“If I Could Have Feelings at All, I’d Have Them for Deb”

Showtime's hit series Dexter, which aired for eight seasons from 2006 to 2013, chronicles the adventures of a serial killer with "standards" who works for Miami Metro Homicide by day and prowls the streets of Miami by night in search of criminals who slipped through the system. As Karin Hoepker contends in her contribution to Transgressive Television, Dexter "set the standards for many shows to follow". The links between Dexter and Wuthering Heights are not immediately apparent, particularly because Dexter disavows its Gothic elements from the start, even and especially with regard to Dexter's murders. Dex and Deb's story resembles that of Catherine and Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights from the very beginning. In Wuthering Heights, Catherine's position in the family is usurped by Heathcliff, who becomes the father's favorite. Like Heathcliff, Dexter is an impostor, using the law and the patriarchal order to exact his own revenge.