The following contains spoilers for Dexter: New Blood's seventh episode, "Skin of Her Teeth," which aired on Showtime on Dec 19. For more, check out our review of last week's episode.
Even back when seasons of Dexter ran for 12 episodes (instead of New Blood's 10), things started to feel a little chewy around Episode 7. It's the time Dexter, as a concept/series, starts to run out of steam on a seasonal level. Viewers can anticipate the endgame, Dexter and his foe usually know who each other are, various walls are closing in on our anti-hero, and then the show puts up purposeful plot roadblocks to delay things. "Skin of Her Teeth" is very much in the vein of that: when Dexter chapters start to blur more, and episodes as episodes start to mean less.
The good news for New Blood is that we don't have to wait as long for the end to come around. We also know, for all intents and purposes, that this is the new series finish (unless a new deal is struck for more), so big things'll probably happen. We also left "Skin of Her Teeth" with Dexter now, finally, wanting to talk to Harrison about his own darkness (a full Bay Harbor Butcher confession? Perhaps). We just have to wait one more week, it seems, before that happens.
Nothing can really feel vital on New Blood until someone finds out Dexter is a serial killer, and preferably that person is Harrison. At least, it's preferable that he's the first to know. The closest we have right now is Kurt figuring out that Dexter killed his son. That's... okay? It definitely helps the current "cat and mouse" dynamic, but it's still a little confusing as to why Kurt sat on this information. At the time he discovered it he wasn't anticipating being caught for anything, and if he was what help could "Jim Lindsay" have been? Does he know more than just the one murder?
Kurt, as a character, is a little all over the map. This week he was a diabolical manipulator, overconfident that he could beat any murder charge, not even knowing what Angela had discovered or what evidence she had to throw at him. Other times, in previous episodes, he's seemed like a careless buffoon, getting publicly drunk after every kill. Throwing emotional fits whenever someone fights back. This isn't a knock against Clancy Brown, just the overall presentation of Kurt Caldwell. In the third episode, Kurt was annoyingly one-note, just screaming "How does this help find my son?" every few minutes. It almost might be better if the Kurt situation was handled before the finale -- like, in next week's episode. There's plenty to wrap up after that, from a finale standpoint.
In fact, that's one of the things that helped Season 7 play better than any of the other post-Season 4 episodes of Dexter. It didn't have one final boss and it wrapped up its minor adversary story early. If you're telling enough good stories, the killer doesn't have to hold until the finale.
Anyhow, "Skin of Her Teeth," despite being a wild goose chase for the most part, still had some good moments. Dexter briefly got to show off his crime scene analysis skills, even on the decades-old Iris cave grave, and that briefly mended the fence between him and Angela. Kurt gave us a clever alibi for his skin being in Iris' teeth, recounting how it must have been his wayward drunken father (while the flashbacks showed us that it was him and that he shot her down after trying to help her). Of course, what he said about his dad, the parts when Kurt was a small boy, were most likely true.
It just seems unlikely that Kurt and Dexter can continue to tango for three more episodes. That doesn't mean it won't happen, but Kurt's already bleached and ditched his cabin and has resorted to having Dexter beaten and kidnapped. It just seems like the perfect set up for Harrison to see how crazy Kurt is, which is what Dexter's wanted for a few episodes now. Also, Harrison can't hold out any longer either. After his tearful "I'm so f***ed up" speech to Dexter, spilling how the Trinity episode of Molly's podcast made a bunch of memories flood back, he needs relief mighty quick.
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/3pfXfO8
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming
No comments:
Post a Comment