Eight years after he crept into the woods of the Pacific Northwest, Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) returns to audiences in Showtime’s “Dexter: New Blood.” Over the run of the original series, “Dexter” went from a critical darling to a case study in how not to end a series. At its peak, it was landing annual Best Drama and Best Actor nominations at the Emmys, among others, and making dozens of lists of the best of television. By the end, it was a shadow of its former self, producing a final season that was inconsistent and even nonsensical before limping to the finish line with a conclusion that regularly ranks among the most-hated series finales of all time. “New Blood” should be a corrective, a way to wipe away the memory of that final year, but it falters by failing to really justify its existence. The good news is that it’s nowhere near as incompetent as the worst of the original series, but it’s also surprisingly forgettable, almost as if the creators over-corrected in terms of their crazy plotting and so delivered a series that barely feels like “Dexter.” Say what you will about the original “Dexter,” it was rarely as easy to ignore as “New Blood,” at least through the first four episodes sent to press.
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It turns out that Dexter Morgan has been a good boy for the last eight years, keeping his “Dark Passenger” at bay in a small community in the Northeast. He works at a hunting store called Fred’s and dates the local sheriff Angela Bishop (Julia Jones). Sure, he still talks to a dead relative, but Harry Morgan and his code have been replaced by Debra (Jennifer Carpenter), who now takes on the part of his twisted conscience. Going by the name Jim Lindsey (a nod to the author of the books, Jeff Lindsey), Dexter seems to lead a simple, ordinary life. Of course, that has to change.
Two sons drive Dexter’s return to his old routines. The first is the spoiled brat of a wealthy businessman, later played by the great character actor Clancy Brown. This rich kid is the kind who demands Dexter bypass the background check to sell him a gun to go hunting, and Dex soon learns that he has even worse skeletons in his closet, including a boating accident that led to the deaths of five people (although it does seem a bit anti-Dexter that Morgan doesn’t prove the guy’s guilt, which was a basic tenet of the show early on—he had to have the evidence beyond a shadow of a doubt.) When things go haywire during a hunting excursion, Dexter has to scramble, both to keep his truly dark side from emerging and to stop his girlfriend and the locals from figuring out his secret.
As if that’s not distracting enough, Harrison (Jack Alcott) ends up on Dexter’s doorstep. The son that Dexter had with Rita (Julie Benz) before sending him off with his serial killer stepmom Hannah (Yvonne Strahovski) is back, first seeming like he just wants to be a part of his dad’s life. Soft-spoken and potentially brilliant, Harrison rings a lot of alarm bells from the very beginning, and not just because the writers remind viewers that he witnessed the murder of his mother in a way that’s awfully akin to how Dexter’s Dark Passenger was formed. Is Harrison carrying the same demons as dear old deadly dad?
Meanwhile—“Dexter” always had a lot of “Meanwhile”—there’s another monster out there, someone who has been kidnapping girls before murdering them. Seen only in brief diversions in the first few episodes, his identity is revealed at the end of the fourth, setting up a different kind of tension for the second half of the season.
This is a good thing because “tension” is what the first four episodes lacks. “Dexter” was always about its title character scrambling to stay one step ahead of everyone around him, and an element of that has returned in how he has to once again outwit local law enforcement, even his girlfriend, while playing the role of dad to the son he abandoned. But the stakes feel notably chillier and less intense. There’s a startling lack of gravity here, in part because Hall, who is once again very good, has been given almost no balance. To be fair, he slides back into Dexter Morgan in an impressive manner, finding the sly smile with which he used to open every episode but also portraying how much Dexter now wants to hold onto the normalcy that was once just a façade (and how much harder that is to do when a crime has been committed in the middle of nowhere as opposed to a murder capital like Miami). Hall is far and away the best thing about “New Blood.”
As for the supporting cast, Carpenter is fine, but Debra was a much stronger counter to Dexter when she was corporeal. Alcott and Jones don’t do anything wrong, per se, but they lack the flavor of former co-stars and guest stars like David Zayas, John Lithgow, Jimmy Smits, or even Colin Hanks (and the introduction of a true crime podcaster played by Jamie Chung feels like an annoying afterthought). Brown’s role feels like the one to fill this hole in the second half of the season, but one wishes that “New Blood” had premiered with an ensemble as rich as its protagonist instead of delaying that satisfaction. There’s just too little to “New Blood” to hook anyone but the hardcore fans for the first few episodes.
The reports are that “Dexter: New Blood” is not a full new series but a final chapter, sort of a revision of the end of Dexter Morgan (although it’s not hard to envision Showtime changing that approach if the ratings justify it). With that in mind, one presumed that this show would come out guns blazing, giving a formative character in the history of the network the kind of send-off that he deserved in the first place. Maybe that will happen in the final four episodes, but the most surprising thing about “New Blood” is how much it really fails to pump new life into a dead franchise. [C]
“Dexter: New Blood” debuts on Showtime on November 7.