The Season 7 première of ‘Dexter’ gets the series back on track,  feeling fresh and revitalized. 

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Spoiler Alert; Watch the Season Premiere before reading this. You’ve been warned.

The last season of ‘Dexter‘ was by far the weakest. It seemed to have run out of steam…..until the finale, when Deborah Morgan finally figured out her brother’s big secret.

The season première  episode ‘Are You…?’ picks up where the finale left off.  Dexter, always trying to cover his tracks, explains that the ‘Doomsday Killer‘, Travis Marshall tried to attack him, so he killed him in self-defense. But Deb’s detective wheels are spinning, and she seems unconvinced.

But as conflicted as she is, she still helps him torch the body and leave the scene.

But seeing him stab Travis on the table takes Deb back to when she was on a similar table, when The Ice Truck Killer (Brian Moser, Dexter’s brother) was going to murder her before Dexter intervened. She starts putting the pieces together.

Later, the murder scene is swept and Police Captain LaGuerta recovers a blood slide left by Dexter. When she asks Forensic expert Masuka about it, he says offhanded that it fit the M.O. of the Bay Harbor Butcher (actually Dexter, but blamed on the late Sgt. Doakes). LaGuerta has long strived to prove Doakes innocence, so this doesn’t bode well for our hero.

Elsewhere, detective Mike Anderson stops to help a motorist with a flat tire. But upon opening his trunk he sees a dead woman. The motorist shoots Anderson to death.

Dexter’s lab work shows that the killer is Viktor Baskov, a Ukrainian hit-man. The woman was a stripper. Dexter traces his whereabouts and sees he’s getting ready to fly out of the country, so he stalks him and winds up killing him at the airport. Even for a series that pushes suspension of disbelief to high levels, this seems a bit much!

But Quinn and Batista case the strip club of the late dancer and are given the cold shoulder by the owner (Jason Gedric). He is definitely hiding something. But this side plot feels like filler, and I’m a tad tired of the bantering of this cop duo.

Dexter also has another problem, and that’s Louis, the lab tech who is obsessed with him for as yet undetermined reasons. He cancels Dexter’s credit cards. What does he have planned? (Still wanting to know why he has the prosthetic limb from the ‘Ice Truck Killer’ in his apt).

But it’s the end of the episode that holds the most weight. Dexter returns to his apartment, and there sits Deborah. She has his case full of blood slides, and all his murder weapons. She lays it all out; “Are you a serial killer”?

“Yes”, he replies.

Will Deb turn him in? Or give him access to undesirables that clog up the police system? Will they work together? I don’t know, but  I can’t wait to see where it goes next. Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Carpenter seem re-energized and their chemistry is as good as ever (amazing given that in real life they were once married and now divorced. Talk about professionalism.)

I think even the most diehard ‘Dexter’ fans feel the series peaked with Season 4’s ‘Trinity Killer’ storyline. But this opens a lot of new possibilities and for now at least, ‘Dexter’ looks like its back on track.

Check out ‘Dexter’s’ Home Page for more info on the new Season.

Amazon Links to Best ‘Dexter‘ Seasons:

[amazon_image id=”B000Q6GUW0″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Dexter: The First Season[/amazon_image][amazon_image id=”B000V86OKG” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Dexter: The Second Season[/amazon_image][amazon_image id=”B002N5N5M0″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Dexter: The Fourth Season[/amazon_image]