Dexter

By Alan Sepinwall(asepinwall@starledger.com) Quick spoilers for tonight's "Dexter" coming up just as soon as I fix the disposal... Keith Carradine was great, as was John Lithgow, and the moment where the two crossed paths was as tense as it was designed to be, especially since both of them realized on some level who the other one was.

By Alan Sepinwall(asepinwall@starledger.com) • Angel and LaGuerta are together? Sigh... I like the supporting actors on "Dexter," David Zayas as Angel in particular, but their non-Dexter-related subplots are never very compelling, and just there to lighten Hall's workload. The one plus of this is that it means instead of having to slog...

By Alan Sepinwall(asepinwall@starledger.com) Spoilers for the "Dexter" season three finale coming up just as soon as I break my hand... • How do you put Dexter in the clutches of another serial killer and allow him to escape so quickly? That should have been an entire episode right there, and now they can't even go there again because they di...

By Alan Sepinwall(asepinwall@starledger.com) Jennifer Carpenter gets beat up a lot here and on various message boards, but I thought she did a very nice job with Deb trying to deal with the news about Harry. And the scene where Anton talked about what it felt like to be the Skinner's captive gave us a different perspective on what it must be...

By Alan Sepinwall(asepinwall@starledger.com) And the idea that Miguel was a monster all along -- if not a killer -- solves a lot of my problems with the recent progression of that story. If, as I had speculated before, Miguel had been using his brother Oscar as an avenging angel, and that he turned to Dexter as both a replacement and an attem...

By Alan Sepinwall(asepinwall@starledger.com) And in terms of guesses for our serial killer, I'm assuming it's the head tree-trimmer -- not only because his underling was so terrified of him, but because, unless my eye is way off, he's being played by Jesse Borrego, who isn't quite a Hey, It's That Guy!, but still falls under the Most Rec...

By Alan Sepinwall(asepinwall@starledger.com) In case you hadn't noticed it by now, that Michael C. Hall is kind of a good actor, isn't he? Even though the outcome of the Dexter/Camilla story never really seemed in doubt, Hall and Margo Martindale played the hell out of it, as Camilla pleaded for a painless death and Dexter wrestled with w...

By Alan Sepinwall(asepinwall@starledger.com) These are three words that needed to be uttered in this episode, possibly more than once. How can Prado be smart enough to figure out that Dexter is capable of being a vigilante killer and yet not connect the dots to the vigilante killer operating out of Dexter's office a few months ago? How ca...

By Alan Sepinwall(asepinwall@starledger.com) Meanwhile, the Prado thing starts to get interesting. Dexter and Miguel's confrontation at the episode's end was the highlight of the season to date, with Jimmy Smits continuing to bring this unsettling intensity and Hall playing Dexter in full retreat.

By Alan Sepinwall(asepinwall@starledger.com) Now, I loved the first two seasons of "Dexter" and I continue to think Michael C. Hall is doing great work here. But if you've been reading my reviews this season, you already know I don't think this is a good idea. If three seasons already seems like too much "Dexter" to me -- the concept gets dilu...

By Alan Sepinwall(noreply@blogger.com) To me, the strongest moment in this episode -- maybe in the four episodes I've seen -- is the one quoted above, where Dexter tears into an imagined version of Harry, wondering if this really was the path he had to follow. From the flashbacks we've seen of Dexter as a kid, it seems like Harry did t...

By Alan Sepinwall(noreply@blogger.com) • With Doakes' unfortunate passing, it makes sense that Angel would wind up as the new sergeant, though all of LaGuerta's talk about the responsibilities of that rank never seemed to apply to how Doakes carried himself. Taking Doakes' place as a body in the squad, meanwhile, is Desmond Har...

By Alan Sepinwall CBS made it official: Bowdlerized versions of "Dexter" will air on the Eye beginning Sunday, Feb. 17. As I wrote back when Les Moonves first suggested the idea, I don't think it's going to be that hard to get the show down to broadcast standards. You'll have to change some of Deb and Masuka's dia...

By Alan Sepinwall JAMES GANDOLFINI / Tony Soprano “The Sopranos” (HBO) MICHAEL C. HALL / Dexter Morgan “Dexter” (Showtime) JON HAMM / Don Draper “Mad Men” (AMC) HUGH LAURIE / Dr. Gregory House “House” (FOX) JAMES SPADER / Alan Shore “Boston Legal” (ABC)

By Alan Sepinwall I'm glad the writers didn't sell out Lundy in the end, that Dexter escaped the noose without Lundy having to look the fool. (Even here, you could tell Lundy knew something wasn't right with the way he said the evidence against Doakes was "overwhelming, really.") Even his affair with Deb came...

By Alan Sepinwall Sorry for that opening digression. Let's get to the core of the episode, which was the back-and-forth between Doakes and Dexter. We already saw last week that Doakes' approach to Dexter had changed from how he treated him before the Butcher discovery. How much of that was simply him playing h...

By Alan Sepinwall I enjoyed the cat and mouse game in the cabin between Dexter and Doakes, and how being exposed to the true face of Dexter -- even hidden behind opaque plastic sheeting -- shattered Doakes. If a hard man with blood on his hands like Doakes would react that way, how badly would Deb and Rita and the...

By Alan Sepinwall Okay, so how do we keep Lila around now that Dexter's dumped her?" I know! We'll have her start dating Angel!" But wouldn't Dexter just tell Angel to stay the hell away from her?" Well, what if Dexter tries to tell him but Angel doesn't want to listen?"