Review of 'Dexter: New Blood' 1.2

Well, Dexter: New Blood is soaring off to a powerful, punch-in-the gut flight, with a second episode that was even better than the first. Among the highlights:

• Harrison tells Dexter than Hannah died of cancer three years ago, and he found a letter Dexter wrote to Hannah in which he worried that Harrison might have inherited Dexter's "dark tendencies". I'd bet money right now that he has. The real question is how far has Harrison acted on them? Has he killed anyone? Probably -- fair to good chance that he has. A wild thought even occurred to me that Harrison for some reason killed Hannah. But it's still too soon to know that. What is clear is that there is a lot more to Harrison than meets the eye, and that even Dexter so far has realized. Jack Alcott, by the way, is already putting in an excellent performance as Dexter's son.

• Dexter's repartee remains (from the original series) in top form. When Angela says to him, "we need to talk," after learning Dexter has a son, Dexter's inner voice remarks to himself, "'We need to talk' — words you never want to hear from your doctor or your girlfriend." True, that.

• As he usually was able to do in Miami, Dexter's doing a good job of staying a scant but significant step ahead of being discovered. In this episode, it's covering the blood trail. Next week it'll be keeping the posse from discovering the remains of Matt's body, which resides right "beneath their feet". Dexter's opponents are usually lame, but not so lame as to not put two and two together, if they discover Matt's body buried right in front of Dexter's house.

• In a case at this point unrelated to Matt's killing, someone's keeping a young woman hostage in a room, observing her sleeping, and that kind of pervert thing. This probably is the same guy who killed Iris. We don't yet know his identity, but this looks like precisely the kind of predator that triggers Dexter wanting to put him and the world out of his misery. Best guess at this point is that it's Matt's father, but it's still too early to tell.

So that's pretty good -- no, outrightly excellent -- for a second dealing of the re-started series. And I'll be back with reviews of the rest.