The unsettling feeling that we got from the last twist in the episode “Smoke Signals” (1×03) of the miniseries Dexter: New Blood (Clyde Phillips, 2021-2022), when it already seemed that our beloved serial killer played by Michael C. Hall (Six feet underground) could breathe easy, it’s important enough that “H Is for Hero” (1×04) Don’t waste a second and start tackling it right away in the minutes leading up to the titles.
If the scenes with an imaginary Debra Morgan (Jennifer Carpenter) in the role played by her father, Harry (James Remar), in Dexter (James Manos Jr., 2006-2013) are usually quite surreal, between comedy, pure psychological tension and even the terrifying, the one at the beginning of this episode plays with the fantastic possibilities of their mental essence; and gives us an unexpected and very grateful example of reverse motion.
In addition to new referential ironies that can only be understood by Dexter Morgan himself. On the other hand, like Clyde Phillips (Suddenly Susan) knows wonderfully the fundamental dynamics in this macabre Showtime intrigue, that more characters join to put their noses in the investigated homicide and to corner its elusive author to a greater extent is expected, and one of the dramatic engines basic of this history since forever, which could not but recover to Dexter: New Blood.
Like father Like Son
What comes next is a memory about the most iconic adversary of the first television fiction, Arthur Mitchell (John Lithgow), the Assassin of the Trinity, and what happens in the chapter “The Getaway” (4×12), the first great tragedy in Dexter before Debra Morgan’s in “Remember the Monsters?” (8×12). And it is not gratuitous, as it is directly related to the nosy Molly Park (Jamie Chung) and, especially, to the enigma that is the same Harrison Morgan (Jack Alcott) and the revelations we predict about him.
In fact, the surprising violence that follows makes us suspect that the resemblance to his father is not limited to having identical impulses, but also spending his wits to cover up the consequences that lead him to danger in Dexter: New Blood. And the guilt for the damage it produces, very well exposed in a specific scene with a proper writing of Tony saltzman (Goliath) and the simple staging of the director Sanford Bookstaver (House), which repeats after “Smoke Signals”.
The full and familiar narrative density in ‘Dexter: New Blood’
But the most attractive from “H Is for Hero” we found it in the investigations of Michael C. Hall’s Dexter Morgan, his illusory conceptual elements and his visual composition, in which he uses forensic skills that we missed in all his analytical capacity to discover the intuited imposture of his son; with a verbal punchline that is most pleasant because it is recognizable. And with it, in the whole of the episode, narrative density returns from Dexter, propped up with his almost omnipresent voice in off.
Another relevant piece of the puzzle about the personal mystery surrounding Angela Bishop (Julia Jones) is put in place and, at the same time, the character of Molly Park gets a complete sense for her intervention in Dexter: New Blood. And, for the final stretch of the chapter, almost as placid as “Storm of Fuck” (1×02) but much more interesting, Tony Saltzman and Sanford Bookstaver give us a substantial alternate three-way montage that culminates with two key revelations for the development of the miniseries, and for them we are already looking forward to seeing the fifth.