Andy Friedman

It must be rough being the overshadowed younger sibling of the cable world — the Kevin Dillon to HBO's Matt, the Casey Affleck to its Ben. I can only imagine the consternation over at Showtime some years ago, when it realized that its chief rival was actually going to get away with its claim to "transcend television." But who could protest? HBO had the most culturally significant program on the air (The Sopranos), the most subversive (Curb Your Enthusiasm), and the flat-out greatest (The Wire). Showtime doesn't even have the dignity of an acronym to disguise its cheesy '70s moniker, which means the best it can do for a logo is throw a circle around the first three letters and then squirt the entire word with what appears to be thin ribbons of ketchup. Edgy.

But suddenly, if I could watch just one, I'd go with Showtime.

In part, that's because most of HBO's landmark shows are either finished or nearly so. (The Wire has one more season left.) Mostly, though, it's because Showtime's frustration and desperation is starting to manifest itself in its programming, which has become increasingly twisted over the past couple of years. Shows like Weeds and Dexter push the notion of the sympathetic antihero into the realm of black comedy, overtly acknowledging that we're most entertained by watching people flout all the social mores known to man. You say you can identify with a mobster? How about with a serial killer? Tickled by a dysfunctional family of morticians? We got us a bereaved single mom who makes her living as a suburban pot dealer. Showtime provides a fun-house-mirror reflection of HBO's programming, transforming penetrating drama into absurdist satire.

You can see this warped sensibility in Dexter's audaciously witty opening-credits sequence, in which the title character (Michael C. Hall, formerly of HBO's Six Feet Under), a forensic expert who's slaughtered several dozen victims, goes about his morning routine — shaving, making coffee, tying his shoes — all of it shot in a way that evokes bloody carnage. Pop culture has been building up to the serial killer as hero ever since Hannibal Lecter, and Dexter cannily appropriates two of mankind's guiltiest fantasies: that torturing people to death might be fun and — more crucially — that some people richly deserve that fate. Unlike, say, the Hostel movies, however, Dexter doesn't seek to discomfit or repulse. For all its matter-of-fact gore, including close-ups of severed body parts and hotel rooms drenched in blood, the show is primarily a comedy of manners, observing a self-aware sociopath as he struggles to channel his homicidal urges (born of childhood trauma) into "productive" endeavors. The first season, adapted from a Jeff Lindsay novel, was a tad plot-heavy; season two, which begins in late September, should allow its writers the freedom to experiment with their protagonist's burgeoning emotions. It could get pretty sick, in a good way.

If I sound optimistic, that's largely because Weeds, Showtime's other current first-rate show, went ballistic in its second season, to the point that it's now almost impossible to categorize. (It returns on August 13.) Series creator Jenji Kohan continues to lay waste family values, pushing Nancy (Mary-Louise Parker) further into the drug trade and her two sons deeper into deviant and/or antisocial behavior. But without skimping on outrageous humor — last year's zenith was Uncle Andy's lecture to thirteen-year-old Shane about the fine art of semen disposal — Weeds grew darker and more despairing as the season progressed, concluding with the apparent offscreen murder of a major supporting character and a cliff-hanger in which every member of the Botwin family faces death, jail, or life in Uruguay. That it's hard to tell how seriously to take any of this is precisely what makes the series such an unruly, perplexing triumph. Rather than attempt a synthesis of comedy and drama, it's treating them as if they were fundamentally interchangeable, which is far more interesting.

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