Tag Archives: Jennifer Carpenter

Dexter: 8.01 – “A Beautiful Day” Season Premiere Review

Before watching this, as I always do, I watched several old episodes of Dexter to try to get in the mood. To be honest, I enjoyed the first couple of episodes of season 7 and the season finale was great, but the rest was pretty much garbage. It is hard to see a show with such a unique premise and strong story crumble like this has. Part of me wishes that the show would have ended after Trinity in season 4. Because of this, it has been difficult to get excited about Dexter. What made me even care to watch the premiere of season 8 the night it aired was that this is how the show will all end and I plan to follow it there.

A Beautiful Day Dexter

The season premiere begins 6 months after the season 7 finale. Dexter has gotten his life together, obviously unaffected by the shooting of Maria LaGuerta. Dexter has never been one to dwell on the deaths he causes. In fact, if he is affected by anything, it is when he cannot kill, like in season 2 when Doakes was tailing him.

A Beautiful Day, Dexter, Dokes

Deb is MIA at the memorial service for LaGuerta and nobody has heard from her in a while. The first time we see her she is snorting coke and screwing a jewelry thief, Andrew Briggs. Clearly, she is having more difficulty coping than her brother. Basically, she’s a hot mess.

A Beautiful Day Dexter

After finding out that Deb is on a cocktail of prescription drugs and that she hasn’t checked into her job in 2 weeks, Dex tracks her down at a convenience store. Deb tells him that she shot the wrong person in that trailer. OH SNAP.

I have no clue how super-douche Joey Quinn pulls the tail he does, but we get to see him in action with Jamie Batista. This part isn’t super relevant, I just wanted to give everyone reading the opportunity to take a moment and imagine Aimee Garcia naked…

garcia

Matthews brings in a special guest, Evelyn Vogel (Charlotte Rampling), to Miami Metro. She is there to help with a new case. She is a neuropsychiatrist. The victim has part of his head and brain separated before being laid out. She profiles serial killers, so of course Dexter is extra nervous. She seems like she may be a bit of s psychopath herself. She starts grilling Dexter about how the Bay Harbor Butcher was, stating that it’s strange that Doakes had a short fuse. She said that it seemed like the Bay Harbor Butcher operated under some sort of moral guidelines. I really love what she seemed to be doing as I watched it.

Here is Charlotte Rampling back in 1976. (Via Getty Image}
Here is Charlotte Rampling back in 1976. (Via Getty Image}

Dexter, with his son in tow, tracks Deb down to a seedy motel so he can warn her the the fence she is waiting is in fact a hitman. Harrison is with him because Jamie took the night off. Father of the year, ladies and gentlemen.  He leaves Harrison in the car and escalation of the events result in an altercation with Deb’s target, Mr. Briggs. In a move that goes against all of his M.O. and history of preparation, Dexter stabs Briggs in one of his least impactful killings ever. Upon his return to the car he finds Harrison no longer asleep in the vehicle, and after a frantic 10 second search, finds the boy wandering through the parking light. Dexter picks his son up with bloody hands and a sullen look. After Deb calls the death in to the police, she is spotted by the hit man that Dexter was trying to save her from, “El Sapo”.

At the end of the episode, Vogel brings Dexter some of his childhood drawings. He chases her down and she tells him that she knows he cannot kill her because she doesn’t fit Harry’s code. And my thoughts are…. why did they wait until the end of the episode to make me excited?

dextergif1 dextergif2 dextergif3 dextergif4

In a sneak peek at the next episode, Vogel says that Serial Killers are a gift and that she needs a favor from Dexter. I love that there will be someone new who knows what Dexter is, but after LaGuerta’s theories before her death, his sister being MIA, and the fact that he told Angel “she died because she wouldn’t leave things alone” about Maria, there are already a lot of fingers pointing at Dexter right now. Too many people know or at least suspect him to be much darker a person than they originally thought.

I would give this episode a 2.5 out of 5. It was pretty dull for a season premiere, but it did excite me for episodes to come.

grizzly-rating-2-and-a-half-of-5

Dexter: Season 8 – First Peek At The Final Season!

The first official teaser trailer for Season 8 of Dexter has released!  Take a look:

As has already been said several times, this will be the final season of Dexter. This little preview suggests that Season 8 picks up a couple weeks after Season 7 ends, as Dexter tells Deb she hasn’t talked to him in weeks. Obviously Deb isn’t handling the fact that she *SPOILER*  killed LaGuerta *SPOILER* very well, since she missed her memorial and is very clearly drunk.

Oh… and then there’s this:

dexter

Chilling! Is Deb going to kill Dexter this season? Is that how it all ends? Or will he kill her? Or will they run off into the sunset together? Sigh… I suppose we have to wait.

dexter

Season 8 begins June 30th at 9 pm on Showtime.

Dexter: 7.02 – “Sunshine and Frosty Swirl”

In true Dexter fashion, the latest episode, “Sunshine and Frosty Swirl began where the premiere of season 7 left off. The title comes from Dexter’s interaction with an inmate who decided to come clean about where some bodies were hidden, after many years. Since Dexter had to be on the scene, he inquired as to how he changed; how he got rid of his evilness, or his dark passenger. After a gruesome suicide of the inmate (he hurled himself in front of a moving semi truck) Dexter realized that he hadn’t changed, and just wanted some sunshine and the ice cream across the street before killing himself.

After Dexter had officially admitted to Deb that he is a serial killer, she had a very difficult decision to make; does she turn him in, or does she help him? As you know, Deb is a sucker for her big brother and offered to help him try to control his urges. Deb has taken on the duty of rehabilitating her serial killer brother.

Deb has blinded herself to the obvious red flags about her brother being a criminal in the past. She seems to be a great detective, yet she has been completely oblivious to all of the signs. As Deb structures this information in her head, she realizes that Dexter was the Bay Harbor Butcher. She also starts remembering other signs. If this wasn’t hard enough news for her to take, she learns that her hero father whom she has spent her entire life trying to please, even after his death, knew about Dexter’s true nature; and had actually trained Dexter.

Although she tries like hell, Deb cannot watch Dexter 100% of the time. I am not sure what is going to happen between Dexter and Louis; after this episode, Louis is clearly not scared of Dexter. Even though Louis must know many dark things about Dexter’s past, he doesn’t seem phased by what he knows. This leaves two possibilities: Louis doesn’t know just how dangerous Dexter is, or Louis sees himself as more dangerous than Dexter. I am curious to see what comes of this.

A fun little turn of events was that Dexter did not kill anyone, but we did see a gruesome death. A mob boss by the name of Isaac, played by Ray Stevenson, murdered a bouncer by stabbing him in the eye with a screwdriver! Holy shit! This was so quick and unexpected, that I got a little bit nauseous. That is how you know this was a good episode; if you feel a little bit sick at the end.

When Dexter told Deb that he’d already tried to quit before and it didn’t work, her response was something I hadn’t really considered before. We all assume that since Harry had to nurture Dexter’s urges and teach him how to use them in a more positive (uh…ish) way, that there was simply no way he could help himself. However, Deb tells Dexter that since their dad helped him to become this sick man, it might be solely because of that, that he cannot stop. Harry didn’t tell Dexter to stop killing; he told Dexter to be picky about his victims, how to clean up after himself, and how to avoid getting caught. He used his son’s illness as a means to get revenge on the criminals who slipped through the cracks in the judicial system. If Harry had tried to get Dexter help, who knows how he would have turned out? I do not think that as his age, Dexter can change his entire way of thinking… his need. I know that Deb wants to see the good in him, though.

This was a very fun episode for me to watch. Being a huge Dexter fan, and having re-watched every single episode of the show recently, I can honestly say that I am excited for what’s to come this season. I had lost a lot of hope before the premiere, because of the lazy and poorly written previous seasons, but this one seems different. Different is what Dexter needed, no? What makes the boring episodes so lackluster? Normalcy and monotony. Here, we are getting some of the missing pieces to the puzzle that is Dexter Morgan… and I like it.

4/5 Grizzlies!

Dexter: 7.01 – “Are You…?” Premiere Review

The long-awaited Season 7 premiere of Dexter was last night, and though I had very low expectations following the disappointing season 6, I was pleasantly surprised. The premiere began right where season 6 ended; Dexter was caught sticking a knife into Travis Marshall by Deb. As she stood there, eyes wide and jaw dropped, the season ended and we were left to speculate what might happen next.

Continue reading Dexter: 7.01 – “Are You…?” Premiere Review

Dexter Season 7: Behind the Scenes With the Cast

There are about a million reasons that I am excited for the premiere of Showtime’s Dexter: Season 7. Everyone I know who is a fan of this show is sick of waiting. The way that season 6 ended left everyone with lots of questions and ideas about what is coming next. I present to you now, a behind-the-scenes video that will titillate you Dexter fans:

http://youtu.be/oaZmLnLaZt8

The first full trailer that was shown at CCI was absolutely amazing! Everything down to the music playing in the background was perfect. In the beginning of this behind-the-scenes featurette, Michael C. Hall explains that the show is always at its best when Dexter is in hot water. He then explains that season 7 is the hottest the water has ever been. Hall also goes on to mention that everyone else in the past seasons who has known Dexter’s secret has died. He’s not going to kill his sister, and she’s not just going to disappear, so how do they live with the tension?

You see Deb digging into the other parts of Dexter’s life… questioning Jamie, digging through his apartment, looking over old cases… and that is what I am most excited about. Deb is an extremely intelligent character. Her intuition, though, is not the greatest. She somehow has yet to notice any of the clues that piled up to point to Dexter’s guilt in the past. I am left to wonder if she will look back at all of the little inconsistencies in Dexter’s cover-stories, and realize that he has been hiding his true colors his whole life. Honestly, she cannot believe that this is an isolated incident. Jennifer Carpenter mentions that Deb is very powerful and could at any moment just throw cuffs on her brother and put him away. I do not believe that she will do that; Deb has broken the rules before. When Deb caught Lumen and Dexter after they killed Jordan Chase in season 5, she let “number 13 and her vigilante” go free. But this is quite a lot to try to ignore.

There’s also the Louis situation. What the hell is his angle? Why did he send the prosthetic to Dexter? Is that going to change the whole idea Deb has about Dexter? Maybe since Dex bound Travis to the Altar the same way Rudy did to Deb, owns blood slides that look exactly like the ones Doakes collected, and owns the prosthetic from the Ice Truck Killer, maybe Deb will just think that Dexter became obsessed with the killers over the years? Maybe it will help him in the long run.

I have said this a hundred time, but I feel I must say it again… I cannot wait for September 30th! Oh yeah! And we have her to look forward to!

Dexter Season 7: Showtime’s First Full Trailer!

Back in mid-July, during CCI, we showed you the first 2 minutes of the season 7 premiere (if you haven’t seen it, click here!). As if that two minutes wasn’t exciting enough, I bring you, friends of the internet, the first full trailer from Showtime!

http://youtu.be/J4GfsaYk-9k

This trailer could not have been better in any way! I have been excited about season 7. I knew that Deb has now seen Dexter kill someone. I was sure, though, that the rest would remain a secret. I was sure that she’d never find out who he really is. And now? I have no idea what is going to happen… and I love it! Also, they used one of my favorite songs of all time “Change” by Deftones. This trailer makes it seem like season 7 is going to be dark. Season 6 made me really miss Dexter’s dark passenger. It appears that they have brought him back.