S6:E6 It’s almost pointless to introduce this episode of Dexter because something happens at the end of it that is so epic and shocking, I don’t want to waste your time with some thoughts on where we are in the season. But I will say this episode ends with some serious street cred.
“Dex, it’s Brother Sam. He’s been shot.” – Deb
As Dexter is following Travis through a street fair in Miami, he gets a call from Deb and he learns Brother Sam has been shot in his auto body shop. He rushes to the crime scene and doesn’t get to see Travis meet up with Professor Gellar and ask him if the girl they’ve captured can have some painkillers to numb the discomfort of her broken arm. Gellar denies Travis’s request and asks him point blank if he’s hesitating in following through with their plan. Travis denies he’s “slacking off,” and Gellar says he hopes the person he’s chosen to be his partner gets back into shape because if he doesn’t, he’s going to be “destroyed along with the rest of the scum.” Later that night, Gellar tells Travis to burn the girl and giving her their usual O inside an A symbol, but instead of following orders, Travis takes her in his car to the water and sets her free.
“…or Julio’s gang probably got even with Brother Sam for stealing Nick.” – Dexter
Dexter arrives at the auto body shop just as paramedics are taking Brother Sam to the hospital. Deb informs him Sam was shot three times and after he retrieves his blood kit from his car, Dexter enters the garage and begins to try and piece together what happened. Deb and the other detectives suspect someone came to rob Brother Sam but he fought back and got shot, but Dexter has the inkling that members of Nick’s old gang tried to kill Sam for taking away one of their own. After Dexter analyzes the spatter patterns and tells Deb in five seconds what transpired, he excuses himself to the office to look for a bat that he hit Julio’s number 2 guy with (Dexter already killed Julio, you’ll recall, and so he assumes the gang’s number 2 is now its number 1). He easily finds the bat and scrapes some blood off the end of it onto a piece of paper, scans it in his lab, and isn’t surprised to learn it matches someone in the police database known as Leo Hernandez. Later on, Deb learns from her new homicide detective, Mike Anderson, that the “Eighth Street Locos” blamed Brother Sam for the disappearance of Julio, their leader. Dexter realizes his killing Julio might be the reason Brother Sam was attacked, so he asks for Deb’s permission to go see him in the hospital. After he leaves, Batista and Quinn tell Deb that Gellar’s TA, Carissa, told them Gellar believed The Book of Revelations contained a code that would lead to the end of the world. They show her the books the TA had her apartment that depicted various forms of sacrifice, and Deb demands they bring Carissa back to Miami for more questioning. Quinn is hesitant to do this because he slept with her and doesn’t want Deb to find out about it, but Batista promises him privately that Quinn won’t have to interview her at all.
“I want you to give Nick a message for me. Tell him that I forgive him.” – Brother Sam
Dexter receives word Brother Sam is awake and asking for him, so he rushes over to the hospital to his bedside and tells him he knows it was Nick who shot him, and that he was going to make him pay it. But instead of Brother Sam resting easy with the news that Dexter was going to get justice for him, he tells Dexter he should tell Nick that he forgives him. Dexter says he doesn’t understand why he would forgive Nick for shooting him, and Brother Sam said he was the only one he trusted. And just before he dies, Brother Sam tells Dexter that even though he doesn’t think he’s capable of forgiveness, he really is and all he needs to do is “let it go.” As he’s leaving the hospital, Dexter meets up with Nick and asks him if they can take a ride together. They end up at the beach and Dexter confronts Nick about shooting (and killing) Sam. But Nick laughs in Dexter’s face because the police have no evidence to charge him with anything, and Dexter is so infuriated he lunges at Nick and drowns him in the ocean. The episode closes on Dexter walking past Nick’s floating body and out of the water and running into his brother, Bryan (aka The Ice Truck Killer, aka Deb’s ex-fiancée, aka Rudy, aka who Dexter killed).
So yeah, now you see why I didn’t want to spend too long with an introduction. The re-…discovery (?) of Bryan is kind of unthinkable, and something that came totally out of left field. There are two ways to look at this: the first is that this is going to be a completely awesome season because one of our favorite characters is back, but the other way to view this is along the lines of “man, the writers really must not know what they’re doing anymore if they’re bringing back people Dexter has already killed.” Whichever viewpoint you subscribe to is totally your call, and I’m not even sure team I’m on yet but I will say one thing: Dexter does not seem like his usual self this season. He seems much more pensive, and withdrawn, and quite frankly — not saying a whole lot. He’s not cracking his usual jokes, or even smiling very often. The original beauty of Dexter was that he was so volatile, but he also seemed pretty lighthearted at times. And so I’m not really sure what’s going on with him lately. He just seems much more…harder to like.
