Yvonne Strahovski as Hannah McKay (Season 7, episode 6). (RANDY TEPPER/Showtime) RECAP: Pen rivals sword on 'Dexter' Dexter's cover-ups getting out of hand Some bloody changes on 'Dexter' Fewer and newer problems on 'Dexter'

Dexter, you horn-dog.

Has Dexter Morgan ever truly been lustful before? Yes, I know he has had sex. He has a son, after all. But I certainly had the impression his marriage was more dutiful than lustful.

But now that Dexter has been exposed to the joys of "table sex," who knows where this leads?

SPOILER ALERT: This column discusses the Dexter episode titled Do the Wrong Thing - the sixth episode of the seventh season - which aired Sunday, Nov. 4 on The Movie Network and Movie Central in Canada and on Showtime in the United States. If you don't want to know what happened, this is your opportunity to shield your eyes and click away.

Okay, it's certainly no mystery why anyone and everyone would want to have sex with Hannah McKay in a physical sense, since Hannah is played by the fetching Yvonne Strahovski. But this is Dexter (Michael C. Hall) we're talking about. Usually he does not have normal urges.

Rather than killing Hannah - Dexter had her taped to his table, knife in his hand - he cut her loose and they went at it like rabbits.

Oh wait, bad example, Hannah poisons rabbits, as we saw earlier in the episode. She probably poisons people, too, although I'm not sure if Dexter ever got definitive proof on that.

Either way, Dexter's judgment really is all over the map lately.

Like, he knows that Sal Price (Santiago Cabrera), who wrote a book about serial killer Wayne Randall (Daniel Buran), is working on a new project. Sal believes Hannah was much more than a scared and trapped tag-along during Wayne's reign of terror.

And Dexter also is all too aware that his foster sister Deb (Jennifer Carpenter) knows who and what Dexter really is.

Given such a volatile combination of circumstances, there is just no way the Dexter of previous seasons would choose this moment to kill Hannah. Way too suspicious if she disappears, on so many levels.

And then, even more striking, if we accept that he has made the decision to kill, there is no way the Dexter of previous seasons would change his mind at the last minute and not kill her. Now Hannah knows what Dexter is, too. This is getting so, so messy.

Maybe these are meant to be indications that Dexter is losing it. When the series wraps up after next season, will Dexter be in the nut house? Are cracks in his sanity starting to show already?

Dexter certainly is not the meticulous, careful creature we once knew. He even gets horny now, and we all know that horniness often is the sworn enemy of good judgment.

Other observations:

• Apart from the sex scene in the fake snow right at the end, I actually thought this episode was flat overall. Even a bit boring at times.
• Just from a practical standpoint, I really had to laugh at Batista (David Zayas) and his dream of retiring from the police department and - get this - buying a restaurant. Oh my God, running a restaurant is one of the most stressful jobs in the world! Long hours, problems up the ying-yang, cut-throat competitive. Batista would be longing for the good old days at Miami Metro in about two weeks!
• Isaac (Ray Stevenson) had a great line in prison when he said, "I'd really like to avoid killing anyone in here. It would get in the way of my being released."
• Please tell me Detective Quinn (Joey Harrington), or any other run-of-the-mill cop, would not have such easy access to the evidence of such an important case as the one against Isaac. Please, tell me that, I'm begging you.
• This is unrelated to the episode being reviewed here, but just to clear the air: A few weeks ago I wrote that Isaac and the now-deceased Viktor (Enver Gjokaj) might be lovers. Then I got some emails pointing out that, in scenes that occurred in close proximity, Isaac spoke about Viktor with virtually the same words Dexter used when speaking about his son Harrison. So I mentioned that in last week's column. Then I got emails saying that Isaac and Viktor clearly are lovers. So for the record, I don't know what the relationship between Isaac and Viktor is. As I often have said to my wife when we're watching something together, "We're not supposed to know yet." But I always am excited to share informed theories that I hadn't considered.

bill.harris@sunmedia.ca