A complete whimper it turns out. As expected, the season starts with a morosely narrated montage that catches us up to speed on what’s happened in the interim. The main change is that Deb has completely flung off the rails in a twist everyone saw coming a year ago. We get this information through clumsy exposition during Laguerta’s bench dedication and then get it hammered home even more gratuitously with the predictably superfluous conversation with Harry. So Deb’s working private security and has become dangerously attached to him, swilling beer at midday and snorting cocaine. Jennifer Carpenter gives a strong performance here but it all feels like low stakes for the aftermath of what was meant to be a bombshell finale. We start the final season with the ever looming threat of… Deb doing drugs? I understand the emotional importance this is meant to hold but it’s all rendered so prosaically that it’s hard to care.
Dexter’s reaction is also shambolically written. He seems incapable of understanding why Deb can’t move on but his sociopathy is played to the point of parody. I know Dexter can’t feel emotion but he’s demonstrated so many times that he’s capable of understanding Deb’s sense of honour that his tactlessness here just comes across as stupid. His final attempt to ‘rescue’ Deb climaxes with the realisation that she was right and he was wrong, to which myself, and I’m sure many viewers, replied ‘duh’! Not only is it painfully obvious it goes against the self-awareness that has been a key character trait from the beginning. It’s all brought home in a bizarre scene where Dexter almost kills an innocent man who cut him off while driving. It’s an unprecedented act of anger, in an episode that features a psychologist telling us that psychopaths don’t get angry. We’ve seen Dexter cold and unfeeling and we’ve seen him grow into a potentially empathetic man but this current state of flux is just bizarre. Any sense of character continuity has been abandoned.
Of course I have to mention the tedious subplots of the most unloved supporting cast on television. Batista has returned to the force in the wake of Laguerta’s death and is cluttering up his house with her old clothes. I appreciate the writers giving us the human cost of Laguerta’s death but once again I have to say: it’s the final fucking season, either make it count or don’t show it. There’s a tease that he may take up Laguerta’s vendetta against Deb and Dexter but it seems to be thrown away, and my god I hope so. Meanwhile Quinn is now screwing Jamie, super sister/nanny/sex-kitten, to which I let out a grown that was heard around the world. He’s been dragging the show down for four seasons now and she’s a plot contrivance, their children are destined to be vortex’s that suck in the credibility of any TV show they enter.
The main conflict this episode sets up is Dexter’s yearly obligatory obstacle, this time in the form of ‘psycopath whisperer’ Evelyn Vogal and she’s introduced with all the grace of Masuka’s attempts at consolation. When she enters the briefing room there is an immediate tension between her and Dexter as if she may be the one to reveal his secrets. It’s so poorly done because Dexter acts as if he’s read the scripts in advance; reacting to her like he’s hearing the ominous music that accompanies her. At the end of the day she’s just another law enforcement official that he chose to surround himself with every day, essentially Lundy 2.0, and until she actually starts poking around there’s no reason to believe she’ll ‘smell the psychopath’ on him during the limited interactions they would have. Of course it turns out that she knows who Dexter is and she knows about Harry’s code, which is a relief because we’ll be spared this pathetic attempt of mystery surrounding the character.
So we’ve got some good things to work with here, with an increasingly despairing Deb and someone who perhaps knows Dexter more intimately than anyone since Harry. But Dexter has given itself so many opportunities before and they never come to fruition. I don’t want promise anymore; I want the goods each and every week, other shows can do it so why can’t Dexter? There wasn’t enough strong writing or drama to carry this episode by itself so I remain extremely sceptical about the direction this season is heading in. When Dexter’s good, it will be good, plain and simple. Until then, I remain unconvinced.
Other stuff worth mentioning
- The unusually long 'last season on' segment just seemed to bring home how much of a clusterfuck last season's end was, and that's leaving out the Russian Mafia subplot.
- Harrison can talk now!
- While it's hardly original for the show, I kind of liked the opening montage as it eerily illustrated Dexter's complete lack of self-awareness... even if that doesn't really make sense.
- Looks like there's a hit-man on Deb's trail in a subplot that I'm sure will be 100% integral to the rest of the story.
- Dexter's fathering in this episode was spectacularly bad, even by his standards.
- Billy Walsh from Entourage appeared in this episode... there you go.
Next Episode On Dexter!
So it looks like Vogel will be a mother figure which is actually a nice twist to save for the final season. It actually left me a bit more hopeful than the episode itself but I've been led astray by preview's better than actual episodes before so I'm not taking it into account in my opinion of this hour of television. We also got the return of Hannah McKay (yawn) and some other stuff already shown in the season's trailer. Speaking of the preview, was it meant to be particularly long for the premier or is Showtime dedicating more of its airtime to ads that eclipse actual content?
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