***SPOILER ALERT! If you’re waiting to see the season premiere of Dexter on September 26, do not read on.***

By Rob Siebert
Editor, Fanboy Wonder

I have never seen a bad episode of Dexter, and I’ve seen ALL of them.

Granted, some seasons have been more thrilling than others (season 3 was a bit more tame). But if you think you can find a bad episode, name it and I’ll fight you. Dead serious.

Photo from thetvaddict.com.

Last season, viewers were flabbergasted when Dexter found his wife Rita dead in a bathtub filled with blood. The culprit was obviously the sinister Trinity killer, whom Dexter had just murdered with his own special brand of justice. His infant son sat alive on the bathroom floor next to the tub.

Heck of a way to end a season. Believe it or not, I typed “Dexter” into the Google search field about a week ago, and one of the suggested searches that popped up was “Dexter, is Rita really dead?”

Naturally, this season’s first episode gave us the fallout from Rita’s death, which we’ve waited almost a year to see. Dexter becomes emotionally vacant following the incident, leaving Deborah to plan the funeral. Detective Quinn suspects Dexter of the murder, seeking out possible leads. Dexter’s stepdaughter Astor lashes out in anger at Dexter, accusing him of being apathetic about Rita’s death. All the while, Lieutenant Laguerta and Sergeant Batista ponder whether their department should be investigating this murder, as opposed to the FBI, who are still hunting for Trinity.

This is probably the most emotional episode the series has ever seen. Most of our key characters are grieving. Deborah’s grief prompts her to do something some fans have seen coming for awhile: Hook up with Quin. She apparently saw it solely as grief sex, but he doesn’t seem to see it that way. Meanwhile, Dexter is wracked with guilt. He knows he brought Trinity into the house, and feels it’s his fault Rita is dead. He tries to leave his infant son in Deborah’s care, as he destroys several ties to his life in Miami, and flees on his boat. But when he kills a man in anger, the voice of his dead father Harry (who actually serves as fraction of Dexter’s inner monologue) convinces him that he must go back. He arrives just in time to perform Rita’s eulogy, and he realizes that although he thought he was an emotional vacuum, he truly did care for her.

After this episode, Quinn (played by Desmond Harrington) is playing a more aggressive version of the role he played last season, as the one person who vocally suspects Dexter isn’t what he seems. I’m interested to see if the show’s creators can make this character distinctively different than James Doakes, Dexter’s previous nemesis. Like Doakes, it looks like he’s going to conduct his own personal investigation into Dexter’s life, which means we’ll probably see more characters from last season popping up, such as Jonah, Trinity’s son.

Putting Quinn with Deb (Jennifer Carpenter) is a nice way to insert a bit of conflict that wasn’t there with Doakes. But I’m wondering if Deb actually suspects Dexter. Remember, last season she found out that Dexter’s brother was the ice truck killer, and how the two boys saw their mother being chopped up with a chainsaw. If the ice truck killer turned into a monster, Deb has to at least be wondering if her brother has those same demons inside him. I’m anxious to see what kind of twists and turns she takes this season, especially now that she and Quinn have the connection they do.

Image from daemonstv.com

One of the nice things about this episode is that we get to see Rita (Julie Benz) alive one last time. We see her first date with Dexter. It turns out he used their meeting as a front to catch a killer, which I thought was great. He was lying to her from day one, which only added to his guilt.

Michael C. Hall’s performance as Dexter in this episode is naturally subdued, as his character is feeling something he’s never felt before, and is struggling to keep his mask on amidst everything. I absolutely loved that primal scream he let out toward the end of the episode. It sounded like a wild animal in pain. It was perfect.

Next week, it looks like we’ll have more anger from Astor, we’ll see Quinn talk to Jonah, and Dexter will be back on the hunt. It’s unclear at this point what LaGuerta and Batista’s story arc will be this season. But imagine that will become clearer in the next episode.

Overall, a great start to season 5. It gave us what we were looking for in terms of fallout from last season. But more importantly, it planted some seeds which I’m very interested to see blossom.

Rob