The long hair is gone. And that is a massive improvement. The sort of hindsight looking back at the past (hey, last week is still the past) makes me realize just how jarring that long hair really was on young Dexter.

Dexter is now on the floor of Miami Metro. First day on the job. Seeing him learning the ropes at the station is cool. Setting foot on his first crime scene though is a rude awakening for him. Sent off to play gopher at the coffee shop while the Miami Metro team checks out the crime scene isn’t what he had in mind. His innocence and naivete are on full display. The insight he has and offers to the veteran officers is laughed at. Not because he’s wrong, but because it was the most basic of observations.

Seeing Dexter interacting with Harry is nice, because in the main series we pretty much always saw Harry as a ghost in his psyche. The voice in his head trying to keep the Dark Passenger in check. Getting to see Harry as a cop and as a person is great.

I imagine it’s going to take a season or two to get Deb to an interesting place. She’s about to be a senior in high school, so she has the typical teenager mentality. Not that she was much less of a teenager in the main series, but there is a difference. As a high schooler, we can see she has nothing really beyond school and friends. The biggest thing we have with Deb is that she doesn’t really respect her dad right now. And that isn’t really her fault.

Harry is a single dad that is failing at raising two kids because he spends all his energy worrying about Dexter. We are seeing an awful lot of younger Harry in this. Centering on his recruitment of Laura Moser into his network of criminal informants. Although she is more than just a CI for him. Using her to get inside the drug cartel Miami Metro is trying to take down. I imagine this is going to be a full season side story leading up to the Dexter in the pool of blood scene. Although the young(er still) Dexter we see as a kid with Laura Moser is too old. It’s been awhile, but I felt like Dexter in the blood was more like a two year old. This isn’t an infant Dexter or even a toddler Dexter, he looks like he is about a six year old Dexter.

And we get two great ties to the main show. Camilla down in records! The first time they meet. And the even more fun genesis of a box of donuts coming in the door with Dexter. Much better idea than a veggie platter.

In this episode we have two crime stories going on. The son of a judge can has been kidnapped and become the focus of Miami Metro. Dexter is too new to the department to be helpful, so he takes his first dive into the cold case files and decides to introduce the Dark Passenger to Handsome Tony.

I realize we are in the age of binge watching shows, but things like this are just more fun weekly. (I say this as I am currently binge watching through 8 seasons of Monk. Stupid me started watching a show ten years after it ended and one month before it is leaving Netflix.) I hope you are watching this week to week.

I think the evolution of the characters is going to play out better weekly than seeing it in the sped up version of a binge watch.

One interesting moment here dealt with the earrings he took from the first victim. Episode one telegraphed that they would be a problem. And that problem is already starting to be seen as Deb gives them to her friend. But more on that later….

I imagine every episode of this is going to rank in at a 9-10 level for me. I’m biased and embrace that completely. I hope there isn’t anything that drags me out of the clouds as I watch this.

10 stars for me here.