I’ve recently fallen in love with Dexter, the TV show about a serial killer who kills serial killers. I’ve got through 3 seasons in about a week and a half, and just starting my fourth. I realized after watching a few episodes that the show fulfills all of the criteria I have for a good TV show:

• A like-able, relatable main character
• A “cat-and-mouse” type story arch
• Unpredictable twists and turns
• Darkly comedic
• A well-planned out storyline, with resolutions at the end of every season (*cough* LOST; Heroes)
• Poses interesting ethical delimmas and forces you to ask yourself , “Is this right? What would I do in this type of a situation?”

The last one is a fairly important one. I find that a show can’t just be entertaining, it has to be intellectually stimulating, and Dexter is one that is.

If you’re familiar with concepts in ethics, and specifically ‘utilitarianism’ or ‘consequentialism’ — the belief that in any given decision, the consequence is what matters most, and what should be measured — the first thing you’ll notice about Dexter is that he’s a consequentialist. He believes that it’s justified to take a life in order to prevent more innocent lives to be taken, and for justice to be served to the previous lives there were.

A famous consequentialist dilemma is the one about being stuck in a lifeboat which can only contain 7 passengers when there’s 20 of you. What would you do? Would you throw the weak people off to give the strong ones a chance to row back to the shore? Would you randomly throw off some people so that it’s not unfair to some, while risking some certainty that people left will be able to row back to shore? Or would you just let everyone drown together and no one survive?

A consequentialist would choose the first option, because it’s rational in that ‘most human lives have the chance of being saved’ who could then ‘lead on to affect the world in a positive way making the world, consequentially, better off.’ The fact that you’ll essentially have to murder for this to happen isn’t a factor because in the end, you’re saving some lives as opposed to saving none.

Coming back to the show, through the episodes I’ve kept on asking myself, “Am I a consequentialist?”. While I feel totally justified with Dexter’s decisions, and support him in every kill of his, I’m not sure I would choose to push the weak people out of the boat, because put simply, I don’t think I could. While I would save lives in the end, I’d like to think that everyone on the boat is on the same boat, so to speak, and no life is worth saving more than the other.

So if you’re in the mood for some philosophical pondering, check out Dexter. I’m about to start season 4 now, and if it is as good as the others, I’d have to give it to Dexter to being the most consistently awesome show on television.