Dexter Wants Recognition. I Want Him to Calm Down.

Dexter: Resurrection, Season 2 Episode 1, “Risky Business.” Spoilers ahead.

I was shouting at the TV during this episode. “Stop, Dexter. What are you doing?”

He has a serial killer to catch, a promise to Harrison to keep, and apparently enough confidence to believe he can fit both into his day. He's heading off after Rapunzel while his son's police-academy graduation approaches. Dexter, you can go to the ceremony. The killing can wait.

Of course, he doesn't. He's having a midlife crisis, and Harrison gets to spend his big day without his dad there.

I loved the first season of Resurrection. I gave it 10/10, partly because it seemed to understand how much fun this character could still be. Giving Dexter a new city full of killers was a good start. The season also ended with Dexter and Harrison having rebuilt their relationship. Now he has a relationship worth showing up for, and he's already finding reasons to be somewhere else.

Rapunzel, played by Eric Stonestreet, was a loose end from season one. I wanted a little more buildup before the payoff.

Season one moved quickly too, so this isn't some sudden change in how Resurrection tells its story. Still, after leaving Rapunzel out there, I expected his return to have a little more room to develop. Dexter finds him, gets close, and the confrontation arrives before I'd had enough of the hunt.

The killing itself certainly doesn't go the way Dexter expects. Al fights back, Dexter nearly gets strangled, and the chain hoist becomes his way out. He gets his man, but he comes far too close to being the one who doesn't leave that body shop. I can appreciate the danger of the scene and still feel that the whole Rapunzel business was wrapped up more simply than I'd hoped.

Then Dexter decides he wants people to know Rapunzel is dead.

That immediately set off my alarm bells. Leaving the body to be discovered means someone can recognise Al for what he was. It also gives Dexter a chance to have his work noticed. He wants a little appreciation for all these killers he's taken off the streets. You can almost hear him waiting for somebody to say thank you.

Harry's warning makes sense. Recognition is a dangerous thing for a serial killer to want. Dexter has spent years depending on people overlooking him, and now being overlooked seems to annoy him.

Meanwhile, Harrison has given him a perfectly ordinary opportunity to be appreciated. All Dexter has to do is turn up and watch his son graduate. He goes chasing Rapunzel instead, then wants the world to notice that he's done something useful. A plan going wrong in the kill room is one thing. He chose to leave before any of that happened.

And yet I enjoyed watching him make these decisions. That's the annoying part. I'm telling him to stop, but watching him take every sensible precaution would get boring pretty quickly. I suppose a serial killer having a midlife crisis was always going to make for entertaining television.

The opening is one thing I have no complaints about. I love it. I never skip it. The morning routine is back, with the familiar music and a New York version of those everyday actions that somehow feel threatening. I'll happily sit through that before getting back to worrying about his choices.

I'm curious how far this need for recognition will take him. He's already missed Harrison's graduation and nearly got himself killed chasing someone he thought he could handle. For now, I'm still shouting at the TV. Next episode, I'll be there through the entire intro, ready to do it again.