Dexter Season 7 Episode 3

Another great episode, although i was disappointed that Louis

was killed off too easy. I really wanted Dexter to kill him, it,

would have been more interesting. Deb & Dexter relationship has

taken another turn, Deb is trying to understand or a part of her

does understand why Dexter does what he does. I can only

speculate what the writers will do next, btw where is Harrison...?

Buck the System was a superbly entertaining episode of Dexter though some scenes were shocking and seemed a little too easy and convenient. I did like the story lines and their development and it was great watching Deb watch Dexter who tried to bring her into his world a little. I liked that Dexter was able to prove that his code and values do make some difference and Deb is definitely contemplating this. I look forward to watching what happens next!!!!!!!!!

In this episode Dexter proves to Debra that what he does can save lives and can stop the people responsible because at the beginning she hated that Dexter was stalking someone and said not to kill him but when she runs into him she nearly gets killed herself and a woman dies just before Dexter gets there Dexter also planned to get Louis out of his life and if getting him fired and Batista's sister breaking up with him wasn't enough he also found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time when the Ukrainians find Dexter's boat with Louis on it and kill him and now know that Dexter killed Victor.

This week's Dexter continued this season's winning streak after least season's shaky and quite frankly lame final half of the season. The first half of 6 was great but measure of a great show is keeping and adapting arcs that can be sustainably watchable throughout the whole season not just through half. Anyway, Dex and Batista have to go visit Wayne Randall's travel buddy (the guy who threw himself in front of a semi last week) and it turns out to be Chuck's (Yvonne Stakovski) who I believed would have more of a presence not just evade Angel's questions and subtly flirt with Dex. His dropping of the Q-tip was so unlike him it made me giggle sine Dex doesn't really get nervous around women that aren't a big part of his life. Dex also begins hunting a suspected killer of four women, Ray Speltzer. He tries to get out from under Deb's overprotective eyes and imagines casually killing people since he hasn't killed in quite some time. He says that he needs space but Deb won't give it to him. Once more there is no Harrison and Dex's being away from home is just kind of written as "Oh Jaime's taking care of him." Louis gets his comeuppance as Dexter mails the ITK hand back to the forensics lab as the buyer of it being dissatisfied with the condition of it and Masuka fires him. Dexter also manages to mail the sex tape he had with the prostitute last week to Jaime and she breaks up with him. Meanwhile, Isaac finds way to find Victor if he's still alive with a GPS chip that was in the necklace Irina was wearing the night of her death. Apparently it is the key to the cops uncovering Isaac's heroin distribution from overseas so he seeks to keep it tightly under wraps. He gets an IT guy to get the chip in the necklace's last known location which is out to sea at the marina Dexter's boat is at. Isaac goes there with the nightclub owner and finds Louis there about to drill holes into Dex's boat. He says it's his boat and when Isaac threatens to torture him he gives them Dexter's name and that he works for Miami Metro before Isaac shoots him in the head and leaves. He's strangely on track to finding Dexter quicker than most villains encounter Dex in Dexter's history of villains. Isaac and Dex's exchange in the club not knowing who each other are and speaking casually about finding something was well acted particularly by Ray Stevenson who can certainly hold his own against Michael C. Hall. Dex tries to bring Deb in on the Speltzer thing when she tails him to a bar where Ray is flirting with a waitress. Dex says that he can find the evidence for Deb to let him kill Ray but she sticks to her guns. When she goes to LaGuerta to put put surveillance on Speltzer LaGuerta reminds her of the limits of being an officer that they can't prevent crimes so much as solve them. Dex's talk of saving lives comes to her head and she puts a patrol car to watch Speltzer so that Dexter doesn't try anything. Dex searches the cemetery where Ray works and finds an earring that belonged to one of his previous victim's in a mausoleum filled with bulls. Deb sends the patrol car home for the night but watches by herself outside of the house while Ray and the waitress meet for their date at his house. He chokes her and comments that she is strong. Just as Deb is about to drive away she sees strobe lights from the house and breaks into Speltzer's house gun blazing. She works her way upstage which appears to be a haunted house/maze/torture chamber. Speltzer is decked out in a bull suit and fights Deb but Dex shows up and clocks him on the head. They find the beaten to death body of the waitress and Speltzer manages to get away and he had taken the earring from the mausoleum by the time the cops had gotten there. While this was predictable arc wise of "Deb needs to have a scenario where she learns that Dexter's methods are necessary in the world" didn't make it any less enjoyable. Louis is good to be gone since he was an unfleshed out creepy mess that just hung around plotting against Dexter for some reason. But Isaac has my respect as a cold blooded villain an with Deb releasing Dexter from his "cage" out into the "wild" of kill as he wants land it doesn't change that she is devastated from the lesson she's learned. Dex may eventually track down Speltzer, but I think it's much more convincing if we never hear from him again just to solidify it as a "Deb was wrong" point for the show.

- Spoilers ahead -

I'm shocked at how fast this season is going - which makes me question as to whether that is a good or bad thing. In 4 episodes Deb has gone from being distraught at her brother being a serial killer, to her 'understanding it'. Furthermore, 'The Brotherhood' - who I am assuming to be the 'season bad guy' - know who killed Victor. Hopefully this won't signal a slow down in pace over the next few episodes, as I've been quite impressed as to how tense and smooth each episode has been thus far.



Debra is feeling like a bit-part character at the moment. She doesn't really have any grip on the decisions that Dexter makes, and now that he's moving back to his own house I can't help but think she will have an even less an impact on his actions. Hannah McKay however I can see being in it a little bit more, as there seemed to be some chemistry there (whether that was intentional remains to be seen).



I'm definitely disappointed at the death of Louis, the whole build up concerning his character just seems pointless now. I have a feeling that Dexter will be under suspicion of his murder though; blood on his boat, body dispensed in the sea (Deb will see the links) and so on.



The season ahead looks promising, with layers of story available for the writers to explore - lets just hope it's coherent and not rushed!



P.S I feel sorry for his son Harrison! Never see the poor lad.

This episode was crucial - Deborah needed the push to start accepting "The Dexter Way". While it's a relatively slow start to the season, I like the way the writers are pacing themselves.



I wanted to highlight some of the clever (but obvious) connections between Raymond Speltzer and the Moloch theme in Jeff Lindsay's third Dexter book (Dexter in the Dark). Speltzer is clearly into worshipping (or at least fetishizing) bull-deities. The mausoleum had a bull headstone (which was part of the original design, and probably why Speltzer chose it as his trophy house/shrine). Inside there is a shrine that Speltzer set up, dedicated to the Minotaur - with a photo of the Athenian bust of the Minotaur, and a crude etching of a labyrinth (maze) with the trophy earring in the centre. There was also a pendant with the zodiac sign of the Taurus (the Bull). His chosen method of killing is to don a bull-mask and chase a female victim through an improvised maze, again a mythological reference to the Minotaur.



Moloch, of course, was the pagan god with the body of a man and the head of a bull. It was the central conceit of the third book, which was poorly received because of its overt supernaturalism. It's clear the writers of the show aren't foolish enough to go down that misguided path, but I like the way they managed to work the reference into the show.



By the way, I was happy they got rid of Louis, he was a singularly irritating character who (unfortunately) hadn't done enough to deserve Dexter's knife. I just wish the mobsters had played with him a little before dispatching him. They had a power drill, for Chrissakes!

Things definitely did pick up at the end, but it was still a bit of a disappointing episode. Still not buying this Ukrainian mob as legitimate villains for the season, and the dream sequences of Dexter killing people were completely unnecessary.



It is more slow-moving than usual, and that's not how this new dynamic with Debra knowing the secret should be. Still good television despite the flaws though.

This show is going nowhere. I don't like how Louis was killed off, such a pathetic death for a character that had potential. Good job lazy writers.



Episode 1 was AMAZING. But these past two episodes have let me down.

The focal point of the episode was to have Debra realize that she can`t stop Dexter from killing and there is a certain value to have this particular serial killer cleaning the streets. No surprise here. She obviously was not going to arrest him and if the solution to Dexter`s addiction was as easy as watching him 24/7, Harry would have done it. In the past, they have tried love, fatherhood, religion...now, the sister, still Dexter cannot stop, I don`t think any fan will accept the alternative anyway. Dexter is a psychopath and we are rooting for him, we might as well just face it:P. Anyway, since Debra`s discovery, things have been moving a little bit too fast. In 3 episodes, she went from total disgust through "move in with me" to "you have to move out". You`d think that after discovering that the brother she loved more than she should was a serial killer, she would still be in the disgusted phase, especially as the head of the police force.

Anyway, the entire direction of the season is still promising and overall the show is doing good, especially after that shockingly bad last season(where the show went from one of the best to one of the worst shows on TV). There is still some eye rolling moments though. That last kill scene was terrible. Dexter always had a certain style of cinematography, it made no sense to switch to the free camera style, and it was painful to watch. They wanted to create something disturbingly sick with a killer dressed as some kind of animal and torturing some girl to death but it just turned out plain ridiculous. That killer was probably the worst one in history of the show. How would someone expect to get away with a brutal murder, with death metal music at maximum, along with lightning effects...in a flat, that he seemingly trespassed and made a horror chamber out of it...come on, you expect that from bad B-Horror movie from Rob Zombie! A rip off of everything bad about Saw. Also, there are those conveniences. Of course, they are not as appalling as last season`s conveniences (how can they), but i do hope they are addressed. For example, I hope they don`t expect us to believe Larguerta will think Debra`s hunch about that psycho is due to her "lizard brain". This can easily be tight up with larguerta`s interest in the bay harbor butcher and I hope it is.

As far as the positives goes, Ray Stevenson plays a great villain and will no doubt be one of the highlights of the season. The fact that he is after Dexter now is very promising. Louis death was a surprise since they build him up as a threat for Dexter for an entire season. The fact that he died on Dexter`s boat will probably mean trouble in the future. And there is a new love angle. Aside from Dexter-Rita, those are never interesting on this show. The purpose of that Russian stripper is probably to get Quinn closer to the truth about Dexter. There is big potential here; all angles will eventually lead to Dexter. In the trailer for the next episode, Debra tells Dexter that bad things will eventually find him. The show now has an end date, so I don`t expect things to just miraculously work in Dexter`s favor once again. He is in many aspects not the bad guy but in so many others, he is the bad guyso expect some consequences as the shows approaches its end. I doubt they will ever reach season 4`s greatness again but this should still be an interesting ride.

This is a marked improvement on last week's horribly written episode and though I still think the writers are doing a poor job with Deb, her slow-to-accept attitude almost made this episode feel like it should have come before the last one.



It was pleasant to see Louis killed off. There was definitely potential with that storyline but nothing we haven't seen before in variation. It makes me hopeful the writers have something more innovative and original up their sleeve. The Viktor plot still feels a little trite and tiresome but maybe that will start to blossom.



On the plus side, this week's true villain was genuinely scary and just the level of gravitas needed to push Deb closer to the dark side. Even Quinn wasn't boring as hell this week.



I hope to see more of LaGuerta and her hunch about the ice truck killer. I also hope to see Michael C. Hall coming out of this role a little more. As his solitary life of murder has imploded, he's remained frustratingly stoic, where there was opportunity for him to become far more versatile in his depiction of Dexter. I really hope to see him flex more acting muscles as the season continues.

Yawns.

Though liking Dexter's original concept a lot, i find myself not caring anymore.