Dexter: Dress Code, Review

Just like last season, Hannah McKay has popped up at the halfway point to slow everything down. With just a few hours remaining, it seems like the writers of Dexter are throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks, and one of the ideas they seem to be fixated on is a love interest for Dexter.

This season, we haven’t had any sort of consistency as far as story or theme. The one thing that keeps coming into focus though is an eleventh hour romance for a titular psycho. So far this season, love has been wafting in the air only in subtle douses. With their relationship on the mend, it was looking like Deb and Dexter were about to head into the incestuous romance we have all been dreading. More than a few times it felt as if Deb or Dexter were only a head turn and smooch away from realizing an actual relationship. Then, we also had the cute neighbor popping up randomly. We all knew that she was destined to be apart of the picture in more ways then just a love interest though, and tonight that proved to be true, but we’ll get to that later. So with a few options on the table, it seemed unneccsary for Hannah to come back in as Dexter’s real one true love, but here she is.

Speaking of unnecessary, what about last week’s cliff hanger? If all Hannah wanted to do was talk and gauge Dexter on a murder, why did we need the big dramatic poisioning of Deb and Dexter. The move was so puzzling and over the top Dexter and Debra spend the first half hour wondering why she went through all those lengths only to not kill them? It only proves that the move was just a cheap ploy by the writers to reintroduce the character in a shocking manner, but back to the love talk. It is somewhat interesting for Dexter to pine after this doomed romance with Hannah, but it feels like a story that we’ve already seen and one that we surly don’t have time for. I’m so glad that Hannah’s husband was offed tonight solely for the fact that now it doesn’t have to be a dragged out ordeal taking up another chunk of an episode. I’m just sad to see the show backtracking, but maybe this fits into the whole, “can psychos have feelings?” thesis of the season. I don’t know, I’m not happy about it.

I’m also not happy with Zach Hamilton. Like many times throughout the course of television and film history, someone had the bright idea that a kid sidekick would freshen things up, like Indiana Jones and Batman, and just like those instances, this guy was wrong. Zach is the annoying kid sidekick that Dexter desperately didn’t need, and he only proves it more this week. I’m glad to see that this was what Dexter’s neighbor was being set-up for, however, because the other things she could have been, like a love interest or a possible threat, just didn’t seem likely. Now we get to watch Dexter reconsider his whole mentoring of Zach, which seems like more of a tedious internal struggle than an interesting plot twist. The clock is ticking folks, and they’re pissing the minutes away.

Den of Geek Rating: 2 out of 5