What we don’t get, in the four competent but redundant episodes screened for critics, is the “new”: any hint of a fresh creative impulse in a series that had worn itself out years before it left the air.
Then again, in “New Blood,” as in so many of TV’s ubiquitous revivals, novelty is not really the point.
You might have thought that interest in a “Dexter” comeback would have been squelched by the , in death.
It even brings back Debra, now a taunting imaginary presence in Dexter’s mind.
The newish wrinkle is the sudden appearance of his son, Harrison , last seen as a tot heading off into exile in Argentina.
There’s also a string of missing young women in the area; a potential school shooting; and the appearance of that staple of brooding cable dramas, a Symbolic Mystical Deer.
The original “Dexter” began well into cable’s antihero period, a flourishing of difficult protagonists that, at best, gave us “The Sopranos” and “Breaking Bad,” series that forced their audiences to confront the moral implications of being invested in the villain.
For its first couple seasons, “Dexter” was a mischievously provocative narrative.
Instead, the show let you enjoy Dexter’s macabre handiwork and even cheer him on to evade capture, because his victims were evil, because without him someone would commit even worse crimes, because he was in the end a kind of victim.
The new series likewise seems to be mostly comfortable as a darkly comic romp, opening with a stalking sequence set to Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger” — get it? — and quickly setting up new cartoon antagonists who are basically begging to get themselves serial-killed.
In the current era of TV, “New Blood” is the latest revival indulging the idea that fans always deserve to get more of the things they liked, because they can — creative dead-ends and supposedly final endings be damned.
Not every revival or spinoff is a bad idea — but it needs to have an idea beyond “I want more.” “Better Call Saul” can stand with the original “Breaking Bad” because the prequel developed its own picaresque story and voice.
Good, bad or adequate, though, the collective effect of all these continuations and extensions is to rob finales of finality.
As “Jim Lindsay” says in “New Blood,” explaining why he changed his name: “Dexter had to die.” Amen, brother, and yet here we are.