Dexter 7.06 “Do The Wrong Thing”

Dexter shows that even deranged killer of killers can do well with the women.

For the first time in the seventh season of Dexter, the Morgan Sibling dynamic takes  a backseat for a different focus — the maturation of bubbling subplots. Of particular concentration in the sixth episode is venomous vixen Hannah McCay, a female who makes our protagonist more unnerved then any of the psychopathic madmen he’s squared off against.

After getting scary mob boss Isaak Sirko thrown in jail for killing a trio of Columbians, Dexter narrows in on Hannah for his next kill. An accomplice to a series of murders when she was fifteen, Hannah has been granted immunity, thus putting her in the criteria as potential prey for Dexter. Doing his typical preemptive fieldwork, he discovers Hannah poisons anyone she views as a threat, and the two engage in a light game of cat and mouse. In one particular exchange Dexter discovers that Hannah shares his emptiness, the space he fills with the blood of his casualties. When the blonde catches Dex snooping one too many times she demands to know why.

“I want to take you out.”

If anything, Dexter has continued to provide awesomely dark innuendo, this nugget being the most romantic.  From her first appearance it’s been clear that Dexter’s smitten with Hannah, and in “Do the Wrong Thing” he continually reminds us through action and his now iconic voiceovers that he’s flustered in her presence.

This of course leads to the ultimate scene of the episode, and one of the season’s most significant. On suggestion from Harry the ghost Dad (Henry Remar) Dexter grows worrisome that Hannah is actually stalking him, so he lures her to a Christmas-themed amusement park and plunges her neck with his handy animal tranquilizer. She wakes up bound in saran wrap, and Dexter delivers one his best table speeches ever, which are routinely the show’s best moments. Telling Hannah this is how he fills his emptiness he removes the tape from her mouth. She doesn’t plead or ask him to explain.

“Do what you gotta do.”

Jeez oh man, even I’m a little turned on by that. And Dexter definitely was, because he cuts his captive from the table, gets naked and mounts her in a passionate embrace. Crazy people move fast! It’s clear as crystal that Dexter is fucking up royally. The name of the episode points to that. He knows his new woman is bad news but he dives in anyway. Hopefully, the show examines Dexter’s rationale for this, and hopefully it’s more than Hannah’s hot bad girl factor.

They do point to this through a clever mention of Lumen, the assault victim that helped Dexter (or did Dex help her?) from season 5. Debra has a lot to do this year, and between a date with non-fiction crime writer Sal Price and handling Batista’s contemplation of retirement, the other Morgan feverishly tries to defuse Captain LaGeurta’s Bay Harbor Butcher investigation.

LaGuerta puts forth her theory that the Butcher’s victims might fall in the house of open cases, and ponders if Jordan Chase, the guy who orchestrated the group rape of Lumen and other girls, might be dead. Deb asks her brother about Jordan, and he guarantees that everything is fine and pleads her to back off. She pries further and figures out that the girl “with the weird fucking name” was an accomplice. Talking about Lumen is a clear strain for Dexter, and the heartbreak of the girl he shared his secret and activity with suddenly losing passion for their relationship still weighs on him.

(Weirdly, this exchange missed a chance to address the scene from the end of season 5 were Debra talks to the Chase group killers [Dex and Lumen] though does not see them, and ultimately lets them go. This, in my mind, is the true start to her path of accepting “greater good murder”)

All that and you probably forgot about Isaak, huh?  Don’t worry, Dex did too.  In prison Isaak dispatches the leader of the Columbians, then uses his cell phone to call for a meeting to discuss how he’s getting out of lockup. The plan is simple: lean on Quinn hard, and when the heroin slingers do that, the self-proclaimed dirty cop first returns the bribe money, then later accepts it after serious threats, including sending his stripper girlfriend to a sex pit. His task is simple, make Isaak’s incrementing evidence disappear, and Quinn does so begrudgingly. It looks like Sirko will burst back into the picture sooner than expected, and I’m betting the intimating force will be ready for Round 2. Will Dexter?

The ending made the episode because the whole Hannah thing felt a little peculiar and possibly forced. That said, even the surprise sex at the end, creepy as it was, is premature, but excusable because that’s how these passionate “wrong things” go sometimes. Dexter normally thinks with this “lizard brain”, but this time, maybe the first time since that crazy addict chick from season 2, he’s thinking with another body part.  Now that he has a sister who is constantly checking up on all this activities there is no way he can get away with getting off for long.