Dexter’s problems just keep getting bigger, don’t they? Sunday night’s episode was one of my favorites so far this season. We learned a lot more about Julia Stiles’ character and we saw Dexter struggle to keep things a secret as he dealt with new emotions.
The scenes with Dexter, Julia Stiles and Harry were fantastic. The ghost of Harry is something that could have come across as cheesy if Dexter weren’t such a good show, but instead the glimpse into Dexter’s subconscious is fascinating. Harry always plays devil’s advocate and he had his work cut out for him this week. When the episode opened, Dexter was cleaning the girl’s wounds. These glimpses of compassion from Dexter are always touching, but they’re also dangerous. Harry is the voice of reason, asking if Dexter was going to nurse the girl back to health so that she could run to the police and tell them what she saw. When the girl woke up and panicked, things got worse. Things got messy. Dexter had to sedate her and ended up with her blood (from her open wounds) all over his shirt.
Just when he was trying to calculate his next move, sister dearest called for help with a case. Oops! He also realized he’d left the babysitter at home with Harrison all night. He ran to the crime scene (that gruesome beheading from last week), but not to help his sister out. He realized a little police work could be a great opportunity to get an ID on his little problem.
Back at home, Dexter’s nanny quit. Who wouldn’t? No one wants to work for an absentee single dad. By the end of the episode though, Dexter had managed to manipulate the truth (that he was helping a girl who was near death) to earn a second shot. I can’t quite figure this nanny out. Is she a villain? Is she going to come close to discovering who the real Dexter is? Will she end up dead? There’s no way to tell, since Dexter is always full of surprises.
Another person causing a lot of suspense is Quinn. He came pretty damn close to getting Trinity’s son to ID Dexter as “Kyle Butler”, but instead he just ended up in a bunch of hot water. I’m guessing Jonah wants to protect “Kyle” because of what Kyle did for his family. They’re safe now, so why throw the guy under the bus? Now Quinn is on an unpaid suspension (thanks, LaGuerta!) and is getting in deeper with Deb, so will this be the end of his Dexter-hunt? Unlikely. He obviously thinks/knows he’s right. But I’d like to see this story arc take a different turn from past, similar storylines like that of Doakes. So for me, the jury is still out on the whole Quinn/Kyle/Dexter thing.
Even though I like the characters of Batista and LaGuerta, I still can’t get into the bar fight storyline. The internal affairs guy was mighty creepy when he asked LaGuerta about the accusation that she gives the best blow job in Miami, but where is this going? Sexual harassment seems sort of tame for Dexter. I’m hoping this story will end up tying into the rest of the plot somehow.The subplot that I did like this week was Deb’s encounter with one of the Santa Muerta killers. When she came across him holding a machete to a kid’s throat she radioed that her sector was clear, but the killer slit the guy’s throat anyway.
The rest of the episode mostly dealt with Dexter and the girl, who he ID’d as Lumen Pierce from Minnesota. He used Harrison as a distraction (how cute was it when Harrison launched himself back into Dexter’s arms afterward?) so he could get some alone time in the lab, swiped some meds from Masuka’s fridge full of pills, and followed up on an outstanding motel bill in Lumen’s name. Obviously, Lumen was not exactly quick to trust Dexter. She did everything right – gave him a fake name, told him she didn’t see him do anything, tried to escape.
I’m interested to learn more about Lumen. A note left in the luggage Dex retrieved from the motel revealed she’d run away, but her family wanted her back. How old is she? Why did she leave? Has she not returned because she was kidnapped by Boyd before she had the chance? Dexter visited her again and there was a thrilling moment when Lumen got away, tried to flag down a car full of frat boys that dismissed her as a psycho junkie, and then was caught by Dexter again. In a last-ditch effort to earn Lumen’s trust, Dexter took her to the swamp where Boyd had been dumping his victims’ bodies. Still, Lumen had no way of knowing that it hadn’t been Dexter who had killed all those women. He told her it was “a leap of faith”, which is what his nanny had said when he begged for a second chance. I love seeing Dexter borrow bits of dialogue from people and trying to mirror those emotions – it’s a reminder that so much of what we see is fake. What was real though, was Dexter telling Lumen that his wife had been brutally murdered.
In one final display of trust, Dexter gave Lumen the knife. She stabbed him in the arm and broke down crying. I guess the fact that he didn’t hurt her back proved that he wasn’t a monster like Boyd, as she’d feared. But things got really interesting when Dexter told her it was all over, she should go home. “Boyd wasn’t the only one who did this to me,” Lumen told him. “There were others. It’s not over.”
Whoa. Others? Who? How many? Boyd told Dexter “You have no idea what you’re getting into,” and now we have a glimpse of why. Personally, I can’t wait to see more.
