Sal Price stares intently at things throughout “Chemistry.” And then he dies.
This week’s table-turning Dexter opens on a reflective, post-coital Dexter considering his recent loss of control and the inexorable attraction some people feel toward each other.
That pull pulsates throughout “Chemistry,” a crystallization of the mid-season plot points that recaptures the urgency of the opening episodes and puts the seventh season back on track for a whirlwind final half.
The next morning, Dexter remarks that Hannah never asked why he kills. “I don’t need to,” she responds cheekily.
Watching them from afar is Sal Price, the true crime author trying to bed Deb and uncover Hannah’s role in the Randall killings — and other murders — who tails Dex and Hannah for most of the hour. Dexter uses his dextrous deception to divert Price temporarily.
Back at Miami Metro, LaGuerta bemoans the dearth of Bay Harbor Butcher evidence. Deb tries to persuade her to give up and admit Doakes’ culpability, but LaGuerta hesitates.
Amazingly, I rooted for LaGuerta during this scene. I’m both excited and scared by the potential of a Breaking Bad-esque transformation of Dexter from antihero to straightforward villain. If we eventually can’t root for Dexter, this show would lose much of its intimate and dangerous appeal.
Deb tells Dexter she’s found out his blood coverup, but thinks it’s so he can kill Hannah. She’s almost right.
The police discover the Isaak Sirko evidence has disappeared thanks to the ridiculously coiffed (and written) Quinn, who later finds himself fully in the Koshka Brotherhood’s pocket. Batista suspects him of foul play, but nothing comes of it.
Both separately evading Price’s journalistic entreaties, Dexter and Hannah talk about why they kill.
“Killing for me is just surrendering to nature’s way,” she says. “Survival of the fittest.”
Dexter thinks hard about her words: “She accepts both sides of me. The whole Dexter.” Deb can’t do that, and it seems she never will. Soon after, Dexter sneaks into Price’s house to steal DNA for a frame job and to delete his work-in-progress book.
This has become the Hannah season. Dexter’s past is part of every episode, but the throwbacks to earlier seasons are far rarer. That momentum is missed, but Dexter and Hannah have excellent chemistry and it’s great to see her mess with his head.
Price is a welcome addition to the show, especially because Deb has tentatively let him into her heart. He talks with Hannah in the episode’s most chilling scene, when she confesses to the author.
Yvonne Strahovski gives by far her greatest performance on the show thus far as she conjures up swollen forehead veins and torrential tears confessing to the stabbing murder Dexter covered up with his bad blood work. The scene is an affecting validation of Strahovski’s acting and Hannah’s presence on the show.
Isaak’s back on the streets and back to threatening Dexter, who cops to Viktor’s murder.
Price comes to Dexter’s apartment to interview him, but the supposed lab geek lays out his planned blackmail: Planting evidence linking Price to the murder he covered in a popular book he wrote.
Price stands up incensed, then clutches his chest and collapses, splitting his head on the table. Poisoned, Dexter surmises, by Hannah.
Miami Metro brings her in and Deb steps up to the plate for another fantastic interrogation scene with close-up shots and no music.
Dexter talks with her after, and she’s blustery with confidence.
“I’m never going to prison,” she tells him after admitting she killed Price. It’s a line reminiscent of Dexter’s unsettling “everything is in my control” outburst in “Run.”
Hannah tells him she killed her husband after he said he’d leave her if she didn’t get an abortion; she later miscarried. She also points out that they were looking out for each other throughout the entire episode, a big step for two killers. In bed with her later, Dexter thinks about love: “Am I even capable of this?”
Deb, after listening to Price’s audio recording of Hannah’s confession, calls and interrupts Dexter’s heartfelt musing. Complaining about the failure of evidence, Deb seems exhausted. “There has to be some f—ing justice,” she gasps. “It’s you, Dex.”
Dexter silently waits for her to spell it out. “She deserves it,” Deb tells her brother. “I want you to make it right.”
Then she drops the bomb: “Do what you do.”
Dexter silently contemplates this order, then looks directly at the camera. Cut to black.
I punched the air in celebration at that ending. Deb has accepted the whole Dexter. That line even recalls Hannah’s reaction to Dexter nearly murdering her.
The previous two episodes sputtered setting up the beakers and flasks for the chemical reaction that exploded this week. This is Dexter done right.
Next week: Deb tries to convince a lovelorn Dexter to kill Hannah before taking matters into her own hands and Isaak cuts to the chase in his attempts to murder Dexter.
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