This Week On DEXTER: “Are You…?”

Holy taint, Dexter is back on its game. After seasons of circling the nipples, it has clamped back down with a vengeance. Teeth grinding while you arch your back in unexpected pleasure. Pain. Something-such. Draw in your breath and prepare for the terminal descent, as it looks like the writers are finally willing to play with an endgame. The season seven premiere had me diddling my taint with anxiety for a solid hour, before sucker punching me in the groin while I screamed yes.

It isn’t what it looks like!
So the season breaks open with a cheesy frame narrative that quickly reverts back to where we were last left. Dexter is all plunging his wildly sharp phallic object into Tom Hanks’ son while Deb looks on in astonishment. She starts to wig out, and he’s all, it ain’t what it looks like! I’m only wearing a butcher’s apron, cloaked in killer’s garb, giggling manically as I perforate this dude.

Reminds me of that time my Mom came into the house and my dog was so goddamn happy and I was scrambling to flick bits of chunky peanut butter off my ball bag. No! Mom! Seriously, I slipped and fell into a vat of peanut butter at school. Embarrassing as shit, but thankfully the old pooch here was willing to help a brother out. Stop crying. No, it isn’t because you smoked while you were pregnant.

Deborah momentarily buys it, and I sort of groaned. She’s always been written as an excellent detective, and thankfully the rest of the episode conveys that. One does not simply shake off watching your brother kill someone without beginning to connect other odd dots. In other circles of television life, we call this “Walter White Syndrome.”

Plots Ahoy! Plots ahoy!
Dexter getting all found out and shit isn’t the only storyline dominating the episode. That’s okay. I’m fine with a little padding. It’s was when the series devolved into a perpetual tip-tease and Fight Club twists that I begin flinging nasal hate at the LCD screen. So uh. I completely forgot that that Louis guy existed. What’s his deal? Blame it on the perpetual amphetamines, but I can’t remember shit from last season. Brain’s fried. Synapses fatigued. However, I’m pretty sure he was responsible for like, buying some arm that the Ice Cream Guy Killer lopped off a dime way back in season one. Now he’s all butt hurt and canceling Dexter’s credit cards and shit? Lewis-Louis is way off the mark. He should be laying sweet, pleasurable pipe with Angel’s sister in his swank pad. I mean, the fact that he has gotten a guy or gal into a place where there’s a fucking Shi painting on the wall?

(Edit: reader who proves the “Caff is an idiot axiom” points out that the painting is Scarab from David Mack. Point stands.)

Stars, thar be lucky.

Then there’s that weird storyline they’re interjecting into middle of the rumble pit with that guy hanging out in Kiev or whatever. I don’t know what the fuck is going on there. What I do know is that the current showrunner formerly worked on 24, which means that if he doesn’t have some ominous and hilariously overwrought depiction of an Eastern European baddie, he begins to foam at the mouth. No, seriously. One time the rest of the 24 writing crew wouldn’t let him have Jack Bauer waterboard a German shepherd that somehow spoke thickly-accented English and they found him at a local burger joint. He was slathered in grease, punching a trash barrel, telling it that it could taste his American prowess. Dude is a bit weird.

Nonsensical Aesthetic Takes
There’s a shot in the episode where Quinn’s hair is goddamn fantastic. They’re standing outside commiserating the fact that the writers have offed yet another prominent African-American on the show and it looks like his hair is reaching for the sky. It was probably like the seventy-fifth take and they were like, “Fuck it, dude is orange and has craters that Curiosity couldn’t circumnavigate, what’s some hair?”

Also, is it me or was Deborah absolutely fucking stunning this episode? Maybe it’s because I have a thing for sports bras, but she was totally working my joints. I wanted to ring that thing out into a keg and drink it in-between Borderlands 2 grind sessions. If you didn’t know, the sweat of a young lass’s breasts is a curative. It will heal everything from athlete’s foot to terminal cancer. Don’t bother looking it up, just trust me.

That Final Scene
Well, no dancing around it. The final scene of this episode fulfilled the requisite “Dexter ends the episode on a groin flick” with astonishing aplomb. Deborah sits about Dexter’s apartment, evidence of his serial killing splayed about the room. She dares to ask the question (though truth be told, I wish she specifically referenced the Bay Harbor Butcher), and homeboy cops to the truth?

Thunderstuck!

I couldn’t believe it. Contemporary logic has the writers stretching the anxiety between the two of them out for at least another three or four episodes. Goodness me, where the fuck are they going to take the show? I didn’t watch the season preview, so don’t tell me. Those things are cleverly edited distraction pieces for cowards.

This has really got to complicate things for Deb. Nothing makes things messy like taking your nascent quasi-incestuous feelings for your step-brother and wrapping them around a reveal that he likes to send people into Oblivion for a living.

Great fucking episode. Season seven, let’s do this.