5.10 In The Beginning But then the season was always going to have an explosive finale, from the moment that Dexter saved Lumen, and with her a huge can of worms that got unleashed. Before In The Beginning, we didn’t really get much of a handle on the sort of person that Jordan Chase was under the marketing driven exterior, but now how nasty a piece of work he is has finally been revealed. I’m not going to go into the details of what transpired, but some of the scenes with Lumen this week were quite harrowing, and what interested me most was to see Dexter’s reaction to them. He’s a seriously reformed sociopath, if such a creature exists, and the tenderness with which he treats Lumen was genuinely moving in places. This is turning into the oddest love story ever, but that doesn’t make it any less watchable, with both actors firing on all cylinders. Given the emotional journey that Dexter is making, one can’t ignore how badly the last season ended for him, and what another blow like the death of Rita might do to him. But it’s not just him that’s on the edge. There are strong hints that at the end of season 5 life’s not going to be the same for most of the key characters in the show, with a simultaneously crisis enveloping them all. The two who look most likely to come to the fore are Debra and Joey Quinn, who are both close to working out the chain of disappearances and linking it to Dexter. Liddy has stumbled into Dexter and Lumen’s hobby, and that might be a fatal mistake. I’m curious how he thinks he’s going to present his case, because he stole equipment to spy on the couple, and as he’s not got a warrant for the surveillance, almost none of the evidence he’s got is admissible in court. But clearly those aren’t things he’s bothered about. Two more episodes to go, and we’re on the edge of a disturbing precipice, wondering how long the fall takes. I’m not even going to attempt to guess where we’re being taken and what the consequences for all concerned might be. It’s a white knuckle ride and there’s no getting off now. The only certainty is that we’ll know soon. Tick-tock, tick-tock! Read our review of episode 9, Teenage Wasteland, here.
