SPOILER ALERT – if you haven’t seen the episode yet, be warned!
Season 7 picks up with Deb seeing Dexter kill Travis in his ritualistic way. Cut to a frantic Dexter, racing along the highway towards, his credit cards all coming up as declined at the gas station and as he rifles for cash in his bag, we see that it’s full of passports and cell phones as he pays for a ticket out of the country.
In the present, Dexter goes into survival mode, pretending to be shocked by what he’s done. Deb is confused and horrified as her brother convinces her that this was in self-defense, and that he’d snapped from the anger he’s had since Rita’s death. Convincing her that they should stage the scene so it looks like a suicide, they burn the church – as if Travis had a final tableau to act out since his doomsday plot had failed. He replaces his knife with the ceremonial sword and, in his haste, unknowingly drops the blood sample slide into the floor grate of the church. Laguerta later spots it when the crew is examining the scene and gets it picked up into an evidence bag.
Miami Metro calls about the fire. Keeping up their facades of being from the police department, they go through the motions of investigating the scene. Dexter spots a small remnant of saran wrap on the body’s foot and catches Deb’s eye to distract Masuka, who was headed towards it. Deb asks Masuka about the probability of Travis killing himself with his sword while Dexter grabs shoves the plastic wrap into his pocket. This little moment of camaraderie might be a hint of things to come, if they are able to keep up the tag team momentum.
Dexter is determined to keep Deb in the dark about his horrible secret as he flashbacks to their childhood, when their mother bought Deb a puppy. His dad was adamant about not having that dog in the house, for fear of Dexter killing it. I’d be really interested to see how Dexter would act without the ghost of his father in his ear constantly. He’s got a dark passenger but, as his younger self insists, he wouldn’t have hurt the dog. It’s like the oft-debated “nature vs nurture” topic… whether it’s in someone’s nature to behave a certain way or if it’s part of how they were brought up.
Ending his call with Deb, Mike from the police department pulls up to a driver that seems to be having car trouble. After opening his trunk and seeing a dead body, the driver shoots Mike and leaves him for dead. Miami Metro finds that the car belonged to the deceased, a Russian stripper, and Batista & Quinn go to interrogate the dancers and clientele. Something is clearly not on the up and up, as Quinn questions a stripper who makes eyes with another dancer from across the room and is silenced, claiming she doesn’t speak English. This is soon to be revealed to be part of a bigger plot involving the club owner.
Dexter discovers a fingerprint uses it to ID the cop killer. He chases him to the airport, hence the opening used to mislead the viewers into thinking he was running from the police. The useless credit cards are revealed to be the work of Louis, Masuka’s intern & boyfriend of Angel. Angry at Dexter getting mad at him for snooping around his office, Louis is looking suspicious. He’s twisted, with a lot of interest in Dexter and the ice truck killer case. I’m curious if they’re setting him up to be one of the baddies this season.
Deb continues to question Dexter about what she witnessed, causing her to flashback to when she was on the table in season 1 with the ice truck killer. She calls Dexter to find Jamie still there babysitting Harrison, and Jamie lets slip that Dexter often works really late hours at the office. Knowing that he wasn’t there, she starts getting more suspicious. Dexter comes home late after dumping the body of Victor, the stripper and cop killer, to find Deb sitting in the middle of it with his killing paraphernalia laid out.
This season is off to a great start. The dynamic between Dexter and Deb has definitely changed, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out. I’m glad that Deb wasn’t letting it go: she’s a lieutenant for a reason, and I’m so happy that the show’s writers didn’t allow her to just gloss over it just because it’s her brother feeding her an admittedly weak story. The cinematography and camera movements seem different this year as well… more organic and less “steady”, which plays into the whole feel of the episode. All in all, I’m very excited to see how this turns out.
