Season Seven
The first half of season seven was not so much an improvement as a miraculous reinvigoration of the ailing series. The first episode dove straight in with Deb confronting Dexter over what she witnessed and for the first time since season two the pace began to rocket along again. One by one Deb put all the pieces together and suddenly the show was compelling again. It did not shy away from delving right into this supremely messed up sibling relationship and even managed to tie in Deb's apparent romantic feelings in a way that didn't make me cringe. Add to this the addition of the best guest character since the Trinity Killer, the dangerous, suave, gay Ukrainian mob boss Isaac Sirko, played by the awesome Ray Stevenson. His relentless pursuit of revenge against Dex for killing his lover gave the show a sense of stakes that it had lacked for the last two seasons. Within three episodes Sirko figured out Dexter's identity and began the hunt. Dexter was once again compelling in a way it had not been in years. Between Deb's confrontations and Sirko's attacks, the noose had never felt tighter around Dexter's neck. But then it all went wrong. First, the show killed off Sirko in the most anticlimactic way possible. So, it turned out that Sirko had no real purpose toward the overall story and left with no lasting impact on anyone. The season then switched all its attention toward the relationship between Dexter and Hannah MacKay (or Lumen 2.0). This may have worked, if the whole 'Dex finds a soulmate' concept hadn't already been done in season five. Sure, you could argue that Hannah, as a cold blooded killer, was a different kind of partner for him, but the effect was the same. Dex learns to love someone who he relates to, blah, blah, blah. Suddenly it felt like we were back in season five or six. The momentum was gone, Deb had accepted the truth about her brother and the only thing close to tension was generated by the very much in the background investigations of LaGuerta into the Bay Harbor Butcher. Then, in the final two episodes, things got interesting. Dexter's dogged pursuit of the man who killed his mother, who, it turned out, was released by LaGuerta as a trap for Dex, created a last minute sense of danger and tension and for the final two episodes Dexter was back to doing what it did best; dangerous cat and mouse games between Dex and a worthy opponent. In this case, that enemy was LaGuerta, a supporting character from the start now turned into a genuine threat. And the ending, where Deb kills her in order to save Dexter was truly shocking and disturbing, the kind of thing one would expect from Breaking Bad or Sons of Anarchy. It left the series in a place it had never been before and made the impending eighth season look pretty promising.