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There’s this program on Showtime that makes my life difficult. It’s called “Dexter”. Up until now it only aired on a premium channel, which has mitigated the amount of trouble it could cause me. However, it recently broadcast its final episode and I imagine it will soon start to run in syndication on TBS. Then my life will be very difficult.
For those of you who haven’t seen the program, the titular character is a serial killer. But don’t worry. He’s a good serial killer. He has a code. He only kills bad people. He often has to break into their homes to search their computers and basements for evidence that they are bad enough for him to serial kill. For getting into their homes, he has a set of lock picks. The program frequently depicts him approaching the front door of his would-be victim’s house in broad sunny Miami daylight, picks in hand. This would be incredibly audacious if he didn’t live in TV Land. In TV Land, lock picks are exactly like keys, in that they function just as quickly and easily as keys, and they are guaranteed to work seamlessly every time. That’s why just as soon as the picks appear, Dexter can be seen breezing into the house.
In reality, picking a lock is not just a matter of having the tools to do it. With many locks, it can be a delicate and painstaking process that requires intense focus and quite a bit of time, something akin to threading a needle in the dark. I’ve picked many hundreds of locks, yet every time I pull my picks from my front pocket to open a door, my heart rate rises a little. I get nervous. There’s no way of knowing how long it will take me to open the lock with my picks, or whether it’s even within my capacity to do so. Never am I more nervous than when someone is hovering behind me watching, impatiently expecting the door to swing open. Nervousness can compel a lot of people to pick a lot of things: scabs, noses, sometimes even arguments. But I can assure you, dear reader, that it does not make me a more proficient picker of locks. It has just the opposite effect.
It isn’t the customers’ fault that they believe their locks should be picked in a matter of seconds. That’s what every televised depiction of lock picking they’ve ever seen has led them to reasonably expect. And I can’t exactly blame the makers of Dexter for devoting too little airtime to Dexter’s lockpicking efforts. Showing a man crouch uncomfortably in front of a door for anything more than three seconds would make for very boring television. And it’s not my fault that I don’t get to perform my job in TV Land. Nobody did anything wrong here. Still, I think my life would be better in a world without Dexter, and I hope TBS doesn’t pick up the show.