S1.E08: Unfair Game

[DoctorAtomic]

I actually really liked this episode in terms of ratcheting up the suspense in whether or how Kurt was going to kill Harrison. When he said, 'oh, I have something to do,' and returned in his get up, it was a great peak to the episode. The actor playing Harrison was up on his game too. I agree he can't carry a 'Dexter' show, and I don't particularly care for the constant sniping at Dexter, but, here, he was just a scared kid. 'Did I say something wrong? I'm really sorry!' 

And again at the end, on the tail of Kurt's, 'you just want to make a connection', he did really well in the final scene in the truck. Maybe blame it on writing him being a pissy teen for most of the show. This was a good material, and he stepped up and really sold it for me. 

Interesting though that he ran, when the blue haired girl was smart enough to know what was up and at least tried to break the routine. 

I take the point about Kurt maybe trying to lure Harrison over to his side, but I've been taking it that he knows Dexter killed his son, so he was going to do the same. 

I also was laughing with Angela suddenly acting like her last name was Landsbury and cracking the Bay Harbor Butcher case. Sure. 

I'm doubtful Dexter will be killed, and I'm rooting him to get away for it, whatever the it is. I doubt 'Dexter' is going to hand the show over unless Hall wants to hang it up for this character.

Edited December 28, 2021 by DoctorAtomic

[paigow]

30 minutes ago, DoctorAtomic said:

 unless Hall wants to hang it up for this character.

Maybe he shares an agent with Daniel Craig...

[CarpeFelis]

20 hours ago, BeatrixK said:

Did anyone else - when he let Harrison 'go' and Harrison started to run away from Kurt - think of Rikon Stark and start shouting 'ZIG ZAG, HARRISON....ZIG ZAG!'

YES! What is with these characters anyway? A guy has a laser sight trained on them and they just run straight away and make themselves easy targets instead of trying to make themselves harder to hit?

[AngelaHunter]

9 hours ago, CarpeFelis said:

YES! What is with these characters anyway? A guy has a laser sight trained on them and they just run straight away and make themselves easy targets instead of trying to make themselves harder to hit?

TV/movie characters, when chased by a bad guy, a car, a monster, a tank, or an alien must ALWAYS run in a straight line and right down the middle of the street or road, even if the street is lined with buildings and alleys in which to duck, or the road with heavy forest in which to dive. It's a trope, one of many, which usually has audiences yelling, "Get off the road!".

Even a rabbit knows to zigzag when a fox is on its tail. But I guess I can give the kid a pass. When panicked it's natural to try and get as far away as fast as you can from the threat.

June, in "The Handmaid's Tale" running from a drone attack, right down the middle of the street.

 

 

[DoctorAtomic]

If he had his razor though, why not take a slice and go down swinging? 

[MamaBird]

On 12/27/2021 at 4:35 AM, BeatrixK said:

Did anyone else - when he let Harrison 'go' and Harrison started to run away from Kurt - think of Rikon Stark and start shouting 'ZIG ZAG, HARRISON....ZIG ZAG!'

I thought all the way back to Peter Falk in "The In-Laws", and shouted "Serpentine! SERPENTINE!"

[preeya]

2 hours ago, MamaBird said:

I thought all the way back to Peter Falk in "The In-Laws", and shouted "Serpentine! SERPENTINE!"

I immediately went to YouTube to watch that clip.

 

[Kristi800]

1 hour ago, preeya said:

I immediately went to YouTube to watch that clip.

 

It's been too long since I've seen this movie!

Quote

I totally agree with this. Michael C. Hall can be very charismatic, especially on the original run. What I liked about Dexter was that he was mild mannered in general, and it came off a lot more genuine than Jim.

There were more people in Miami to blend in with. I'm surprised he's stayed in Iron Lake so long. New people are kind of suspicious in small towns, although some will say you can be who you want to be (I disagree). 

[Chaos Theory]

Dexter grew up in Miami the son of a well respected police officer and the brother of another police officer who went into law enforcement himself.   There was no reason for anyone to suspect Dexter.  

The problem with knowing everything like we do in this sort of narrative is that every time a character fails to see something we as an audience already know, they seem stupid and incompetent when in fact they have no reason to know it.  Even Doakes who was the first to figure out what Dexter was he  only did because he had an instinct he could never put his finger on.   If anything they could “smell” each other.

But in Iron Oaks “Jim” is a transplant who after years of telling one story to his police chief gf he suddenly has another story being true.   He suddenly has a teenage son who he apparently abandoned.   That alone is suspicious enough for any half way decent police officer to do a background check especially if you have been dating the guy and have a daughter of your own.    

So yeah I can see her going down the rabbit hole of Jim to Dexter Morgan to The Bay Harbor Butcher.

 

Edited December 29, 2021 by Chaos Theory

[qtpye]

On 12/27/2021 at 5:35 AM, BeatrixK said:

Did anyone else - when he let Harrison 'go' and Harrison started to run away from Kurt - think of Rikon Stark and start shouting 'ZIG ZAG, HARRISON....ZIG ZAG!'

Others have already mentioned the reference but I was screaming serpentine to both Harrison and Rikon

 

On 12/27/2021 at 5:14 PM, AngelaHunter said:

He gave many truly outstanding performances both in "Dexter" and "Six Feet Under." The kid(?) playing Harrison is not really a very good actor. He's pretty one-note. I'm not blaming him. He got chosen for this role, so why not take it?

The way he could switch from mild-mannered donut geek to serial killer mode -  positively diabolical and sadistic - was very impressive.  "Jim" is a lot older, so I guess he had to drop that "Golly gee" boy-next-door schtick.

Variety? Time constraints? Boredom? Maybe he was disgusted with Chloe attempting to offer sex in return for freedom (bad idea. You never negotiate with something that someone can just take, but desperation is a great motivator) -  so disgusted he skipped part of the ritual? Will we ever find out? Probably not.

 

On 12/27/2021 at 6:34 PM, bilgistic said:

He's such a dweeb. When Angela's gorgeous daughter was interested in him—and then had sex with him(!), I was like, "That kid? With that haircut? Nope."

I guess he maybe has some "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" vibe because he's been out on his own or whatever, but still, no. Has no one seen social media lately?

 

On 12/27/2021 at 7:03 PM, AngelaHunter said:

I only noticed the bowl haircut last night. It was cute when he was three, but now, at his age? I'm no connoisseur of teen boys or their haircuts, but it's beyond dorky.

Yeah, maybe he's rebellious little Audrey's idea of sexy danger. The girl needs to get out of Iron Lake more. For all her imagined sophistication "She's just a small-town girl."

Yes, the Harrison character has been a bit of a nothing burger for me. The fact that he is supposed to be so amazing and dark makes him a bit of a Gary Stu. Please writers, show us why he is so great instead of telling us

On 12/27/2021 at 12:16 PM, paigow said:

A bit of an overstatement.. Angela, Logan & Barney Fife is smaller than the BAU or a SWAT team...

More like a Police Squad

Sadly, I feel like Dexter would have sniffed out O.J. Simpson.

I think the whole idea of a Harrison spin-off is bad. Evan Peters is one of my favorite actors and would be much better in the role (as someone else already mentioned). In order to be invested in the main character, we have to have an actor with the charisma and skill

My guess is that if Hall still wants to play the character then we will have a second season. Otherwise, we might get the adventures of Baby Dexter

Edited December 29, 2021 by qtpye

[AngelaHunter]

1 hour ago, qtpye said:

Sadly, I feel like Dexter would have sniffed out O.J. Simpson.

I think even Frank Drebbin would have sniffed out Kurt by now! Instead Angela focused all her sleuthing skills and took the road trip trying to find Kurt's son, for some reason which I forget now. He was hardly Public Enemy No.1.

 

1 hour ago, qtpye said:

Please writers, show us why he is so great instead of telling us

They have to tell us by having other people proclaiming how wonderful he is (and why wasn't he charged with assault for deliberately breaking the other boy's arm? Oh, yes - they had previously declared him a hero) because I fear the lad (who is probably 20-something) is not one for emoting. The dark/broody thing is not working. It might with a different and better actor. This one merely looks like he's a pouting brat all the time.

I can't see a second season unless Dexter pulls up stakes and moves on, maybe to New York City. How many Big Bads are there for him to kill in that one-horse town? Oh, wait. Angela is the police Chief. He might get away with it forever, the way Kurt has.

I was hoping the writers wouldn't be so lazy and careless this time around. Especially when Angela's Google investigation said the Bay Harbor Butcher injected his victims with Ketamine! That kind of sloppiness in inexcusable. That any drug was used was never mentioned or known and it wasn't even Ketamine. I guess the writers told each other, "Gee, Dexter won't be able to get M99 in that backwater, so let's just change it. No one will notice." It was important, not only mentioned a number of times but we saw Dex using his fake ID and DEA license to get it.

Writers - please! I could overlook dumb goofs in the OS, i.e. the photo the pedo took of Astor stuck on Dexter and Rita's fridge/photo of the Punisher on Isaak Sirko's Interpol sheet (lazy lazy! 😆 )  but this is going too far. If they want us to not roll our eyes at careless blunders, the show needs to be much better than it is. Writers? Google is YOUR friend too.

[Tatum]

8 hours ago, AngelaHunter said:

I think even Frank Drebbin would have sniffed out Kurt by now! Instead Angela focused all her sleuthing skills and took the road trip trying to find Kurt's son, for some reason which I forget now. He was hardly Public Enemy No.1.

She just wanted to yell at him. She was pissed that he was (as far as she knew) dodging her calls while staying at a 5 star hotel while his dad had guilted the poor people in town to go look for him in freezing temps, and Angela herself had to go grovel to the oil billionaire for his resources instead of being able to sanctimoniously scowl at him like she was able to do the first episode. Her whole point was not a legal issue- she just wanted to tell him off face to face for being inconsiderate. Why she insisted on seeing footage to verify it was him who checked out was a writer's leap- at that point she didn't know Kurt was lying about talking to him, and she wasn't considering that someone stole his credit card, so there really was no reason to insist on verifying it was Matt who checked out. It was a pretty clunky way to expedite putting Angela on Kurt's trail.

 

Oh, I forgot, since Podcast Girl was bankrolling the NYC trip, Angela also decided she could kill two birds with one stone and go to the Miami Metro sponsored lecture on missing women, but that lecture was not her main motivation. And amazingly, a throwaway comment by Angel brings the whole house of cards down on Dexter. Because God forbid there are two teenagers out there named Harrison.

[AngelaHunter]

10 hours ago, Tatum said:

She just wanted to yell at him. She was pissed that he was (as far as she knew) dodging her calls while staying at a 5 star hotel while his dad had guilted the poor people in town to go look for him in freezing temps, and Angela herself had to go grovel to the oil billionaire for his resources instead of being able to sanctimoniously scowl at him like she was able to do the first episode.

Oh, thank you! I totally forgot about her burning desire to scold Matt for inconveniencing her. Yes, a silly plot device to get her to meet Angel, who within about 30 seconds just happens to give her the names of Deb, Dexter, and Harrison.

[paigow]

12 hours ago, Tatum said:

Because God forbid there are two teenagers out there named Harrison.

Besides this guy... most people would be hard pressed to think of any dude of any age with the same name....

[Elizzikra]

Quote

I can't think of a single person he genuinely loved. He was fond of Deb, but never hesitated to screw her over, sabotage her on the job when it knew how much her job meant to her,  and lie to her about everything, if it benefitted him.

He said in the original series that he was incapable of love but if he could love anyone, he would choose Deb. I always thought that the first time Dexter really felt love was when Harrison was born but then the last season happened, and well...

[Colorado David]

Season two. Harrison runs away to NYC, Dexter follows. 

[Morrigan2575]

On 12/28/2021 at 11:29 AM, AngelaHunter said:

TV/movie characters, when chased by a bad guy, a car, a monster, a tank, or an alien must ALWAYS run in a straight line and right down the middle of the street or road, even if the street is lined with buildings and alleys in which to duck, or the road with heavy forest in which to dive. It's a trope, one of many, which usually has audiences yelling, "Get off the road!".

I remember in the 80s, watching V with my father, in it one of the characters is being shot at by Visitors and he zig-zags instead of running in a straight line. My dad turned to me and said, that's the right way to run away when someone is trying to shoot you.  I swear to this day it might be the only time I saw it on screen. 

[Elizzikra]

5 hours ago, Morrigan2575 said:

I remember in the 80s, watching V with my father, in it one of the characters is being shot at by Visitors and he zig-zags instead of running in a straight line. My dad turned to me and said, that's the right way to run away when someone is trying to shoot you.  I swear to this day it might be the only time I saw it on screen. 

This advice was all over the news when the DC snipers were active… 

[Morrigan2575]

2 minutes ago, Elizzikra said:

This advice was all over the news when the DC snipers were active… 

Sadly Script Writers apparently never watched the news