*Premise spoilers.*
I resisted this show for quite a while. To be fair, I haven’t had ShowTime since Black Monday ended, so I didn’t have a convenient means to watch it. But I’m wary of TV revivals in general, and while I loved the original Dexter, it varied a lot in quality throughout the different seasons. Over the last few years, my brother and I have joked about the expanding “Dexter Cinematic Universe.”
But then I picked up Paramount+ with ShowTime for a while—my immediate motives were Joel Fry-based, although there was other stuff I wanted to check out too—and I wondered whether I wanted to include the new Dexter shows. When I found out that Peter Dinklage is in Resurrection, that clinched the deal. I wanted to go back and start with the first of the new series, though. I went nervously into New Blood, but I wound up enjoying it more than I thought I might.
Years after faking his death, Dexter Morgan has cultivated a safe, simple life for himself in a sleepy little hunting town in upstate New York. He has an assumed name, sticks to his routines, and is dating the police chief. When he “slips,” it’s with the worst possible person (the A-hole son of an important local businessman) at the worst possible time (his teenage son Harrison has just shown up looking for answers.) As his girlfriend Angela starts the search for the missing man in the woods near Dexter’s cabin, he tries to stay one step ahead of the investigation while also navigating his strained relationship with Harrison.
In a way, it actually helps that Dexter’s quality rises and dips across the years. That show trained me to kind of view each season as its own separate unit, where even the worst ones are still anchored by Michael C. Hall’s always-excellent performance as Dexter. From that perspective, I’d call New Blood a pretty decent midrange season for the series-turned-franchise.
The main mystery/antagonist is good—suitably creepy, and this story leads to some nice showdowns. It’s interesting to see Dexter scrambling to cover his tracks when he’s gotten rusty and makes some clumsy mistakes you wouldn’t have seen from him at his height. I like some of the Harrison story, especially Dexter’s desire to connect with his son feuding with his need to protect his secrets. I like Angela as the largest police presence in the show, along with the thread about Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. And yeah, it’s just great to watch Hall do his thing. He’s always been so great as this character!
On the other hand, I’m not a fan of using Deb as Dexter’s inner voice/conscience/headmate/whatever the person Dexter talks to in his head is. I feel like they kind of overdo that whole thing—I was never overly fond of the device when he used to do it with Harry, and I don’t think it works that well with Deb. Some of the Harrison stuff gets a little rote, and while I like some of the characters introduced for this series, others feel too tropey to me. And although I really like the idea of including a true crime podcaster, I think the execution is too cheesy.
Besides Hall, Jennifer Carpenter’s noncorporeal Deb is the only main actor from the original series to carry over, although we also get some brief callbacks and cameos. Jack Alcott does a nice job as Harrison—his interactions with Hall are very good. For the new characters/actors, I particularly like Julia Jones as Angel and the consistently-reliable Clancy Brown as Kurt, the father of Dexter’s “slip.”
On the whole, a mixed bag, but I’d say I liked it more than disliked it. As I said, it’s still watching Hall do his thing as Dexter, and you can never go totally wrong there.
Warnings
Strong violence (including offscreen depictions of rape,) strong thematic content (including allusions to child sexual abuse and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Woman,) language, and drinking/smoking/drug use.
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