You know what I don't like? Misplaced blame. That happens more often than not in journalism, and I'm sure that I have had some misdirected hostility in some of my articles in the past (but never intentionally). Sometimes, though, reading other peoples' angry rants makes me angrier than perhaps I should be. Take, for instance, this article in the Utica Observer-Dispatch. It's titled "No Ordinary Family...no big deal." Here's a bit of what it had to say:
"If you are a fan of Dexter then you were totally heartbroken at the end of last season when Rita, Dexter's beloved wife and father of his new baby, was found bleeding out in a bathtub. Well you know why Rita had to die? To show up on the crappy new ABC show, No Ordinary Family. What a career move, go from a leading role on a top rated cable award winner to a medicore, hokey series with the possibility of cancellation on a regular network.
"Rita was Dexter's rock. Word has it she will appear in flashback; but what good does that do us! Now Dexter is going to go off the deep end.
"Now Rita (aka Julie Benz) has been thrown into a family which looks nothing like her. Have you seen the children. The premise of the is that thanks to some kind of scientific mix up the family now all has super powers. Stephanie (aka Julie), the mom, has super speed, the dad, Michael Chiklis, has super strength and the daughter can read minds and the son is super smart. And because it is TV mom is an executive at a science research firm, dad is a police sketch artist and the kids are whiny adolescents.
"For now they are all getting acquainted with their new powers; but I don't know if we will get time to see them actually start using them to fight crime and stop bad guys because I think this one is going to be canceled."
Now, I haven't seen a single second of No Ordinary Family, so I'm not at a prime position to defend it. But despite the inherent silliness of that article, I'm afraid it might reflect the thoughts of quite a few viewers who may be tuning out because of Julie Benz's departure from Dexter. Well, folks, this show isn't why she left. She didn't want to leave. The writers of Dexter found they could see the season ending in no other way but Rita's death. So, after she reluctantly left the cast of the Showtime series (she didn't want to, but was professional, of course), she got a gig on ABC's No Ordinary Family, a lesser quality gig that doesn't pretend to be anything but escapist fun.
That article from the Utica Observer-Dispatch isn't the first of its kind I've seen directed toward ABC's new drama (which is doing fairly well in the ratings, and isn't in the red zone for cancellation), but I thought it was important to dispel that myth about Benz's leaving Dexter. It's unfair toward Benz, and it's unfair toward No Ordinary Family.
It's actually a pretty decent show. People are just mad because it's not Heroes which, in my book, is a huge plus.