1x04 H Is for Hero

[7.2/10] You know what? I liked this one! Probably because it focused more on the Dexter/Harrison legacy material rather than the brand new Iron Lake material. But even so, in a revival season that's had a rocky start, I’ll take it.

I like both sides of the Dexter/Harrison deal here. On Dex’s side of things, his forensic brain is tingling that there’s something off about Harrison’s story on how he stopped a school shooter. The angles don’t make sense and the blood spatter doesn’t add up. But the show uses Deb well to voice his insecurity that he needs Harrison to be damaged in some way, preferably the same way he is, so that they can have a closer relationship. On that account, Dexter doesn’t want Harrison to be well-adjusted, popular, and heroic, because it would mean both that he’s everything Dexter wanted to be but wasn’t, but also that his son wouldn’t need him.

There’s something very rich there! Using Head Deb and imaginary stabbings to dramatize Dexter’s inner turmoil over this comes off really well. Credit where it’s due. I wasn’t always Jennifer Carpenter’s biggest fan during Dexter’s original run. But she does a superb job in a more outsized and intense role that asks a lot of her here. Dexter reckoning with what his son is, and what he might want him to be, through the lens of Deb’s presence and recriminations works surprisingly well.

I also appreciate the exploration of Harrison himself in all of this. As Deb points out, and Dex himself once acknowledged, Harrison too was “born in blood.” Him listening to a true crime podcaster turn his mother’s murder into entertainment fodder drives home how craven and harmful making a spectacle out of real people’s tragedy can be. It’s a little heartbreaking to see him trying to recreate the Trinity Killer’s moves as some sort of coping mechanism, contending with a dark passenger of his own. And it’s a little scary to see how the greater empathy he seems to have over his father makes him better at manipulating people, better at covering up what he’s done.

His statement about having to choose between the man and the monster is a fairly trite one for this franchise, but again, if New Blood is doing nothing else right, it’s picking up on one of the most interesting threads from what is arguably its best season, and exploring the consequences with conviction and an introspective character focus. The new material isn’t always great, but it’s the kind of thing I like to see when a franchise delves into its legacy material.

Heck, I even appreciated Police Chief Bishop and true crime podcaster Molly Park in this one. While I still find Molly kind of annoying and Poochie-esque, I like the idea that their coming together solves a problem. Molly wants fodder for her show, of course. But she also has the resource of scores of fans, which could help Angela solve the missing persons cases that are her white whale in an under-resourced station. The characters themselves aren’t standouts yet, but there’s a solid idea at the core, which helps.

That said, everything involving Kurt Caldwell seems like a foregone conclusion. Some of the thematic material, with he and Dexter talking about whether to correct your son before it’s too late or give them the latitude to figure themselves out is solid enough. But I don’t really care about his long game with lying about Matt’s disappearance. And his scheme to use his position as a local benefactor to lure runaway girls into his murder shack already seemed pretty plain.

Overall, though, by focusing on the Dexter/Harrison material, developing their relationship and showing Harrison’s evolution, New Blood comes up with its first genuinely good episode.