The feeling of skepticism, of thinking you know more than meets the eye, is universal, which makes it great material for this meme whether you have watched Dexter or not. You don’t need extensive knowledge of a topic, in this case, Dexter, to get the meme. Simply recognizing Doakes’ suspicious facial expressions is enough to appreciate the meme and to apply it to countless scenarios where someone is questioning someone else.

The absolute smash hit of a show, Dexter, premiered its first episode on October 1st, 2006 and its last on September 22nd, 2013. By day, Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) is a forensic blood spatter analyst for the Miami Florida police department. Though, when he’s not working, he’s stalking his next victim. Dexter is a serial killer, but one with a method and means for his killing. Dexter’s victims are all bad people in some way or another: robbers, killers, thieves, corrupt officials, and many more. Taking matters into his own hands, he gives the criminals the justice that the legal system could or did not. Thus, he is granted the name “The Bay Harbor Butcher.”

In the earlier seasons of Dexter, he has a coworker named James Doakes, a detective sergeant at Miami PD. Doakes is suspicious of Dexter’s identity, consistently stalking him. He has hunches of Dexter’s involvement in the multitude of murders in Miami county, but just can’t prove it. He is suspicious of Dexter and his role in the disappearances and deaths of said criminals. His background in Special Ops gives him intuition that Dexter is hiding something, and may be a sociopath, causing Doakes to frequently show his skepticism when around Dexter.

The memes of Doakes’ facial expressions; staring, raising eyebrows, glaring, represent the feeling of knowing something, but not being able to prove it, as Doakes does to Dexter. The meme, when in video format, is most commonly paired with the “Blood Theme” from the show’s soundtrack, but also occasionally supplemented by the opening instrumental for the Pantera song “This Love.” 

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