By Aaron Sanders, Diversions Editor
The last few seasons of Dexter have witnessed a steady decline in quality since the shocking Season Four finale, which left fans in perpetual awe and hungry for another dose of bloody bliss. Season Seven of Showtime’s hit show Dexter, the beginning of a two-season arc that will conclude the series in 2013, premiered Sunday, September 28 and did so with the flare that every Dexter fan has been craving for years now.
The Season Seven season premiere, entitled “Are You… ?,” opens with a frantic Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall), part-time blood analyst and part-time serial killer, speeding down a Miami highway. He glances at the gasoline gauge as the hand just reaches the “E.” He stops at the nearest gas station, scanning his surroundings in the process. He’s back in his car now, approaching the Miami airport. He enters the lobby, searching for the first flight to Kiev, Ukraine. At this point fans are met with Dexter’s trademark interior monologue, which addresses the topic of maintaining one’s secrets concerning his or her true identity.
Our “friendly neighborhood serial killer” Dexter has found himself in quite the pickle. Fans of Dexter will remember that in the Season Six finale, a certain central character, Dexter Morgan’s sister and Miami police lieutenant Debra (Jennifer Carpenter), walks in on the blood analyst murdering Travis Marshall (Colin Hanks), the homicidal biblical zealot. While this does not mark the first time someone has learned of Dexter’s murderous alter ego, it marks an event every fan has long awaited since the first episode of the series in 2006: Debra’s discovery of her brother’s true identity.
Season Seven aims to depict the ramifications of this revelation in its 12-week run and, based on the first episode alone, does so quite effectively. One issue with the past two seasons of Dexter was not so much a loss of intrigue, but absence of weight or consequence for Dexter and the characters involved. If Dexter can not console his sister in the wake of her newly acquired knowledge, he risks prison, losing the only person he has ever cared for and, even worse, losing his son Harrison. If Debra can not come to terms with what her brother is, she risks her job with the police department, her relationship with the only male figure she can turn to and her morality.
Along with a return to form in terms of contextual relevance, Season Seven plans to introduce viewers to several new characters, including Yvonne Strahoviski, Katia Winter and Ray Stevenson, who actually appears in the first episode of the season as a Ukrainian crime boss.
With readjustments in narrative priorities and the reintroduction of a foreboding aesthetic, Season Seven of Dexter is shaping up to be one for the books, but only time will tell.
Courtesy of buzzinetv.com and 3.bp.blogspot.com