First Thoughts: Dexter: Season 7 – Episode 1: Are You…? (2012)

OK, guys, new segment for the next few months. I love the TV show Dexter, as I am sure anyone with good taste does. So while the highly anticipated new season is running, I'll be reviewing the episodes as they come out. There will be BIG SPOILERS in these things - just a heads up! Let's get started.

Aired: September 30, 2012

After a long year, we finally get the first episode of the new Dexter season, and what a wait it has been. The last season ended with probably the cliffhanger to end all cliffhangers – Debra finally discovering Dexter’s secret life as a serial killer, right as he stabbed last season’s villain Travis (Colin Hanks) through the heart. And that was it! For the better part of a whole year Dexter fans have sat in wait for what the hell happened after that damned last shot from season 6. And it’s here now…so how does the first episode of Dexter’s seventh season, “Are You…?” fare?

Well, it’s good – really damn good. The big thing everyone was wondering about this was how they’d treat Debra knowing Dexter’s “extracurricular activities.” This episode actually did it just about perfectly, mostly on the incredible strength of Jennifer Carpenter acting shell-shocked and skeptical and Michael C. Hall acting like someone just caught him killing a man….hmmm. But both characters act exactly as you’d expect given the seven years of foundation this show has behind it now, and I think the time was perfectly right to finally let Deb in on the secret and shake up the show.

This could have been done so poorly. But here we have a Deb in total shock – especially given how she was feeling about Dexter last season – and at the edge of her wits. He tries the best he can to convince her he’s just his usual self and the whole thing was a fluke, a product of temporary insanity. But really, how could anyone look normal and sane when they’re standing in front of a naked dead body and wearing what looks like an executioner’s outfit? Dexter’s defense is as flimsy as you’d expect. He has no excuse and no way to hide.

And Deb knows it, too, even if it does take her a little while to piece together. At first she agrees to help him destroy the church and, consequently, the evidence, and there’s a really chilling scene of her standing outside in the middle of the night filling up a gas tank so they can burn down the church and destroy the body – the look on her face is just pure, stark unbelieving of what’s happening to her right now, and what she’s doing. This has always been a ridiculously unbelievable show at its core, and so the strength of the actors has to carry it to make it credible and dramatic enough to hold its weight, and episodes like this shine at doing so.

The old Dexter formula is in good form here. Lots of narration from Michael C. Hall and lots of interwoven, fast-moving plot threads that mix together as slick as molasses. I just love the hard-assed, gritty feel the show has, and for fans of cop dramas and more macabre horror films alike it will please. One thing I really enjoy this time around is how crazy they make Dexter look – we see things through Deb’s eyes as she puts together the pieces of what Dexter really is. All he does is the usual stuff – he examines crime scenes, he lurks on his computer and keeps his little secrets – but now it all just seems so much creepier and more insane.

You see him through Deb’s eyes with her newfound knowledge, and he looks like the madman he is. Dexter is not supposed to be a character you look up to – he is a man with a lot of problems and is compelling by way of that. And the way the show addresses his insanity and odd compulsions is masterfully done here, like when he makes his first kill of the season: the Russian mafia man who kills off last season’s new character, Detective Mike (Billy Brown). The way the kill is carried out is just so deeply haunted and creepy, much moreso than usual. I won’t talk much about it here. This one I want you to see for yourself.

I didn’t much like the death of Detective Mike, while we’re on the subject…it worked for the episode, but I dunno, I was looking forward to seeing more of this guy. I guess he just wasn’t working for the show. And Quinn and Batista’s whole subplot from last season has been nixed, too; they’re back to being friendly again after just a few words at the bar…but the thing with this show is that, while the random dropping of subplots gets kind of jarring, there are always new ones to take their place within an episode or two. This season I think we have enough to contend with now that Debra knows that Dexter is a killer. That kind of dwarfs everything else.

So, yeah, definitely looking forward to the next one, and I’ll keep updating with more posts like this one. I don’t know if they’ll all be this long, but hell, it’s Dexter season again and I am loving it. Happy October, folks!

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Dexter Season 6 Review - SPOILERS

No, seriously guys, there are spoilers in this one. So if you don't want anything spoiled for you, I suggest you go finish watching the season before reading my review.

Another year has passed, and with it another Dexter season. Six seasons in is a long time for a TV show, and luckily more people than ever are watching Dexter these days. We got the advertising for this one early on, with the indication that it would revolve around a pair of religious zealots killing people as Dexter tried to figure out his spiritual misgivings and what he wanted to pass on to his 2-year old son Harrison. A year has passed since the events of the emotional roller-coaster season 5, and with it comes a more confident and self-reliant Dexter than we’ve seen in several years.

This was purported to be the darkest Dexter season yet, and I guess you could say it is. The imagery is chock-full of candle-lit churches at night, quivering women, beaten and battered, chained to the wall and dead bodies with black symbols carved into their rotting flesh, and the religious theme is weighty as expected, and handled with Dexter’s usual dark, artistic edge. But the core is, as always, the characters, as each main character has his or her own journey. And there are lots of changes this season, from LaGuerta’s promotion to Captain, Quinn proposing to Deb and Deb becoming the new lieutenant – all in the span of the first two episodes.

Dexter is his usual self, having bounced back from the traumatic experiences from the previous two seasons. He’s witty and stoic and generally we have fun watching his continued attempts to stay out of the limelight with his, erm, hobbies. This season he gets involved early on with Brother Sam (Mos), who is an ex-con-turned-preacher who helps him see a chance for light in him, even through his dark passenger’s hold. Sam is an excellent character, and adds a real presence to the show – he’s a good actor. He and Dexter interact pretty brilliantly, and play off each other well.

Masuka is up to more trickery and he’s bringing in interns to study in the Homicide department. Two of them turn out to be duds, but Louis (Josh Cooke) is a proverbial wiz-kid who knows how to dig deep into the vaults of the internet and turn up info the department couldn’t find otherwise. Cooke is unassuming, innocent and quiet…which makes it all the more startling when his true nature is revealed. I dunno, I guess I kind of saw something coming, but I’m interested in exactly what they do with his character next season. His arc hasn’t been resolved yet, and I think he’s something we haven’t yet seen on the show.

I rather like Quinn’s arc, in which he traverses through a seemingly endless train of drunkenness, humiliating himself and generally being an ass after Deb dumps him. He says he’s “just being a single guy, having fun” but clearly that’s not true, and the dichotomy between what he says and what’s really going on make him a more interesting character than he used to be. Not to mention scenes of him and Batista sharing a dooby in their squad car while on a particularly slow day are priceless. At the end of the season, after several mishaps and clashes, Batista finally puts in a request for a transfer for him, to which he uses a loophole and some cleverly selective wording to pass off his jackassery as a legitimate alcoholism problem – thus able to stay in homicide if he gets help. Clever and underhanded – looks like Quinn’s going back to his old ways. All that stuff from last season about him becoming a better person? I guess that’s just out the window now.

The only real disappointment is the villains, who sound cool and intimidating on paper, but I just don’t think as much work was put into their characters as the drama between our main characters this season. Professor James Gellar (Edward Olmos) and his apprentice Travis (Colin Hanks) are trying to bring about the end of the world by killing people in accordance with several Biblical tableaux. They’re just not that scary, and most of the time I had a hard time taking either of them very seriously. Gellar is incredibly one-note and most of his dialogue is just redundant. Travis almost gets some depth here and there with his sister in the picture, but even that’s just window-dressing.

In the last four episodes, it’s revealed that Travis has been working alone the whole time and Gellar has been dead all along – basically Travis is akin to Dexter; acting with a dark passenger ‘talking’ to him all the time. At this point Travis basically makes the leap of no return and becomes a completely generic ‘crazy’ villain, without much depth or intricacy to his character at all. Too bad I guess.

One thing Dexter has always been good at is creating a great story arc. The flow of the episodes into one another is very natural, creating some great drama. As usual, not every episode is a stand-alone barn-burner, but as a whole, the season has a lot of verve and energy, and everything seems urgent and intense as hell.

One of the standout episodes is ironically the one that departs from the arc the rest of the season is creating. It’s episode 7, “Nebraska,” and it revolves around Dexter going to a nowhere town in Nebraska to confront Jonah Mitchell, the son of the Trinity Killer, who is the only surviving member of the family Dexter interacted with in season 4 – and who is suspected of killing his family. Dexter’s whole story in this season is about his search for faith, and what it means. Brother Sam had been helping him up until this point, but in the previous episode, he was killed, and Dexter, despite Sam’s direct advice to the contrary, murdered the young man who shot him. Armed then with a dark freedom of conscience and the spirit of his dead brother by his side, as opposed to his dead father, Dexter goes to Nebraska to kill Jonah. That along with the cool scenery is a big reason why “Nebraska” rules.

The rest of the season goes swimmingly until episode 11, “Talk to the Hand,” in which the show finally goes where everyone never wanted them to – a romance between Deb and Dexter. Deb, talking to her psychologist, realizes that every guy she’s ever gone out with, including Quinn, is a reflection of her hidden feelings for Dexter, and through a rather icky dream sequence, confirms this. I wouldn’t be so against it if the romance wasn’t horribly contrived. I’m sorry, but for this show’s usual high standards for romance (witness the final scenes between Dexter and Rita in season 4, or the ones with Deb and Lundy early on in the show), lines like “Sometimes everything seems so perfect…and then you’re walking away” are just crap, plain and simple. Even if they are just in Deb’s dreams.

The final episode rules, though, with a lot of great shots, some awesome moments and one of Dexter’s best speeches ever – listen to how badass he sounds; there is no beating that. The man is a legend. And then the show hits us with perhaps its biggest plot twist…Debra’s discovery of Dexter as he’s killing Travis. Dexter looks up, goes soft and says “Oh, god,” and that’s what we’re left with, folks! Damn you, Dexter, for your cliffhangers, as expertly placed and commercially minded as they are! As underhanded as this is, as clearly as it is just calculated to be a marketing ploy to keep people watching, it’s done remarkably well, and fits perfectly with the way the season was going.

So season 6 was another firecracker for the Dexter train as it keeps on rolling. I liked this better than season 5 by quite a bit, as everything seemed to have more energy and power behind it, and all the actors really gave 110% performances. The story, while lacking the subtlety of older seasons, is still good, and I think people complaining about that are overreacting. Dexter in its early days was indeed a more unique show, and had a lot more subtlety and layers to it, with Dexter’s interactions with his victims and various other people as he tried to figure out how to act in general being intricate and idiosyncratic. These days the show goes for bigger, more overt and in-your-face shocks and twists, and it’s safe to say the show has ‘sold out,’ in a manner of speaking – it lacks the old school precise wit and originality in place of a more streamlined action/detective template – but as long as Dexter keeps having seasons this good, I’ll keep watching. Sell-out or not, season 6 is a winner.

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REVIEW: The Hole (2001)

Director: Nick Hamm

Starring: Thora Birch, Keira Knightley, Desmond Harrington

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0242527/

This is one of those movies I just don’t know what to say about. The Hole is a 2001 horror/thriller/mystery mutt of a movie that has actors like Keira Knightley and Desmond Harrington in it, as well as a convincing and pretty well acted lead played by Thora Birch. This is a very British movie, with lots of accents and school uniforms and foggy skies and everything, complete with an extra dose of those ultra-frilly looking old houses. Oh yeah and lots and lots of murder, sex and blood. Welcome to England!

OK, OK, just kidding. The plot revolves around a girl named Liz (Birch) who is found bloody and screaming and taken to the hospital, where she says that she and some of her friends had a third party, this guy named Martyn (Daniel Brocklebank) lock them inside an old bunker for a weekend to party and get away from their oppressive totalitarian boarding school. However things got a little too wacky and then somehow, all of them ended up dead. The only problem is that Liz can’t remember what happened. Martyn says he wasn’t even involved…so what really happened? The movie will throw you for several loops along the way to finding out.

Mostly the problems with this movie are that the characters themselves are pretty boring. They’re decently acted, but their personalities suck and they aren’t really given enough depth for you to be totally drawn into the story. The reason you keep watching is because the plot itself is interesting – although even that’s a little sketchy, honestly. They really couldn’t find a better place to sneak off and hide than an ABANDONED BUNKER? Bunch of morons. I don’t have too much sympathy for ‘em.

But mostly the plot is pretty hooky, once it gets rolling. It takes a little while to get started, and initially it’s a bit confusing, but by the end I found myself interested. Another thing this does well is that it is sufficiently bloody and sick – but not overly so, never gratuitously. It’s just right. The film provides some honestly disturbing scenes near the end that will stick with you. The atmosphere is creepy and depraved, and when the violent stuff starts happening, you know the movie means it, because it has waited this long to show them to you, patiently.

So overall I liked The Hole. It’s original – fairly – and does what it sets out to do. The writing could have been more cohesive, but if you go in with an open mind I think you’ll like it. Just don’t lock the door. You don’t want to get trapped in this film’s odd little world.

None of the pics are mine...and DISCLAIMER, I have nothing against the British.