Review: Dexter ‘Dress Code’

Last week, Dexter brought the titular hero a new friend in the form of the young serial killer, Zach.  While normally Dex might deal with this in his own special way, some urging from Vogel prompted him to give the kid a chance and try to train him in the ways of the code.  So now Dex is a Jedi master, though whether his padawan shapes up or not is another thing.  And as the episode closed, we got to see the teased return of one of my personal favorite characters, Hannah.

After being drugged by his ex-girlfriend, Dex wakes up on the other side of town.  Puzzled that he and Deb are still alive, he makes it his quest to find out why Hannah is back and why she decided to drug him if not to kill him.  So off he goes to track down the girl, finding out that she’s now married to some big-time casino guy with lots of cash.  But, alas, Dex still has feelings for her and, if Hannah can be believed, she is still all goo-goo eyes over him as well.  When Hannah’s husband gets aggressive, Dex decides that he’s got someone new to take down.

Naturally, Debra is pretty upset with the return of the poisoner that tried to off her, so she goes to talk to Vogel about it.  The doctor isn’t too keen on Hannah’s return either, so it looks like a front may be forming against her presence.

As far as Zach goes, Dex is trying to show the kid how to control his urges but Hannah coming back throws a wrench into the works.  He keeps calling on Zach to help him out by using his rich-kid connections, but gives little in return.  Dex is not the best coach, it seems and when Zach loses control again it further complicates their relationship.

In the meanwhile, Masuka finds out that his daughter is working as a topless waitress and, being the good dad that he is, decides to hook her up with a job as a lab assistant down at the cop shop.  Debra is having strange relationship issues with her boss, who has now openly stated that he’s attracted to her.  And Quinn gets booted from following Zach around by some lawyers, although we’ll see how long that lasts.

As usual, Dex always seems to have his hands full.  It’s a formula that kinda bugs me, since the overall story has problems developing when they just spend their time jumping from arc to arc.  Luckily, they concentrated mostly on Hannah this time around, but some of these side-plots need to go away or the show may become muddled (a trap is has fallen into in the past).

As far as the new people in Dex’s life, I’m all for the return of Hannah.  I thought she was the best part of last season and their continued relationship is something that is both potentially good and bad for Dex, testing his need for companionship against his code.  Given that Zach needs the solidity of the code to keep him in check, Hannah coming back could make things even more difficult.  Personally, I’m hoping that Dex kills Zach next episode.  I mean, there’s only so much he can forgive, right?

Next week on Dexter, “Are We There Yet?” in which our loveable serial killer has to continue dealing with both Hannah and Zach, even as Quinn and Debra continue to work against him.  Check out a few clips from next week at this site.

Photo Credits -           

Dress Code Hannah courtesy of ign.com