Dexter (2008)

PLAY IT AS IT SLAYS Smits and Hall

You can feel the crackling creative current running through the new, third season 
 of Dexter. Having abandoned all plotlines from Jeff Lindsay's source novels and dispatched the tediously glowering Sergeant Doakes at the end of last season, the 
 producers and murderous Miami police blood-spatter reader Dexter (a twinkly-eyed Michael C. Hall) slither into fresh territory. The results are exhilarating: In the premiere, our serial killer kills accidentally for the first time, which throws him into a moral tizzy. Meanwhile, his sister Debra (the enthusiastically profane Jennifer Carpenter) has temporarily forsworn booze and is bent on a promotion, which only increases her intensity. Add the pregnancy of Dex's girlfriend (the glowing Julie Benz), and Jimmy Smits' guest run as a sly relative of the deceased, and things are set up nicely for a season 
of Dexter at loose ends, pushed to extremes he never thought he'd reach. B+