Dexter’ Season 6, Episode 7
Finally! A slam-bang episode packed to the gills with old foes, grim surprises, and a sustained sense of grisly fun I thought would never, ever return to this show.
- Showtime
- In one of this week’s many surprises, Dexter diagnoses his dead brother’s inflamed prostate.
Last week’s conclusion left us with an enraged Dexter drowning Mos Def’s murderer in the Atlantic, and then looking up to find his dead brother, The Ice Cream Truck Killer, inexpicably watching him from the shore. This week, we find out that dead brother is still dead: what Dexter sees is the ghost of his brother, popping up in his darkest moment of the season like a cartoon shoulder-devil. But for us, the viewers at home, he’s also like a lapsed Dexter fan, someone who was fully on board the first season but, for whatever reason, never tuned back in until now. His constant surprise and disgust over what Dexter has become. Using the ICTK to provide commentary about the direction of the show is a genius move—at least to a critic like me—because it gives the writers a chance to acknowledge and respond to its fan’s gripes about the show’s domestication of Dexter. I only wish they had thought of this trick earlier, and that they drew it out over several episodes. Can you imagine an entire season of Dexter and Ghost Bro, crisscrossing the country, fussing over who to kill next? Now that’d be a season worth writing about.
But I’m grateful for what we did get: a slam-bang episode packed to the gills with old foes, grim surprises, and a sustained sense of grisly fun I thought would never, ever return to the show. Which is to say, at least until next week’s episode: Hooray! I love Dexter again!