Dexter is not the best show on TV. And it hasn't been for some time, not since either a) the show's incredibly thrilling fourth season, or b) the arrival of Mad Men and/or Homeland. And that, to me, is totally fine; leave the fussing to the other shows, and I'll stick it out with Dexter until the end, for better or worse. And admittedly, the past two seasons have been a lot of that worse. The fifth season, marked by Jordan Chase and Lumen Pierce, was far more fun and engaging to start but culminated in a surprisingly boring ending. The sixth, with forgettable villains Gellar and Travis—though I did like both Edward James Olmos and Colin Hanks in those roles—weren't only poor bad guys, their entire arc was overshadowed by the fact that Deb found Dexter killing Travis, which pretty much nullified any other effect that story tried to have on the rest of the show.
So season 7 has the biggest challenge that Dexter has had yet, and "Are You…" manages the feat better than any episode of the show has completed a goal in a very, very long time. It's one thing to have Deb walk in on Dexter killing Travis, and to have him effectively weasel his way into an explanation, causing Deb to help protect him. And it's entirely another to handle not only the setup of it all—the plastic wrap, the knives, the apron—but so many little pieces of evidence that Deb has had over the years, and carry her realization of the holes in Dexter's story, which all play out brilliantly over the hour, done in exactly the right doses to where the shocking final scene feels both expected and surprising at the same time. Deb is in love with a psychotic killer, and there's no way that love—which was touched on extremely lightly in the season premiere—can be fully explored without her knowledge of that fact.
The close of "Are You…" gets Deb to an even deeper knowledge of the real Dexter than "This Is The Way The World Ends," one that at last has Dexter admitting that he's a serial killer, and it's fucking ballsy to say the least; the show could have easily found an out for him and settled into another season of undercover killing. That it doesn't presents a brand new Dexter we've never seen before: how Deb will tie into this secret, how Dexter will deal with her knowing the truth, and how they keep what's going on from everyone else around them. It's a head-spinning premise, and it's probably the single best place for a Dexter season to be yet.
And yeah, elsewhere, there are gripes: Mike Anderson's run on the show is surprisingly short as his life is cut short by a Victor Baskov, and amidst Deb on his tail, Dexter still manages to avenge his death in the middle of a crowded airport. Even if it's one that indeed does have lasting effects on the season, it seems squeezed into an already stuffed premiere, and insensibly executed at that (I couldn't help but find issue with the fact that Dexter recklessly blew $2,000 on a flight just to get a kill). But it's not like we watch the show for the sense it makes, we tune in quite eagerly for all the sense it doesn't make, and Season 7 is getting off on the best foot in ages.
SumOlogy: It's all on the table.
Grade: A-
Leftovers
"He's all like, 'Don't touch my shit, man.' What a dick." (All of me is hoping that this was intended to make Louis seem like an idiot and not just poor writing. I trust the Dexter writers, but the follow-up of Jamie's "The more I get to know you, the weirder and weirder you get," was even worse, and that was definitely the writers' doing.)
I do like LaGuerta discovering the slide and the potential that has for the season. I haven't liked much of her, at all, ever, really. But I do think she's good at digging up dirt. Quinn and Batista are given a lot of work this episode, but it doesn't seem to work at all in the midst of everything else.
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