Heeeeee’s back! And there will be blood. After an eight-year absence, everybody’s favorite avenging serial killer, “Dexter,” will return to Showtime on Sunday.
But make no mistake, this is NOT the ninth season of “Dexter,” says the showrunner and executive producer Clyde Phillips. “This is a whole new embodiment of the show, a whole new imaging of the show,” he says of “Dexter: New Blood.”
“And I keep using the word ‘new’ because it's NEW blood. Obviously, blood has a lot to do with the show. It is, after all, 'Dexter' ... It is the fact that almost a decade has passed since the finale, and we want to acknowledge them.”
For those who don’t remember, Dexter was a Robin Hood killer, choosing only victims that deserved to die but living a seemingly normal life in sunny Miami as a blood-splatter forensic expert. His friends and police officer sister, Debra, at first had no inkling about his macabre secret life.
When HBO’s popular, “The Sopranos,” ended with Tony Soprano and his family seated in a restaurant, suddenly engulfed by a blank screen, audiences were frustrated and confused about what happened to poor ol’ Tony. The same goes for the finale of “Dexter.”
“I think the way the series proper ended has a great deal to do with why we're revisiting the show and the character,” confesses Michael C. Hall, who plays the devious Dexter.
“I think a lot of what was mystifying or dissatisfying to people is a lot of what creates the appetite that we're hopefully satisfying now. The show did not end in a way that was definitive for people or gave anybody a sense of closure,” he says.
“We didn't hear from Dexter. He didn't say anything to us when the show ended. And I think it left audiences — if nothing else — a sense of suspended animation. I think a big part of our motivation was to definitively answer the question: ‘What happened to this guy?’”
One thing that happened to this guy is that he’s moved to the bucolic burgh, Iron Lake, New York, says Phillips, who navigated the first series.
“Putting Dexter in the small fictional town of Iron Lake, New York, population 2,760 means that there is so much less temptation for him to go out and do what he does,” says Phillips.
“And it's one of the runners through the show. Of course, this is Dexter, and people are going to die, but it's a new Dexter. And he will find himself struggling with the urge, struggling with his dark passenger, struggling with the fact that he was born in blood, and finally gives in to that struggle,” Phillips says.
“But the whole point is to put him in this tiny town so that everybody he passes is a potential victim. He's really got to do the work to find who deserves for him to take a stab at it, as we would say.”
Phillips and Hall discussed possibly resurrecting Dexter in the interim. “Over the years, Michael and I have chatted. Occasionally he would be interviewed somewhere, and somebody would ask about ‘Dexter’ coming back, and he wouldn't deny it. And then I would see it, and then I would call him, and we would talk about a couple of things.
“But the timing was never right for Michael. And it had to be — it had to be right for Michael — Michael's psyche, Mike's character, Michael as an actor, as a man.”
Hall says he kept imagining how Dexter had ended up. “There were all kinds of things that would float through my mind, some of which I'd follow, some of which I wouldn't. I think my mother wanted him to be in a monastery. She just wanted to watch him meditate for 10 hours. That didn't happen. I mean, honestly, I think from the day the show ended until we started, and perhaps even finished principal photography on this revisitation, it's been percolating.
“It's been something that's been a conscious, maybe sometimes unconscious preoccupation ... There's been a sense of it being unfinished business,” says Hall.
Stepping back into Dexter’s soggy shoes was not so easy, either. “It was somewhat daunting, the idea that this person who you said goodbye to had been in some parallel realm; been living a life for all these years, and they were going to turn the camera back on, and you needed to embody him once they did. It was a little daunting and scary. And I didn't know how it would feel,” he says.
“We shot like 119 days, 52 locations. I mean, once we started, we were off and running, and there really wasn't that much time to check in and sort of assess how it felt, because there was so much to be done. But he was still there. I spent a great deal of time with and as him and felt there were things that are maybe sort of idiosyncratic to the way he behaves, the way he talks, the way he moves,” muses Hall.
“Obviously, he looks a lot like me, but he is a fictional character ... And it was kind of eerie to have that experience. Like, ‘Oh, there he is. I guess I'll just get out of the way and let him be.’ It was scary, but once we started, he was there to be found.”
Mel Gibson welcomes the unknown
A gray-bearded Mel Gibson portrays an eccentric therapist in the new action chiller, “Dangerous” opening Friday in theaters and on demand. Scott Eastwood (yep, Clint’s son) stars along with Tyrese Gibson and Famke Janssen, who plays an intrepid FBI agent.
It’s been a long journey for Mel Gibson since he began acting in his adopted Australia. “I think every single day if you're doing the proper maintenance on yourself and your relationship and everything, you are changing something about yourself slowly,” he says.
“It's comforting to stay in a cycle, and you have to be willing to be uncomfortable for a while and step away from the familiar and go into the unknown.
“Now fear of the unknown is what keeps most of us in check, puts a break on our brain. But if you do it a couple of times, even though it’s scary, you find, well, what was I scared of? You're scared of nothing. So really you should never be scared,” he says.
“And I think the main thing for most of us is to live in the present. Because fear is living in the future, regret is living in the past.”
‘Star Trek’ reaches milestone
The History network is celebrating 55 years of the truly iconic TV series, “Star Trek,” with a 10-part docuseries on the show that started it all. “The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek” premieres Friday. The sci-fi series that gave birth to hundreds of permutations did not begin well. The original star of the show was fired. The entire cast was changed, except for a lone player. And the initial pilot failed to sell.
It took a year, but when “Star Trek” finally made it to television it began what would turn out to be a history-making run.
Shortly before he died, I talked with Leonard Nimoy, the fabled Mr. Spock, and William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk.
“We were in a crucible,” remembered Nimoy. “The work was extremely intense. They were long hours and very few days. The work was jammed into a tight, very short period of time. You get a script maybe a day or two before you're going to start shooting it.” (“Or sometimes you didn’t even get the script, you got pages,” added Shatner.) “There were artistic, passionate discourses. So, on the whole it was very much a creative atmosphere.”
That creative atmosphere only arrived after the first teleplay, written by the now venerated Gene Roddenberry, had been rejected. “The first pilot, a one-hour show I acted in, was written by Gene,” recalled Nimoy. “At first it was called ‘The Cage’ and later ‘The Menagerie’ ... In the first pilot Jeffrey Hunter was the captain of the ship. And it did NOT sell the series. Then a subsequent pilot was made about a year later in which Bill Shatner became the captain, and several other cast changes were made,” said Nimoy.
In fact, the only member of the original cast to survive was Nimoy. And his character as the stoic second-in-command, Spock, with the pointy ears and the laconic demeanor was difficult to describe on the pages of a script. “I remember what Gene told me when I met with him, though. He said, ‘The character is going to be a character with an internal conflict because he is half Vulcan, half human. He wants to live as a Vulcan. His human side is something he has to contend with constantly.’ And I was excited about that because I thought it would give the character an inner life, something to work with.”
Judge Judy presides over new court room
Judge Judy has transported her lacy collar and snap-dragon wit to IMDb TV and will hold court every weekday on the free Amazon streamer. Now called “Judy Justice,” the show stars the former judge of the Manhattan Family Court who will mete out justice the way she used to do on syndicated television.
The chance to dispense her own dogmatic philosophy, as well as mediate disputes proved irresistible when she was first approached about being on television.
"It's a much larger audience," she says. “Whatever message I spew: 'Take responsibility for your life. If you're a victim, it's your fault. Stop being a victim. Get a grip! You're the one who's supposed to make a direction to your life.' All those messages I tried in family court to instill in people — primarily women. [The TV show] sounded like something that would not only be fun, but worthwhile as well.''
Judge Judy (whose full name is Judy Sheindlin) is a prime example of the self-made woman. But in spite of examples like her, women still have difficulty competing, she thinks.
"Unfortunately women don't know how to negotiate. They'd rather be liked than respected. I don't care if you like me or not, but respect me,” she says. “I like being known as a tough negotiator, as a savvy, wise, tough business woman.
"Women have been afraid of those adjectives: 'Oh, she's so lovely.' 'It's lovely to work with her.' Show me the bottom line,'' she says, thrusting her chin forward, her eyes wide. "I don't care whether you like me or not. Pay me.''
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