Poor Dexter. He’s having a really rough time with this whole “don’t kill anyone” thing. He’s also having a really, really hard time dealing with being permanently under Debra’s watchful eye. It’s impossible for Dexter to control his sister, and it’s getting harder to control his urges. Everyone who annoys him–the postal service employee, Masuka, that mosquito on his arm in the beginning credits–all of them are victims in Dexter’s murderous fantasies (only that mosquito gets killed every week). Homeboy is on edge, y’all. It’s especially evident when Dexter overreacts to a shooting suspect he’s taking a DNA sample from. After a bit of childish name-calling on the part of the perp, Dexter strangles the guy for calling him a “p***y.” And true to form, Deb has to come in and pull the two apart. Real profesh, Dex.
Deb gets all WTF, DUDE on Dexter and they talk about control versus suppression. Dexter’s afraid he’s going to act out if he doesn’t deal with his serial killer shenanigans his own way. Deb agrees to give him some space, but not without a lot of side-eye. Guess Deb’s rules aren’t really Dexter’s cup of tea. He goes into his files and finds a target: Ray Speltzer. Dexter decides to trail him, prove that he’s a serial killer apt to kill again, and convince Deb that she should give him his blessing to chop this dude into 857 pieces.
Never one to miss out on stupid things to go along with, Quinn decides to fall for the dancer from The Fox Hole (Nadia) pretty hard. The only thing is that–while she may like Quinny boy here, she’s also still working for the Ukrainian mob boys, too. A missing bracelet is of high value to them (it’s a way to track the girls who are also drug mules! Surprise!), and they want answers about Viktor’s disappearance (aka death). Isaak wants her to get close to Quinn–which she was conveniently already in the process of doing, but for personal reasons. Mixing business with pleasure: this isn’t going to end well for anyone involved. I have a feeling. Meanwhile, our token mob boss scary guy Isaak figures out that if you can find where the signal was last working with the bracelet, you may find Viktor. So, they’re on the hunt.
Dexter’s found one thing he can control, though: the Creepy Louis problem. What’s a boy to do when he’s being followed and harassed by a completely unhinged weirdo? Get him fired and break up his relationship, of course! Remember when Dexter was at the post office before? Yeah, he mailed the hand to Masuka, and the video of him getting a BJ from a hooker to Jamie Batista. And there ends all of that. Homeboy was too old to be an intern anyway and Jamie deserves way better–let’s be real.
It looks like the whole Wayne Randall thing is back again, though. I really wonder how this story line is going to affect Dexter’s (the answer is probably: badly). Wayne’s mom shows up with a bunch of personal affects from the time Wayne was running around killing people dead with his little girlfriend Hannah McKay. Dexter goes through it and doesn’t find anything of particular interest, but he figures they’re probably Wayne’s kill trophies (how cute!).
When it comes to the world’s most f**ked up brother-sister relationship, Deb can’t seem to give Dexter his space–and Dexter knows it. He’s aware she followed up the first time he was stalking Speltzer, so he lures Deb to the bar that Speltzer’s hanging at to explain why his process is of value. Deb is all “are you for real, murder boy?” But Dexter’s all “I’m doing a good thing; I’m a trash collector” which feels like an offense to trash collectors. Deb doesn’t understand why Dexter thinks he is above the law, so Dexter goes on about how his law saves people and Deb is all “it still means you kill people when that is illegal!”
Dexter won’t give up, though–he continues to shadow Speltzer, finding him inside a mausoleum because apparently it isn’t enough to just be a creepy murdering dude. You also have to be completely disrespectful of private property while being a creepy murdering dude. When Dexter heads back to the office, Deb confronts him on continuing to stalk Speltzer. Dexter tells Deb the truth (that he was), but also takes it a bit further: he tells Deb that every time he helped her with solving a murder in the past, it was thanks to his “lizard brain” (ugh, seriously? We couldn’t come up with a better name for this? Dexter thinks up the worst nicknames)–the same brain that proves which people are murderers that deserve to die.
Deb deep down totally knows this is true, but still finds the information hard to take. Because, you know, it’s basically admitting that you are utilizing a serial killer’s knowledge pool (that he still uses to regularly kill people) to solve other murders. So really, I don’t blame her!
Deb lives and dies by the system set in place thanks to the good ole L-A-W. So she tells Dexter if he kills Speltzer she’ll ruin both her and Dexter’s lives. Instead, she sends him off to help Batista get some DNA evidence from Wayne Randall’s old girlfriend, Hannah McKay.
NEXT: Hannah McKay and the last of Creepy Louis! First, Angel Batista needs to stop by The Fox Hole to berate the owner. While Dexter waits for him to finish up, he has an innocuous (but clearly also not because of the foreshadowing with all the “killing time” “looking for something” and “everyone is frustrated sexually and metaphorically and literally and whatever” stuff) run-in with Isaak.
And then comes the moment many fans have been waiting for: the introduction of the mysterious Hannah McKay (this season’s newest regular cast member, played by Yvonne Strahovski). Batista asks Hannah to look at images of the artifacts Wayne’s mom brought in, but Hannah is having none of it. She doesn’t want to dig up old wounds and wants to be left alone. Cuuuuuuurious, don’t you think? Hannah is snippy but not stupid–she knows how the system works, so she is willing to obey the rules that she has to: like giving a DNA sample.
But here’s the curious part: Dexter is…nervous around Hannah. Oh snap! Is this pretty blonde (we know Dexter has a thing for pretty blondes. Hello, Rita!) going to start giving Dex the googly-eyed, butterfly-heart feelings? I mean look at the picture up above this paragraph: the people at Showtime photoshopped that image within an inch of its life: it looks like a goddamn fairy tale. If that doesn’t point to lovey-dovey ~feelings~, I don’t know what does. Hannah and Dexter, sittin’ in a tree, k-i-l-l-i-n-g…wait, that’s now how it goes! (Or is it? Dun dun duuuuuun!)
All I can say is: when Hannah ends up falling for Dexter, her and Deb need to start a club.
Speaking of Deb, we next see her at LaGuerta’s office, asking for a warrant to search the mausoleum. She even uses Dexter’s “lizard brain” line. Ooh, not cool, Deb! LaGuerta won’t help her get the warrant, but LaGuerta uses the same lines on Deb that Deb used on Dexter. (The law! It is very important! So is evidence.) Sounds like our homegirl Deb is tres confused. They decide that a parol car watching Speltzer is enough, for now.
Now, here comes my favorite part of the episode. Isaak knows that Viktor is dead now, and wants to find out the exact boat the GPS signal last went off on. So he gets his fancy IT guy to work a bunch of computer magic and finds out the exact location of the boat: Dexter’s boat. But there’s one problem–Creepy Louis has made it there before him, with plans to sink the ship out of spite because he is the world’s tallest, creepiest baby. “Kiss my a** you ginger freak!” he whines.
Isaak shows up and Louis lies and says it is his boat: bad idea, Louis. Lying gets you nowhere–and in this case, it gets him killed dead! But first he admits that it isn’t his boat, but rather Dexter Morgan’s. Uh-oh, Isaak’s got a name and a job description for Viktor’s murderer now. Too bad there’s no way Louis’ death isn’t going to be attributed to Dexter now that he’s been murdered good-and-dead on Dexter’s boat. Or at least, be the unraveling of Dexter’s secret serial killer life later in the season. Right? Creepy Louis: f**king people over even from the grave.
Back on the Island of Misfit Toys Poor Life Decisions, Quinn and Nadia are having a romantical evening at home where they’re talking about Nadia’s big dreams of owning her own dog-walking business. Because rich people will always be lazy and own dogs. Right! But Nadia is feeling guilty about her double-dealings with Quinn, so she admits everything. And instead of acting like a rational human, all Quinn hears is “You like me! You really, really like me!” LORD, this man is a barrel of f**k-ups. I guess that’s what happens when the love of your life breaks up with you and also you maybe-sort of know that her brother is a murderer but you’re trying to forget that part because he saved your life or whatever. Hmph! Self-medicating the crazy away makes a crazy boy crazier, methinks!
Let’s get back to the inevitable, though: Speltzer’s got a lady to murder! Deb, unable to shake the lizard brain shenanigans from earlier, is convinced that something is afoot. So, she tries to call Dexter (who is in Speltzer’s Mausoleum of Murder Proof) but can’t get ahold of him. She leaves him a message explaining that even though the patrol car didn’t see anything funky, she’s going to head over there and take a looksie for herself. It is a miracle Deb hasn’t been murdered like, 500 times by now, you guys.
So she heads over to Speltzer’s where his date is totally creeped out by his lack of furniture and the plastic on the one couch in the room (he broke into a deserted place, you see! To set up his crazy Murder Olympics…but we’ll get to that in a second). He makes her a mojito which has like, no booze in it (another thing that weirds her out) and he starts saying all sorts of unnerving weirdo stuff. You know, about her being strong, needing her to be able to be in control of her faculties, etc etc. “I like it when they’re strong!” he says before strangling her and telling her it’s time to play a game. Homegirl was uneasy from the second she walked in so she should have left right when he went to make her the drink. Buuut she didn’t because she has to die. Deb hangs out in front of his apartment, unsure what to do. The lights go off and she’s just about to leave when she notices a bunch of crazy metal playing, complete with strobe lights. Uh, what?
Dexter leaves the mausoleum and hears Deb’s message. Run, Dexter, Run!
Ready for the scariest bit? Homeboy Speltzer has on a motherf**king BULL COSTUME. He is chasing this girl in his makeshift horror dungeon playscape while she cries and tries to free herself from its depths. I’m sure that will work! Oh wait, no…no it won’t. But the worst part is that Deb tries to play hero (instead of calling the cops–you know, that thing she’s always lecturing Dexter about doing–because she’s clearly going to need back-up in this situation) and enters the house/playscape of murder.
And this murder playscape is truly the work of one f**ked up, mentally-demonic dude: it has barbed wire, piles and piles of scrap metal and old wooden pallets. There’s shredded plastic, glass, cages: everything nightmare-inducing, ever. This poor soon-to-be-dead girl is running around in true campy horror film style: gasping for breath and crying and moaning. You know, because it’s not bad enough that you’re trapped, so you might as well make a bunch of noise to alert your killer to where you are. Good life decision there, dead-girl-to-be!
So she’s running around and runs into Bull Speltzer in all his mouth-breathing, psycho-f**ker glory, and Deb is running after them, trying to save the girl’s life and nab Speltzer. But, uh-oh! Speltzer finds Deb first! He’s pulled her down by the ankles and is surely amped that he got a two-for-one deal tonight on dead girls when–TWIST!–Dexter shows up in the nick of time and saves Deb’s a**. Deb, swear to god if you weren’t a main character in this show you would have died a billion times by now. Oy! Her life is the worst.
When they find the girl, it’s too late: she’s dead. Dexter shows the earring trophy that Speltzer took from his last victim and now this girl as they hear Speltzer speed away.
So now Deb is sad. Obviously. If she had listened to Dexter and let him do it his way, Speltzer would be dead, and that girl’s life would’ve been spared. She’s not totally on Dexter’s side, but she sort of feels like maybe what Dexter does is a “necessary evil.”
Dexter at first sees this as a win, but Deb brings him back down to earth: in the end, he is like Speltzer, because deep down, he likes to kill. Dexter attests that he’s nothing like him, but Deb knows that his trophies (the blood slides) prove that, in the end, they aren’t all that dissimilar, either.
Deb tells Dexter that their time as roommates is over. Which, yes. Good idea. The farther Deb can put herself away from that, the better. Even though Dexter says “nothing’s changed” Deb knows better: “everything’s changed, and I don’t know if it can ever be the same.”
Freedom comes with a cost, indeed.
What do you think of this week’s episode? Will Deb and Dexter ever find a resolution? Sound off in the comments!
[Photo Credit: Showtime]
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