Since 2020, the only place where fans of Right handed, or people coming to the show for the first time, were able to watch the original 2006-13 series to watch on Paramount+. Netflix had the show for a long time before that, but in 2020, each new service was pulling the shows their parent companies licensed to the streaming giant for exclusives. We’re now in a new era where those parent companies are finding value in those licensing fees, so after three and a half years, Right handed is back on Netflix. Let’s take a look at its premiere in 2006, shall we?
RIGHT HANDED: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Initial shot: Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) drives down a street in South Beach in Miami. “Tonight is the night. And it’s going to happen again and again. It has to happen,” we hear Dexter say out loud.
The essence: What Dexter is doing is attending the appearance of what appears to be a well-known Miami politician. But Dexter knows who he really is and ambushes the man in his car, pressing a rope against his neck. He tells the man to drive wherever he tells him.
When they get there, Dexter shows the man the decomposing bodies of two of the children he killed. This is when Dexter does what he does; He drugs the killer and then ties him naked to a table with tight plastic wrap. When he wakes up, Dexter cuts his cheek and puts a drop of his blood on a slide, which he keeps in his apartment. Dexter then begins to cut up the killer while he is still conscious.
Yes, Dexter is a serial killer. But his victims are always murderers, most of the time fellow serial killers. We see flashbacks of him as a child, when he first felt these murderous impulses within him. His adoptive father, Harry (James Remar), knew from the beginning that Dexter had this in him, so the Miami cop tells teenager Dexter how to “channel” these impulses by killing only bad people and teaches him how to cover his footprints.
We hear Dexter’s thoughts, where he admits that he is a sociopath who puts on his charm to make people think he is “normal.” He’s a forensic specialist for the Miami Metropolitan Police, and his specialty is the study of blood spatter evidence (of course). The only person on the planet he could even think of loving is his adoptive sister Debra (Jennifer Carpenter), an MMPD patrol officer who often asks her opinion on the cases she works on. .
Deb calls Dexter to a secret motel where she works undercover as a prostitute; There she found a body in the drained pool. When Dexter gets there, he is ready to look for blood spatter, when his forensics teammates, Angel Batista (David Zayas) and Vince Masuka (CS Lee) tell him there is no blood. Just a body carefully cut into several pieces and then reassembled. Dexter is fascinated and impressed with what this assassin was able to accomplish.
That killer’s skill is on Dexter’s mind while he’s out on a date with his girlfriend, Rita Bennett (Julie Benz); They’ve been dating for six weeks and she’s perfect, because she was so traumatized by her abusive ex-husband that she doesn’t want to have sex. But he comes into his house and is great with his kids and seems like a great guy.
On a date with Rita, he sees police activity and sees Batista floating over another carefully severed body, this time headless. While she continues to figure out how this killer did it, he makes plans to take on another killer.
After Deb mentions something about “cellular crystallization”, Dexter has an epiphany: the killer is using a refrigerated truck. He tells her to propose this to her boss, Lt. María LaGuerta (Luna Lauren Vélez), but the lieutenant would probably prefer to hear it from Dexter, given the way she looks at him. However, a nighttime incident with an ice truck solidifies the theory with both Dexter and the MMPD.
What shows will it remind you of? The first episode of Right handed It’s very 2006, if there is such a thing. It certainly presents itself as the kind of show that emerged from the “golden age of cable dramas” that began with The sopranos in 1999 and would peak with mad Men and Breaking Bad in the following years Right handedThe debut.
Our opinion: Believe it or not, I’m a newbie at Right handed. When it premiered in 2006, I was just at the beginning of my career in entertainment journalism, had not yet enjoyed mainstream access to viewers, and was too cheap to pay for premium channels like Showtime. Plus, back then, there were still plenty of great shows on broadcast networks and basic cable to write about.
From what I have gathered over time, the first seasons of Right handed were the ones I probably missed the boat on, and the last few seasons, especially the series finale, showed that the series had stuck around a few years longer than it should have (somewhat Showtime was guilty of a lot in the 2010s).
Developed by James Manos, Jr. from the novel by Jeff Lindsay. Dexter dreaming darkly, the first episode and the first season were more the vision of Clyde Phillips, who came on board as showrunner. Seen through the lens of the time, it was certainly a groundbreaking story. Think about it: Dexter is a serial killer with a moral code, someone who only murders other killers. Had we seen a character like Dexter before 2006? Probably not. But this was the age of the antihero, and a depraved killer with a moral code was about as antihero as it gets.
But what really stood out was Hall’s performance. At that time, he was leaving six feet belowso his fans knew he could bring out Dexter’s acerbic, sociopathic side, but what he was able to do was make Dexter believable as the sociopathic killer that is his true personality and as the gregarious guy who is so good at masking his sociopathy that He is actually well-liked by his coworkers at the MMPD and has an absolutely devoted sister in Deb.
Are there stylistic touches in the show that scream “2006 prestige drama”? Absolutely. Camera angles and zooms that probably aren’t necessary now are used liberally throughout the first episode. The voiceover seems gimmicky eighteen years later, though it does provide insight into the mind of a guy who’s so good at hiding who he really is, and it’s part of the show that Hall took it very seriouslyplacing voiceovers after filming the episode, to match the tenor of a particular shot or scene.
But the idea that Dexter, trained by his father, is so good at covering his tracks makes the idea of him being a killer’s killer so intriguing. As the show progresses, he will marry Rita and at some point, the people closest to him will know about his “hobby.” But what’s even more intriguing is that he plays cat and mouse with a new killer every season, the first season being the Ice Truck Killer.
Knowing all this, it’s no surprise that the show has been so well received, especially during its first four seasons. You just wish the show didn’t end up running for eight seasons.
Sex and skin: Naked corpses in the first episode.
Parting Shot: The ice truck killer knows Dexter is after them and leaves a cut-up Barbie-type doll in Dexter’s freezer. He looks at himself in the mirror holding the doll’s hand and, instead of feeling violated, “I think it’s a friendly message, something like, ‘Hey, do you want to play?’ Yes. I really, really believe that.” Then Dexter looks in the direction of the camera.
Sleeping star: Erik King is Sgt. James Doakes, the only MMPD detective who believes something is wrong with Dexter. Dexter has a great line about this: “The question I have is why, in a building full of cops, all supposedly with great insight into the human soul, is Doakes the only one who gives me the creeps?”
Most pilot line: When the guy driving the ice truck throws the head of his latest victim in the direction of Dexter’s car, the head doesn’t look real. Of course, that could be because it was preserved bloodless in the ice truck.
Our call: TRANSMIT IT. Right handed It’s about a killer, which means there’s a lot of blood and body parts. But it’s also a story that hadn’t really been told on television at the time, and Michael C. Hall gives a dynamic performance as the killer with something resembling a conscience.
Joel Keller@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and technology, but make no mistake: he’s a couch potato. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.comFast Company and other places.