Dexter: New Blood Review: Skin of Her Teeth (Season 1 Episode 7)

The tables have officially turned.

Dexter is once again able to put his forensic science skills to use on Dexter: New Blood Season 1 Episode 7, “Skin of Her Teeth,” when he meets Angela at the caves where she’s found the corpse of her long-lost friend, Iris. Still furious with him for lying, she’s grateful now to have him there to help her figure out what happened to her friend.

And he steps into that role with ease. It’s fun to watch Dexter show off his skills to Angela, and for us to see his mind at work in this way again. Of course, he’s putting even more pieces together than he lets on at first — because he figures out pretty quickly that Iris’s killer would have been Kurt Caldwell.

Angela’s not far behind on that, though. She suspects him too, and then Dexter reveals what he knows about Kurt’s cabin. 

Now Angela and Dexter are working together in a way they never have, and that in itself adds an interesting layer to this episode. Dexter’s finally able to be just a little more honest about who he is, and it certainly seems that Dexter and Angela could make a great team. 

Dexter: Is that the sound of you not needing a warrant?

He still has his bigger secrets, though. Their dynamic at the moment is almost closer to what he had with Deb at one time — he even suggests Angela bounce her ideas off of him the way his sister used to.

Knowing what Dexter knows now, he’s conflicted on how to handle Kurt. He could let the cops handle it, or he could handle it himself. The latter would be complicated by a few things, including how it might affect Harrison to lose another person he’s becoming closer to. 

Maybe that’s what makes this all so compelling. More than ever, Dexter would rather not have to kill someone. He’d rather this play out with a proper investigation, and it seems like it just might. Kurt’s arrested, which is a satisfying moment, but Kurt is so smug that he knows he’ll get out of it. 

Even when confronted with good, hard evidence, Kurt doesn’t budge. Then he finally decides to give a statement — a very smart one, that suggests his father is the person responsible for Iris’s death. What we see in the flashbacks, though, is what really happened that day. 

Kurt and Dexter aren’t so different. Both of their stories begin with trauma that occurred when they were children — seeing things they shouldn’t have seen. The same is true for Harrison. I’ll get to that more in a moment.

Something else Kurt and Dexter have in common, is they understand the mind of a serial killer. Because here’s the thing, just as Dexter was able to spot clues about Kurt based on his own knowledge of how serial killers work, so can Kurt, it seems.

When Dexter confronts Kurt (which he’s able to do after letting those sheep go free — a nice callback to the first episode of the season) Kurt reveals what he knows. He knows that on the night Dexter picked him up, the snow wasn’t snow at all. And he also knows titanium doesn’t melt.

It might seem surprising that Kurt put this all together so quickly, but there are a few factors at play. Dexter was sloppy and out of practice, for starters. He’s also in a small town that made disposing of Matt Caldwell’s body a whole lot more difficult.

But Kurt is also acutely aware of what’s going on in the town, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine he has cameras Dexter wasn’t aware of. I also can’t stop thinking about that drone he gave Harrison. 

Harrison, meanwhile, is still struggling with his own demons, only his are more reckless.

It’s a great touch, by the way, to Harrison suiting up in the same kind of gear for his truck stop job that Dexter does for killing. Dexter: New Blood has taken so much care with details like that, and it’s paying off well.

There’s a lot about his interactions with Dexter that still don’t feel quite right, and it seems there should be a little more backstory by now. And Dexter is still trying to figure out how to be a father to Harrison, which may very well mean telling him the truth about everything.

Harrison finally admits to his dad that he remembers everything, and this offers us a much-anticipated appearance from John Lithgow as the Trinity Killer. It is unsettling, that’s for sure.

Along with those memories, hearing about the podcast, and realizing his own dark tendencies, Harrison feels lost more than anything.

His assumption is that his father left because Harrison had those tendencies, and now Dexter feels that pressure. So there are two things he has to do here: one, he needs to have an honest talk with his son, which may lead him to become the Harry to his Dexter, and two: he has to kill Kurt Caldwell.

It is perhaps some of the most complex storytelling we’ve ever gotten from Dexter, and Dexter Morgan himself has never seemed more vulnerable. 

That makes it even more shocking with Dexter is snatched at the end of the episode. 

Like I said: the tables have turned. I don’t think there’s been another television series this year that had me quite this eager to see the next episode. 

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Dexter: New Blood airs Sundays at 9/8c on Showtime.  

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