My name is Dexter Morgan and I'm a serial killer.  Megan's allowing me to write her post this week because I make her uncomfortable.  She had mixed feelings about writing about me, because she finally saw my show and liked it. 

You see, Megan finally broke down, cheapskate that she is and got Showtime. So she's gotten to know me very well in anticipation of my CBS network debut.  While she's fascinated by me, and that other guy, Michael C. Hall, she's terribly embarrassed by her attraction to me.  She really shouldn't be.  We are what we are.

I'm a forensic blood spatter specialist for the Miami Police Department.  My job is to help catch killers.  But since I was a young boy, I've had those urges myself.  The only time I ever feel anything is when I kill.  I've developed good techniques for appearing normal to everyone around me, but make no mistake about it, I feel nothing.  Except of course when I can add another slide to my blood collection.

Even though I work in a police department the only cop that even remotely suspects what I do is Sgt. Doakes (Erik King).  I may have to do something about him one day, but for now, he adds some spice to my work.

If I could love anyone, I would love my sister, and I might even have strong feelings for my girlfriend Rita (Julie Benz).

Megan's like my sister Deb (Jennifer Carpenter), too emotionally involved in her work.  Deb's a cop, but she's stuck playing hookers in vice when she really wants to work homicide.

Like helping solve the Ice Truck Killer murders.  But it seems he found me first.  Throwing that dead hooker's head at me from the ice truck, and then leaving that replica of his crime scene in my own
refrigerator.  A stroke of genius.

But back to Megan, when Showtime advertises my DVD with the phrase "that sexy serial killer" she gets squeamish.  The whole dismembered women thing, all those lovely closeups of dismembered body parts.  They get to her.  We talked about it for quite a while. 

It's important because I'm no longer being relegated to the backwoods of pay cable.  I'm on a real network now.  I've joined the stable of CBS's slice 'em up crime shows:  the grisly "Criminal Minds" and the riveting "CSI."

Oh, how I would relish pitting my skills against my law enforcement counterpart, Gil Grissom one day.  Too bad that probably won't ever be possible.

The problem is, poor Megan wonders what does all this clinical talk of killers and killing mean to my audience?  I told her it means nothing.  Men and women have been presenting violence as entertainment for centuries.  This is simply the most modern expression of it.  She didn't believe me.  Not totally anyway.  There's a part of her that feels the telling of my stories and those like mine belong in the backwoods of pay cable.

Ha.  Good luck getting that genie back in the bottle.

I'm not a bad guy.   In fact I have very good qualities:  I'm a great bowler and I bring my co-workers doughnuts every morning. I simply have urges I can't control. 

My adopted father, Harry was a homicide detective and taught me to channel my urges more productively.  He taught me how to calm the chaos, and how not to get caught.  He also gave me certain rules to live by. I only kill killers, those who deserve punishment.

But that doesn't mean I can't admire their skill.

Oddly enough, there are parents out there who don't like me.  I don't understand why, since I'm especially nice to children.  Jill at Showtime Fan quoted that Tim Winter of the Parents Television Council:

“The biggest problem with the series is something that no amount of editing can get around: the series compels viewers to empathize with a serial killer, to root for him to prevail, to hope he doesn’t get discovered."

Conservative blowhard.  What does he know?  Patti of Patti's Blog however, loves me.  She "darkly dreams" about me:

"Even though he’s a man who lives on his own, his apartment is spic-and-span. Everyone who meets him instantly likes him. You should see him and his sister together; he really cares about his family."

Now, Patti gets me.  At "Ramblings Of A TV Whore," they love me as well, though their assessment of me is almost insultingly clinical:

"We’re forced to sympathize with our protagonist, a serial killer who
walks among us, pretending to be a regular guy. And as we get inside his head, we start to wonder. The many things Dexter does to pass as normal are things we ourselves do to pass as normal, posing the question of what society-defined “normal” truly means, whether it’s necessary, and how good or bad it is that we all have a little bit of Dexter in us.

Megan's thought about all these things, and yet, she still likes me.  She loves good mystery and at the heart of it, my work involves mystery.  Who will I kill next, why will they deserve it, how will I do it?  Will I ever get caught?

We all know the answer to that, don't we?

Megan Smith is a BlogHer Contributing Editor covering TV/YouTube, and though "Dexter" disturbs her on several levels, she's hooked.  Her other blogs are Megan's Minute and Video Runway.