The following contains spoilers for Dexter: New Blood's ninth episode, "The Family Business," which aired on Showtime on Jan 2. For more, check out our review of last week's episode.
"You tell Harrison you kill people, there's no going back."
Well well well. Where do we go from here? How will it all end? New Blood's penultimate episode, "The Family Business," may have had a few nagging snags but the core story here was so overwhelmingly powerful and fulfilling that it's easy to overlook those right now. Dexter showing Harrison his Bay Harbor Butcher methods, slowly unfurling his meticulous M.O. while also using sneaky psychology that made Harrison want for more, and fill in the necessary blanks on his own, was an absolute apex for the series.
Of course, the show didn't need to have previously ended poorly for us to get here, but it did need the time away, right? Or at least the time jump, which the real-life time away allowed for -- demanded, even. This story could not have been told in Season 8 without leaping forward by a decade and, as it turns out, it's everything the it needed. Leaving things with Harrison as a non-character -- and us knowing his "born in blood" origin and only being able to predict/project a future for him -- was how the original series was designed to close. And most of the time, the series treated him like an off-screen pain anyhow.
Now though, having Harrison be fully grown and in the mix as a damaged soul, and an actual individual for Dexter to contend with and wrap into his own legacy, is inspiring and delightfully demented. Dexter and Harrison killed Kurt together and Dexter carefully demonstrated to Harrison how all of this madness made them heroes, which is something Harrison already dabbled with mid-season when he wanted to be seen as a champion protector for attacking Ethan.
"The Family Business" was a wonderfully paced ride, but not one without a few beautiful bumps. Every so often, it would seem like Harrison was out. Like, Dexter had gone too far and when actually faced with killing and mutilating up close, Harrison might realize his dad was a monster and that was it. Harrison would balk. But it didn't happen. Still, it was so, so important for the boy to teeter there, on the edge.
There were a few curveballs thrown in to test the kid too, like Kurt telling Harrison that Dexter had killed Matt (letting Harrison know his dad lied by omission) and then Dexter telling Harrison that he'd killed Trinity (again, something that could have shaken Harrison since Dexter killed the guy he wanted to kill). But Harrison stood firm. However -- and this could disrupt (even spoil?) things in the finale by being overly convenient -- Harrison may spot Dexter's lie and turn on him, that lie being killing Trinity as payback for Rita when that's not how it went down at all (speaking of... Kurt even got a little posthumous revenge on Dexter this episode too).
This possible turn could be done well, mind you, but they're going to have to really work to sell Harrison figuring it out. That being said, there are many ways for the finale to go, most spelling doom for one or more of the four crucial characters -- the Morgans and the Bishops. On one hand, Angela's a lot like Deb and LaGuerta, but on the other she's been looking for Iris' killer, and the person responsible for killing all the runaways, for decades. One glimpse of Kurt's vault of horrors may change her mind about vigilantism. Or something might happen to make Harrison doubt this crusade, or even push him way too far into it. Needless to say, the endgame has exciting potential.
"The Family Business," written by O.G. Dexter writer/story editor Scott Reynolds, felt like a warm inevitability. With a flashback to Dexter killing a murderous clown named Mr. Wiggles to Ghost Deb's sorrowful pleas to not tell Harrison about the murders, going unheard it was a haunting corker. The defeated beat Deb takes on Dexter's shoulder ("Please don't"), right before he tells Harrison he's a killer, was amazing. The whole thing was more intense than most of Dexter's lethal "cat and mouse" games with past killers and it was just a father trying to help his son feel seen, while also feeling seen himself, with the added danger of losing his son forever thrown in if, at any point, Harrison was like "WTF?" and ran.
Jack Alcott, who entered the acting scene in a big way back in 2020's The Good Lord Bird, has been quite wonderful these past few episodes as Harrison. Sure, he had a lot of thankless "tortured teen" stuff to embody at the outset, but watching him cry last week in front of Kurt when Kurt flipped a switch and tried to kill him, wondering what he'd done wrong, was so wrenching. And then this week, Alcott nailed all of Harrison's reactions as a lost boy whose life has just now started to make sense and fall into place. There was hesitation, but also a deeper comfort, because for the first time he felt like he belonged.
We previously mentioned a few snags, and the first was the timeframe of Kurt killing Molly. Seeing her already dead was a great moment but Kurt must have, like, ran off into the woods and killed her (and embalmed her!) that very night. The other bizarre thing was Dexter and Harrison going over to Angela's house for Christmas. Obviously, this morning gift exchange was probably set up weeks earlier but...didn't the Bishops more or less break up with the Lindsays? It was all played awkwardly from Angela's perspective but not from anyone else's, which was just a bit strange.
Those hiccups aside, "The Family Business" was a tremendous outing for the entire series as a whole and it's positioned the story nicely for the finish. Whether it sticks the landing, we'll have to see.
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/3JFO5Co
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