TV Review: DEXTER - Helter Skelter 7.9

Wow, what a brilliant episode, unfortunate though. Issak Sirko has met the end of his story line and with that goes one of Dexter’s best ever “big bad’s”. Ray Stevenson has genuinely been one of the best characters I have seen in Dexter for a long time. Season 7 as a whole has been on another level compared to the previous two and Stevenson is a big part of that. Was Issak Sirko the season’s “big bad” though? It certainly seemed that way for the most part, but in the last few episodes it seemed like it would go the way it did in “Helter Skelter” with Issak and Dexter almost becoming friends, or at least enemies who learnt to trust one another with Dexter even learning a thing or two. Maybe we have been guessing the “big bad” wrong all along, maybe it’s nightclub boss George Novikov (Jason Gedrick) who is really the bad guy here, after all it initially seemed that Sirko had been sent to Miami to get George to clean up his act, however in “Argentina” it was George who called home and effectively ordered the hit on Issak.

I can’t think that Dexter will let George get away with killing Issak, yes he did him a favour and certainly got rid of a headache but you can’t help but think that he might end up on Dexter’s table before the finale of this seventh season. Quinn is in way over his head with George, this week throwing him through a window before beating him to a pulp, and I wonder if comments I made a few weeks back about writers throwing us a clue that Angel Batista may be getting killed off is going to happen? I said then that it would be some balls up made by Quinn which resulted in someone shooting Batista by accident, that someone may be George giving Dexter an even bigger reason to treat him to a night out on his table. As always I’ll probably be completely wrong but at least its fun to get some ideas going.

It will be interesting to see how they move the Dexter and Hannah story along now, Dexter is clearly head over heels in love with Hannah, but is that feeling mutual? I’d say probably not following their embrace at the hospital, Hannah seemed a little awkward to me. I thought last week that Hannah may be one of the only characters who rolls into another season, setting up an “ideal” life with Dexter and Harrison, but now I’m thinking that may not be the case. It’s one of those where I really don’t know how there going to go with it and I guess we will just have to wait and see. If anything I’d say that her Lila side may come out a little more, especially now that the threat of Issak is out of the picture, what will keep us entertained until the season finale?

Well, there’s always La Guerta who is all but convinced that she will be re-opening the Bay Harbour Butcher case, her primary target? Dexter Morgan. Now of course she has the help of her former boss Captain Matthews, who will help her out on the case in return for his old job back. I can’t see that being much of an exciting race to the finale can you? As yet La Guerta has nothing but circumstantial evidence against Dexter, eg; he moved his boat to a new marina about the time of the investigation. I’m thinking that Matthews might figure Dexter out before La Guerta does, after all it’s been proved in the past that she’s not exactly the best detective in the world. If Matthews, or anyone else does find out it will of course be in the season finale. Again, I may be totally wrong about it but it’s worth a mention to see what you think.

I hope that the excitement does not drop out this season now that they have done with the Issak story, I’d hate to think they got rid of him to early when all along it looked like he would be the usual suspect for Dexter’s kill table in the season finale, but I guess that’s a good thing because non of us now know where they are going with the story, we can only guess as I’ve done above. Dexter has been panned especially last season for becoming to predictable, there was nothing predictable about the way Issak was killed in this episode (not even by Dexter) and I think the writers are really working on making us sweat about what’s coming next. My favourite thing about tuning into this season so far was to see a Dexter showdown with Issak, as for next week I don’t know what to expect, I just hope it’s a good as season 7 has been so far.

“Helter Skelter” was a brilliant episode, where we were served up some brilliant scenes between Dexter and Issak and some real unpredictability in the way in which Issak was killed off, I loved this episode, I’m loving this season and I just hope things continue to get better and better as we roll towards the end of a season that has re-affirmed Dexter as the best show on TV.