady of forensics.” Given the close relationship she’ll be forced into with Dexter, and the fact that SMG is listed as a “special guest star,” I fear she may not be long for this world.

Dexter and Debra go to the college party, where we meet Deb’s bestie, Sofia (Raquel Justice). Otherwise, it’s the expected collection of drunken and rowdy young adults, including a boy named Andy with obnoxious vibes who takes a special interest in Debra. Dexter is repulsed by the whole scene, and who can really blame him? You can kind of understand why Harry thought it would be good for him, but it’s hard to imagine how he could ever have fit in here, homicidal or not. It’s lucky that Dexter is there, though, because he comes to Deb’s rescue when Andy tries to sexually assault her in an upstairs bedroom. Dex beats the crap out of him, a useful outlet for his violent desires, but comes very close to taking things too far when he spots a knife nearby. Fortunately, Debra stops him, and after yelling at him for ruining the night, she admits that he saved her from a terrible situation.

On their next hunting trip, Dexter tells Harry how close he came to throwing it all away by killing Andy. Harry reiterates that once he’s done the deed, he won’t be able to undo it – but before he can finish that lesson, he has a sudden heart attack. Dexter picks up his father and carries him in his arms and you have to appreciate the way Original Sin leans towards melodrama. It is at this point that we switch from prequel to remake: the story of Harry’s hospitalization and Dexter’s first kill was dramatized in “Popping Cherry”, the third episode of Dexterso this is familiar terrain. Some lines of dialogue are lifted almost verbatim from the original series. But after watching “And in the Beginning …” and re-watching the now 18-year-old (!) “Popping Cherry”, I was impressed with the choices Original sin does in retelling the story, which also reveals much about the tone of the newest iteration of Dexter goes after.

At the hospital, Harry appears to be recovering from his heart attack until he begins to take a turn for the worse. No one can explain why his condition is not improving, but Dexter begins to pick up some clues, namely that Nurse Mary is clipping obituaries from the newspaper. He realizes pretty much immediately that she is also a serial killer, an angel of death who intentionally murders her patients – or relieves them of their pain, as she sees it. This plays out mostly as it did in the original series, although Dexter gets a little more agency here, doing his own investigation to find out what Mary is injecting Harry with (potassium nitrate) and explaining the situation to his father. Harry also spots the dark passenger in his nurse and gives Dexter the green light to stop her before she kills again.

We get a repeat of another pivotal scene from the original Dexterwhen Dex ambushes Nurse Mary in her home and straps her to his very first kill table. There is humor in both versions of the scene, but Original sin having a lot of fun with it. “You can never forget your first time,” Dexter recalls. “Mine was with an older woman.” The song “Nothin’ But a Good Time” begins to play as we cut between Dex’s clumsy attempts to do the deed and Debra’s volleyball game. The pounding of Mary’s heartbeat becomes stampeding feet for the high school crowd. As Deb scores, the announcer at the game yells “It’s Morgan for the kill!” and we stopped with Dexter stabbing the nurse. This is what I want from any version of Dexterpast or present – a serial killer who only kills other serial killers is one of the dumbest conceits imaginable, and the less seriously we take it, the better.

Naturally, Debra is very upset that Dexter is off his game, but her bad mood lifts soon enough when Harry comes home from the hospital. He challenges Dexter about whether there were any witnesses to the murder and how he disposed of Nurse Mary’s body (good old Alligator Alley). Harry seems satisfied with the answers, but when Dex leaves the room, he breaks down in tears. Fans of the original series will remember that the weight of his son’s deeds weighs heavily on Harry until he reaches a breaking point. For the time being, he will at least be able to keep a close eye on things. When Dexter accidentally discovers a link between two crime scene photos at a career fair, Masuka impresses enough to talk him up to the boss lady. Martin offers him a paid forensic internship – and even though Harry doesn’t approve of his son joining Miami Metro, Dexter is eager to start his new life.

• As one Dexter fan and victim (anyone who made it all the way to the lumberjack final should be eligible for compensation), I’m excited to be back in this world and recap the season here. For those who haven’t recently caught up on the original series, I’ll try to avoid too many “spoilers” when it comes to things we learned about Dexter’s early 90s from the original series.

• Speaking of which, there’s quite a bit of canon to Dexter’s first few kills. I loved revisiting Nurse Mary, but I’m personally in favor of more retooling if it keeps the show surprising.

• So far the music choices are fine. In addition to “Nothin’ But a Good Time” we get the 1990 classic “Ice Ice Baby”. That’s refreshing Original sin is treated as the period piece it is.

• Dexter hiding clippings of serial killers in dirty magazines is a fun detail. The future Bay Harbor Butcher name-checks Night Stalker and BTK before wondering if he’ll ever get his own nickname.

• It looks like we’ll be getting flashbacks within flashbacks, including to events Dexter wasn’t present for. Here we learn that Harry had a biological son named Harry Jr. who died by drowning in the pool while Harry was watching a football game.

• Dexter casually eating a full-sized Butterfinger in the hospital waiting room is more disturbing than anything else he does this episode.