“The Code of Harry”
Rule 1: Never kill an innocent
Rule 2: Don’t Get caught
If you look back in the earlier seasons, you will notice a young Dexter, about 15 years old, and not 38 year old Dexter with a wig made to look 20. 😂
Anyways, Harry was adamant about guiding Dexter towards killing only those that kill the innocent. It’s left as a check list for Dexter to make sure his targets are killing innocent people before committing them to his table. Dexter believes he is a sociopath, so he does not care who is innocent, only that if his vetting, stalking and research leads him to his sense that they are killers and he gets that creepy feeling towards them. They all eventually meet his table, begging for their lives before admitting their crimes. They think they can manipulate a manipulator. He levels with them, sharing his passion for killing and in a sense unmasking his killers as fakes. He believes a true psychopath would egg Dexter on trying to wear him down, and convince Dexter that their kills were justified in the same way as ‘Harry’s Code’.
Look closely when Dexter arrives at every crime scenes. To him, decoding, what went down, with professionalism without trying to hide his passion for blood running deeper that it lights up Doakes’s creepo-meter. And Doakes was right on, probably the best detective, underrated and sorely underutilized would have made for a better story
of his end than he deserved. May he Rest In Peace.
Dexter reveals in blood as if he did it himself. Gives me the idea Dexter is speculating how he would go about it. It’s like a serial killers’ Comic-Con of who killed who meets docu-drama all while critiquing how they would have done it better. “Give em the chair”, the crowd screams with zeal.
It was only after meeting Vogel, Dexter learned that Vogel suggested indirectly that Dexter have one rule: Never get caught. As she explains to give Dexter wiggle room to satisfy his urges. She sees him as a specimen to be studied and ignores Dexter’s twisted sense of serial killer/vigilante justice that doesn’t let criminals slip thru the cracks of the system.
I think having ‘never kill an innocent’ was more of Harry’s moral sense of right and wrong clashed with Vogels ‘Don’t get caught’ suggests Dexter be a practical Killer, living a mundane life; a cover for his activities. I see Dexter showing anger and frustration later on in season 8 with Deb, Vogel, work life and family life.
I say riding along the moral compase of what Dexter considers normal’ is what the 8 season Dexter ride is all about: anonimity and the thrill of success, especially knowing how well Harry prepared him for the life or lack of that he would have for himself.