Dexter Season 7,
Episode 11: “DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE” Recap & Review
After last week’s
groundbreaking Dexter-sode, “The
Dark… Whatever”—which saw Dexter making yet again another enormous shift in his
journey as a devilish angel of death—we’ve all been turning blue from holding
our collective breath for this season’s killer penultimate installment, “Do You
See What I See.” On the edge of what’s sure to be the most dizzying endgame of
any season of Dexter yet (let’s all kiss goodbye even the sacred shock that
overtook us in the final minute of “This Is The Way The World Ends”), how did we get here? And is there ANY
possible way out or trap door to slip through? We’re at the starting gates of
the final race at last, with the odds stacked heavily against our beloved
number one gun. If you’re still reeling from the thrills of this dicey new game,
try to ground yourself with the mini-synopsis below, followed by an in-depth
review of just what is spinning into fearsome motion with this episode and the
sharp stab of a surprising double-edged sword that’s changed the nature of
everything! So tell me, now... Do you see what I see? CAUTION:
SPOILERS AHEAD.
Last night’s episode
spins into action with a delicate reverie of Dexter’s future. Dexter? A future?
A state hoped for, instead of repulsed by? Dexter’s previous future-fantasies
have been marked by acute fears of his predilection for slitting throats and
stopping hearts ruining his family’s unknowable days-to-come. Several seasons
ago, he imagines stumbling across Harrison donning a miniature kill suit and
holding a garrote wire as Rita screams, What
have you done?! And now, he’s seeing himself settling into a happy daily
grind with a doll-like Hannah, who is tending plants in her loose, flowing tee
and endearingly baggy overalls. And Harrison’s coming home from sports practice
with an easy smile and amiable wave. Living the dream, alright. The dream
quickly recedes into Dexter’s present in which he’s contemplating what he
perceives as a distinctly plausible future life with the woman he loves. The
present has always been his key arena—an actor leaping from stage to stage, he’s
contented himself to try not to assess what’s to come unless he’s heeding not
the Dark Passenger, but his own desire to kill. Could it be that the safety
that Hannah offers is real? With Christmas in the air, it’s difficult not to be
wooed by the prospect of shackin’ up with a smooth, spry blonde who could kill
a man as easily as he one day and chatter about holiday traditions the next. It’s
the fact that we get a sense of utopia here that alerts us to its very
unraveling. Though we often find ourselves seeing the world through the eyes of
Dexter, our unreliable narrator whose thoughts are verbalized to us in constant,
we’re quickly reminded of the fact that there is a hell of a lot spinning into
motion just beyond his love-buzzed radar.
Even though Clint McKay
seemed to be highly absorbed in the notion of making a pretty penny off of
Dexter and Hannah—as the unofficial secretary of Hannah’s seedier secrets—he bothered
to leave Deb a juicy little tip before Dexter tipped his deceased body over the
side of the Slice of Life. Although
Debra failed to get Dexter to catalyze her hopes of avenging Price and
satisfying justice by “doing what he does” to Hannah, it would seem that a new
window of opportunity has opened. Death isn’t always the end of trouble; if
anything, it’s often the beginning. Batista tries to warn Debra against Arlene,
the sole living witness to one of Hannah’s varied crimes, but Debra has made it
abundantly clear that her ambition knows no brake pedal. From Debra’s
perspective, Dexter doesn’t understand how to take care of and protect himself
enough to feel any trepidation about the special role Hannah often assumes in
matters of life and death. As Deb learns to make decisions for herself, she
accepts the responsibility of protecting her brother and removing him from harm’s
way. This is her choice and hers alone. This isn’t playing cop for daddy—this is
laying down her all for what she believes in and establishing her own truth
after the old ones breathe their last. She is as loyal to Dexter as she is to
her own integrity, and she makes it clear that the best way she can manifest
love and remain true to herself is by
getting Hannah good and gone once and for all, and freeing Dexter from the
chains of thinking that he can only ever be understood by another killer. Now,
we can’t be exactly sure of what grounds Hannah approached Deb on in the first
place: it is likely that she was acting both on Arlene’s behalf, as well as on
that of her and Dexter. We can’t see the way the invisible scales between her
motivators hang—was she really seeking to establish peace, or instigating a
near-fatal warning against the consequences of Deb’s tenacity? Either way, we
KNOW where Deb stands: she would lay down her life to guard Dexter in the best, flawed, and yet genuinely human way she knows how.
If we look at Debra “laying
down her life” in the context of her near-death experience with the anti-anxiety
medication overdose… some interesting issues arise. We’re led to believe that
she is an innocent victim of Hannah’s darkness wielding its ugly head at last; after
an entire season of waiting for her cracks to show, it would appear that our
anticipations have at last been met. Yet, many of us are wondering if Deb planned this incident and orchestrated
it herself. Regardless of who’s really behind the devastating affair, two
things remain: firstly, Dexter will
never be able to fully trust a poisoner, even if it’s the woman he longs to
love. Secondly, Debra has committed
herself to protecting Dexter at any cost. Looking at the first issue, we need
to consider that Dexter actually starts to suspect Hannah before he has any
viable evidence against her. He is deeply provoked by the idea of there being
someone out there who could injure Debra and immediately comes to terms with
the fact that Hannah could so easily and so subtly do so. Before he even
confronts Hannah after the Christmas dinner that is all but lost on his dizzily
reawakened senses, he realizes that even if Hannah’s not the one behind Debra’s
hurt, he can’t trust her to never be that vessel of wrath. "We could have it all," Hannah begs - but he can never give that all if he seeks to preserve Debra. Even Brian had offered him that same kind of 'all;' being fully known and living in the light of some kind of mad freedom. However, the truth tears its way out of Dexter's agitated, protective heart: "What'll happen next week, when Debra has a heart attack? If anything ever happens to Debra, I'm gonna wonder if you had something to do with it!" By giving Hannah up
to the police at the episode’s piercing conclusion—that beautifully tragic
Judas-like kiss of betrayal around which the camera pans, until we see Debra
approaching to make the arrest (her body framed between Hannah and Dexter’s
faces, creating a visual metaphor of the way she intrinsically comes between
them)—Dexter sacrifices his fleeting hopes for the one constant of his life,
just as he did when he “put down” his own blood-brother in the first season. And
if Debra did dissolve her own pills
in her water and take the risk of killing herself to get Dexter to wake up and
smell the coffee, she did so out of her own sense of what is best for him. We
can’t deny that she truly loves Dexter with every fiber of her buzzing little
being; she may be wrong in her
approach to that love, but it is no less of a love than was Harry’s in giving
Dexter a Code to live by. There is no love that is in itself perfect and that
brings about perfection, when acted upon. It simply is. All we know is that Dexter cannot trust Hannah in the way that
he trusts his need to defend Deb from anything that could damage her—he knows
that he’s already done enough.
Did you see what I saw?
Do you see what I see? And what do we REALLY see in the previews for next week’s
explosive finale, “Surprise, Motherf**ker”!? Sound off in the comments below as
we ready ourselves for a new hurricane. This,
is the way the world really ends.