Dexter had 4 good seasons, 4 bad seasons. Then, in rapid succession: Sequel "Dexter's Kid" (bad), prequel "Young Dexter" (bad), then a sequel-sequel "Dexter and his Kid in New York City". And that one was awesome

Has any TV show ever done this? Was great, fell off hard, had numerous spin offs, and then one of the spin offs stuck?

• Dexter season 4 follows Dexter against his most compelling nemesis, the Trinity Killer. The rest of the series is not so good.

• "Dexter: New Blood" follows Dexter's son, who is traumatized enough to be come just like Dexter. Uh oh!

• "Dexter: Original Sin" follows Dexter in his early days in the police department, following a young version of all of the characters. It is so goofy. It's a decent return-to-form but, geeze, watching something living in the vast shadow of the cultural legacy of Young Sheldon makes me wish I lived in a better world.

• "Dexter: Resurrection" is the sequel to New Blood, with some scant references to Original Sin. It released just months after the finale of Original Sin, with almost zero promotion. This one is actually quite good, which I imagine must be how it would feel for a pig to finish up some gruel only to hear its slop feed fill again so soon after the last feeding, but this time with wagyu beef, or whatever a pig would find delectable. The narrative benefits immensely by subverting the typical pacing of the detective-versus-vigilante narrative.

Dexter espouses a vigilante-justice copaganda narrative rooted in masculinity so unexamined it rolls over to ludicrous hilarity. Unlike You , which uses an exaggerated lens to articulate a theory of how misogyny and violence intersects in the individual man, there's relatively little depth to the world of Dexter. The deepest social themes are carried in the contained narratives of individual episodes, with most of the weight being given to the question, "Is vigilante justice justified"? Which the show answers with "Maybe, but it's cool". Most of the characters occupy archetypes in a way that harken to the characters in Richard Scarry's series of books, but they're very enjoyable within those roles.

Anyways. Impressive glow up for an okay show