Don't worry, I'm not revealing ANY secrets about this Sunday's installments of Showtime's Dexter or (the season finale of) AMC's The Walking Dead. But what I AM revealing -- what I marvel at -- is how incredibly, impressively tense these two shows make me as I watch...
The writers of Dexter seem to revel each year in painting their homicidal hero into a bloody corner, but this year's plot line has been ridiculous... in a good way.
First, in the course of tracking and killing a serial killer just to vent some of his own internal rage, Michael C. Hall's Dexter is witnessed by Julia Stiles' Lumen, that killer's captive and, had not Dexter intervened, next victim. Then Lumen and Dexter team up to wreak revenge on the killer's co-conspirators -- a path that leaves a trail that, at this point, several others are following.
Jonny Lee Miller, as a self-help guru at the center of the murderous gang, has tipped his hand, calling Lumen to let her know he knew she was alive, and with Dexter -- and that he was out to kill them both, before they can get him. But also on Dexter's trail are a) the ex-cop who has collected evidence of Dexter's vengeful sprees, b) Dexter's colleague, who hired the ex-cop to investigate Dexter, and c) Dexter's own sister, a detective whose examination of the "barrel murders" is taking her dangerously close to crossing paths with both Lumen and Dexter.
In the new episode Sunday (9 p.m. ET), all this percolates, and boils, and had me on the edge of my seat -- and, at times, completely off it. What an hour. What a show.
Ditto for The Walking Dead (10 p.m. ET Sunday), which ended last week with a sudden flood of light, as a lone survivor inside Atlanta's Center for Disease Control opened an automatic door to afford our zombie-killing heroes some shelter from the storm. In Sunday's season finale, they get to take a hot shower -- but even that, it seems, is cold comfort.
And before it's over, I was off my chair again.
Tepee. Wigwam. Dexter. Walking Dead.
Two tents.
Too tense...