Animation
Good Times
Netflix takes a classic sitcom, Good Times, and turns it into a vulgar, violent, sexually-charged TV-MA show.
It’s been, oh, about ten years since Dexter Morgan, a serial killer from Miami, took off into the eye of a hurricane to fake his own death and avoid capture.
Now, Dexter, under the alias of “Jim Lindsay,” lives in upstate New York in a town called Iron Lake.
He’s given up his life of killing for something far more quaint: He keeps goats, chickens and pigs. He sells guns at the game shop and sharpens knives for the local butcher. He makes small talk with the church pastor. And he’s even dating a cop. (Guess he couldn’t stay away from his past entirely.)
Keeping his “Dark Passenger” (the name Dexter calls his overpowering desire to kill) under wraps has actually been pretty easy for Dex. The memory of his sister Debra (who died at the hands of Dexter’s would-be victim) still haunts him, reminding him why he stopped killing. And he’s still following the code his cop father taught him: only kill people after finding conclusive evidence that they are guilty of murder.
And since nobody living in the tiny town of Iron Lake is a raging psychopath (other than Dexter, that is), there’s been no opportunity for Dexter to let his urges take control.
But that all changes when he comes face to face with a spoiled rich kid—er, adult—responsible for killing five people in a boating accident several years ago.
Turns out, it wasn’t so much an accident as it was a drunken, malicious attempt to prove how manly and foolhardy he was. And maybe he could’ve slipped under Dex’s radar, but the guy is so obnoxious and rude that he practically begs Dexter to end him.
And now that Dexter—the real, lethal Dexter—is back, he’s not going to stop. There are several missing women in town, and Dexter’s been aching to hunt down their abductor.
But he’ll have to be even more careful than before.
For starters, his girlfriend, Angela, is the chief of police. And unlike Debra, she almost definitely would not be OK with learning about his past, code or not.
For seconds, Harrison, his son, has managed to track him down. Dexter needs to protect Harrison and guide him. He needs to make sure that Harrison doesn’t turn out like him. (Which is totally possible since Harrison was left sitting in a pool of his mother’s blood after she was murdered, not unlike Dexter himself.) But Dexter can’t do that if he gets caught.
He may still be a monster, but, as he puts it, he’s an “evolved monster.”
Dexter begins hacking into someone with the remark, “Sorry about the mess. I’m out of practice.”
Well, he might be, but the series certainly isn’t. One of the distinguishing trademarks of the original Dexter series was the grotesque amounts of blood. (Seriously, shows like this are probably single-handedly keeping the fake blood industry in business.)
Paired with that blood is lots of violence, murder and body dismemberment. But that isn’t Dexter: New Blood’s only casualty.
F-bombs and the like move as rapidly as Dexter’s bone saw. Nudity and sex are common among all sorts of couplings. And while Iron Lake may have a low murder-per-capita rate, there’s plenty of drug users frequenting the small town.
This miniseries will likely provide closer to fans of the original who wanted to know what happened after Dexter survived the hurricane. But really, it probably would’ve been better for everyone if Dex (and the show) had perished in the ocean.
After 10 years of keeping his nose clean, Dexter decides to murder a man responsible for the deaths of five people.
Dexter hits a man with the butt of a gun, knocking him unconscious. He ties the man down in a “clean room,” cuts his face with a broken piece of glass and then stabs him in the chest. He then dismembers the body and puts the pieces into plastic bags for disposal in the lake.
Dexter imagines seeing his dead sister Debra and has conversations with her. This pretend version of her reminds him that everyone he’s ever gotten close to has died because of him. She then lifts her shirt and pulls a bullet out of her own belly.
We hear that a man killed five people by purposely crashing his boat into another. Someone shoots a white deer and Dexter cuts the dying animal’s throat with a knife. Dexter imagines breaking a man’s nose with a gun. A butcher chops up animal carcasses.
Two people have sex. We see lots of skin, including the woman’s exposed rear end. (It’s also implied that she cheating on her boyfriend.) Dexter and Angela have sex as well, but their clothing covers them completely. Several people kiss. Dexter’s boss is a married, gay man.
People drink to excess. Some smoke marijuana, vape and use cocaine. People lie. We hear about bribery and coercion. We hear that someone stole pies from a church potluck. High school students protest climate change. A girl gets into trouble with her mom for throwing a party. A boy is devastated to learn his dad doesn’t want him. There are multiple uses of the f-word and s-word, as well as “a–,” “a–hole,” “d–n” and “d–k.”
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
Netflix takes a classic sitcom, Good Times, and turns it into a vulgar, violent, sexually-charged TV-MA show.
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