1x06 Too Many Tuna Sandwiches

[6.8/10] This one felt a bit bloated and lumbering, but I like the thematic material here.

In effect, what’s happening is a battle for Harrison’s soul. On the one hand you have Dexter, who is worried about opening up for fear of scarring his kid, and who is worried about the dark impulses that lie within Harrison. On the other you have Kurt, who seems more open and empathetic with Harrison, and who encourages him to use his rage rather than suppress or address it.

I don’t love every piece of the execution, but there’s something there. I particularly appreciate how the storyline addresses the final sin of Dexter’s last season. It was fucked up that Dexter abandoned his child, let alone left in the hands of someone who’d poisoned everyone she’d considered any kind of partner to that point. That's not current showrunner Clyde Phillips’ fault, but treating the consequences of that choice seriously helps redeem it, at least a little, and makes the revival better by default.

New Blood tries to account for the decision a little bit. Dex tells a plausible story to Angela about how after all the death he’d faced, all the horror, he couldn't live that life anymore, or face the wreckage that he’d caused, with a fear that he could damage his son to boot. But at the same tie, it doesn’t shy away from the justified anger Harrison would feel at his father abandoning him, the psychological scars he would have from being “born in blood” the same way dexter was, and the pain and trauma he experienced from being without his mother and father, and eventually without any parent, at such a formative age.

Harrison is in a messed up space right now, and Dex is right to try to intervene. But Harrison also has a right to be angry, a right not to trust his dad. Making that the thematic focus of this episode, and the season more broadly, is much to New Blood and the writing team’s credit.

I find myself a little tired of the mechanics of the plot once again. I can appreciate the sense of Kurt being madder and madder because he has a pathological need to kill, and whether it’s Chloe not playing along, the woman looking for a ride at the truck stop bailing before he could lay his trap, or Dexter rescuing Molly Park before she can be his latest victim, he’s thwarted at every turn. But he’s being more and more obvious, including with Molly, to where you wonder how he’s been able to be a successful sterile killer for so long.

I also don’t have much interest in the “Dexter suspect Molly outed him to Angela” subplot here. On the one hand, I have to give the show credit because it makes sense that Dexter would think that. Why in the world would he suspect that Angela ran into Batista at a conference. (Because it’s a stupid turn in the plot.) But the audience also knows it’s not true, and so there’s not much tension in Dexter stalking her and trying to get information. And it never seems plausible that he’d actually kill her if she was onto him. So while him rescuing her from a really sloppy Kurt is mildly interesting, the whole thing’s a bit DOA.

I suppose I appreciate where they go with Angela finding out about Dexter’s real identity. She doesn’t turn him in, but is understandably distressed that the person she thought she could trust has been keeping something huge from her all this time. I wish the show would just pull the trigger on whatever it’s going to do with them, but I can understand the reason for the slow burn. Plus her needing his skills as a forensics expert is at least something.

That just leaves Harrison. He and Audrey finding comfort in one another as outsiders who still feel the hurt of their childhoods is a good beat. Audrey’s backstory delivery system is as clumsy as any in Dexter, but there’s something well-observed about teenagers who feel alienated from normal life and find solace in one another.

Harrison himself is a more interesting and nuanced character than I might have expected. Again, Jack Alcott’s performance is high quality, as he’s reserved and soft-spoken, but with an intensity that betrays the rage roiling inside Harrison. The wrestling match incident is a little too cute, but sells how Harrison can lose control, something his real father is trying to contain and something his surrogate father seems to encourage.

Overall, this is a step down from the last couple episodes, but I still find myself intrigued by what New Blood is doing with its major character focus here.