the fact Tiktok users will never admit that Harry groomed Dexter annoys me to no end.
But I’ve noticed they all have one of three main lines of thinking and I am going to take the time to unwrap and debunk these.
1.
“Harry saved thousands of people and only did it because he was scared of Dexter!” Wrong! Dexter saved thousands of people by doing the action of killing serial killers, Harry actually does much more harm than good even as a police officer. As a police officer, it’s revealed by Debra that he slept with most if not all of his informants in exchange for them not getting arrested or getting someone else out of jail, he’s a sleazy rapey coercive cop and also was the reason for Laura’s death which caused both Brian and Dexter’s mental instability. People say this because Dexter’s code is incorrectly named ‘Harry’s code’ because Harry was the one who described the code to him, but he certainly wasn’t the one who made it. Their main argument is debunked in season eight where it’s revealed Doctor Vogel is the one who made the code and Harry is just the one who groomed him into it. So if we’re following their line of logic, Vogel saved thousands and she deserves a fucking nobel peace prize. Along with the whole, ‘Harry was scared by Dexter’, scenario, it just couldn’t happen. If Harry was scared of Dexter, like he was of Brian, he would have given Dexter away the second he showed signs of violence the same way he did with Brian. Harry was grossed out by Dexter at most, he was only scared of Dexter once he was a fully functioning adult and he realised that he did a play a part in Dexter’s success as a serial killer.
2.
“Harry was disgusted by Dexter and only taught him the code out of desperation.” Half of this is true, the second half definitely is not the case. If Harry was ‘desperate enough’ to resort to the code, he wouldn’t have told Dexter to lie to his psychiatrists and would have gone through the proper channels and procedures to help children like Dexter even if they were shitty at the time. The code was about control, it was about training Dexter like a dog so he could show off his mentally stable family, get sympathy points for being ‘such a good dad’ to his adopted bereaved son and also work out a half baked solution for Dexter’s actual problems and urges. The code was not formed of desperation, it was formed out of an experiment of an under qualified neuropsychologist and a man who wants to have his cake and eat it too. If Harry was desperate, we would have seen him trying everything he could to help Dexter grow into a healthy social, emotional and overall life but he didn’t because conditioning Dexter would be less time consuming and straining for HIM. The code of Harry is about making Harry’s life easier, it was never to actually help Dexter.
3.
“Dexter would have grown up to be a serial killer anyway without Harry, and that’s why he neglected Debra too” Loud incorrect buzzer. Dexter showed no signs of becoming a serial killer at a young age other than killing animals, which many mentally stable people do, most of his ‘pyschopath symptoms’ just seem to be an indication of a high prey drive shown through the average human traits of aggression, tool use or persistence hunting. As much as people love dogs and cats and all other pet animals, unless the dog is actively helping them hunt, people with high prey drives will kill dogs, especially stray or especially active and annoying dogs. Dexter shows more signs of developing autism, ASPD and/or DID rather than pyschopathic traits in children, and there is also no excuse for how he raised Debra given he hardly parented Dexter either except for shouting at him, calling him a weirdo and giving him murder lessons.
Your favourite Harry Morgan hater out.
