>>213590009
Of course they changed a lot, I inferred as much. The books are only like 300 pages long and everyone except Dexter is basically written as extremely one note and shallow caricature with barely any real depth. In order for the show to exist they had to make changes and they improved the show massively by not just keeping everything exactly the same but modifying and make up new stuff.
My point was that the first book was the only one the show directly adapts as a basis for the entire season and it stays mostly faithful to it in broad strokes. That’s why S1 is good, it already had solid foundation in the book’s plot and basic cast of characters and the show writers had to just spend time fleshing out the cast and adding stuff around the edges so that you had enough to fill an entire season episode count.
After season one that they don’t bother adapting the other books for the plots because they just get progressively stupid and shitty and that’s why the quality on the tv show suffers because they had to start creating entire season long storylines out of nothing and they didn’t plan or mapped out stuff for seasons in advance because you usually don’t do that on network shows that are intended to just run as long as possible and you just wait to see if you get renewed.
>>213590585
Deb finds out in the first book and then it’s basically ignored for like two books straight before Debra bothers to actually address it at all. And even then it’s mostly a nothing burger. I haven’t read all of the bookw so maybe later on it changes but I’m not kidding when I say her sole function in the books early on at least is a one trick pony: she shows up, shouts “Dexter! Help me do my job by doing all the work to catch this killer!” and then she just bitches while Dexter figures everything out and she’s being useless. It super obnoxious how badly her and everyone else from the supporting cast is written.
