I'm sorry to say that the second season of Dexter was a real disappointment. The only reason I'm feeling that way is that the first season was so wonderfully scripted and compact that by comparison the followup seemed rambling and unfocused. While you had the Ice Truck Killer theme tying Season 1 into a pretty bow, the second season just seemed to ramble drunkenly from topic to topic. It was really nice to see the interplay between Dexter and Sgt. Doakes develop and come to a head, but the crazy English tart seemed like a cop out, deus ex machina at the end. You can't help but get the feeling that the writers and producers must've spent years editing and polishing the first season of the show as they were pitching it to various media companies. They had it shined up to a T but when the show's success greenlit a second season, there just wasn't the same amount of time they could devote to it. With the fact that so many shows get canceled after a single season, it wouldn't have made much sense for them to spend a lot of time working out future screenplays and storyboards and it really shows.

That said, it's still a good show with some gems. It's just not the complete package which I had come to expect and was hoping for once again. I just started the third season and it seems that there's at least a good unifying theme/plot, though it's also not as captivating as the first. The writers seem to want to focus more on Dexter's internal conflict and self-development as we saw during his stint in narcotics anonymous. That's often hit or miss since it's sometimes hard to relate to Dexter given that a part of him is, in effect, a psycho nutjob. You're not exactly sure why he spends so much time angsting about certain things but not others.

On a sidenote, it's now been a week and a half since I've gotten back from gencon and I still haven't gotten around to starting the recaps. I know if I don't begin it soon, the chances are good I'll just let it slide altogether. I really should be resizing and uploading all those damn pictures rather than watching Dexter. If the third season doesn't pick up a bit, maybe I'll get bored enough to actually do some work.