‘Dexter’ season 7, episode 7 review: A Hannah McKay debate

For the first time on “Dexter” season 7, Deb actually wants her brother to kill someone. The problem with that? This someone just so happens to be the last person Dexter wants to hurt in Hannah McKay. Yvonne Strahovksi’s character is proving to be rather polarizing, and with that in mind it’s taking down the quality of this season from being spectacular (as it was in the first few episodes) to now just being a little far-fetched.

Why? For so long Dexter prided himself on being undetectable, but now just look at all of the people who know about his Dark Passenger. First, there’s Deb; then, there’s Hannah; then, there’s Isaak. That’s three people who are alive who know very well what Dexter is capable of, and LaGuerta is quickly closing in on his tail. It’s getting harder and harder to see how people are not closing on him, especially when Sal Price’s body is found within his apartment, dead in a similar way to how Hannah killed her husband along with her former boss.

The issue with Hannah as a character and as a love interest is simple: she’s a killer without rules, and she is so cold by nature that she is almost too much Dexter (even if they kill for different reasons) to relate to. Usually in the past, the saving grace of “Dexter” female love interests is that there is a certain element of good in them. Rita was not a killer at all, and Lumen was acting out of revenge, which is on the same sort of moral ground as The Code. Lila is the only other romance of Dexter’s that had such a dark edge to it, but even she had a sort of manic personality that she was several shades of a different color. It’s just hard to really be engaged by Hannah, and it is not a slam against Strahovski so much as it is the structure of the character (that and Dexter had much more chemistry with Lumen and Lila than he does with her).

As for the other major issue with the episode this week, we go back to our first sentence of this article: Dexter seems to be acting worse and worse towards his sister despite her throwing him the biggest bone ever in not sending him to jail. He did not know about her connection with Sal, but how can he justify first keeping the Hannah evidence for himself, and then deciding not to kill her so that he can be with her? He clearly is not going to be interested in taking her out, and the strain could be large enough here for some major changes to their relationship.

While there were some brief moments with Quinn and Batistia this week, let’s face it that these are really just blips on the radar at this point. We know that there is no evidence at the moment of Quinn doing anything malicious, and Batista’s restaurant is better to just take a “wait and see” approach with.

Do you think that Hannah is helping or hurting “Dexter” this season, and can you pinpoint a reason why?