| Season 8 | Episode 4
Quinn passes his test, and he and Jamie have apparently reconciled again, but when they're out at Batista's restaurant celebrating, they overhear the patrolman who brought Deb in engaging in some disparaging gossip about her, which pulls Quinn into a fistfight. Jamie's actually not upset about that one, which speaks well of her, but Quinn's situation goes south when Matthews strongly urges Batista to consider Angie for sergeant instead of Quinn. This doesn't even get resolved this episode, so zzzzz.
Dexter has crossed off three more potential suspects from Vogel's book, and as such is now up to an "A.J. Yates," a violent criminal from an early age who's now a seemingly normal cable guy – but also bears a scar that indicates he may have had brain surgery right in the area from which The Brain Surgeon has been harvesting his trophies. Suspicious of Vogel's methods, he confronts her, and Vogel admits that Yates had a lesion on his brain she guessed was contributing to his violent tendencies, so she recommended it be removed, although she never knew for sure that her prescription even came to pass.
Dexter checks out Yates' place and finds a closet full of women's shoes, individual ones at that – unaware that Yates is in the house, watching him from a secret surveillance room in which he's holding a helpless woman captive. Yates sneaks up on him, but pauses to listen when Dexter calls Vogel on speaker to report his findings, mentioning his son in the process, whereupon Yates lets him go, possibly planning to use him to get to Vogel. When Dexter returns to the house, he realizes Yates saw him and makes him as The Brain Surgeon – and also finds one of Yates' victims he thought was dead but in fact survived his stab wound.
After taking her to the hospital, Dexter grabs Vogel and returns to Yates' house – and, on his computer, discovers Yates hacked into Vogel's patient files, which contain her cold and clinical assessments of Dexter's interactions with her. Feeling dangerously betrayed, he accuses her of making him his lab rat and informs her she'll be out of his life as soon as Yates is dead. As Dexter himself notes, though, it's not clear how the girls and the shoes fit into the Brain Surgeon MO, so even if there weren't eight episodes to go it'd seem likely enough there's more going on here.
Deb, tormented by flashbacks to LaGuerta's last moments in which she sees herself shooting Dexter instead of LaGuerta, consents to visiting the scene of the crime with Vogel, and Vogel proves her acumen by getting Deb at least to admit her feelings. With Deb now staying with Vogel, Vogel also shows Deb some of the tapes of her sessions with Harry in aid of making Deb see that Harry protected Dexter in the same way she did. Returning to the shipping container, Vogel closes them in and throws Deb's crimes in her face to make her realize she'd kill LaGuerta to protect Dexter again if faced with the same choice. Deb, finally seeing the light, asks how to make it right, so Vogel counsels her to realize she made the best of an impossible situation.
Later, though, Deb sneaks a look at another of Vogel's recordings showing Harry's remorse over Dexter becoming a killer and wonders how, if Harry couldn't bear Dexter's crimes, she's supposed to live with her own. Eventually, Dexter and Deb mutually reconnect for a car ride – only Deb asks if Harry committed suicide because of what Dexter had become, and Dexter is forced to admit that he did. Deb then goes through with her plan by grabbing the wheel and steering them off a bridge into a lake, planning to kill them both. When a nearby witness saves her, though, Deb reconsiders and yanks her unconscious brother back to the surface, and although he'll survive by definition, at least at this point, it'll be very interesting to see where this will lead.
We're back in the shipping container, with the echoing of LaGuerta's lines and shuddering visuals adding to the haunting effect, and the whole thing plays out exactly as it did in real life - only this time, Deb shoots Dexter dead. As the camera spins around her, a seamless effect transitions us from the horrific red light of the flashback to the soft white tones of the present, as with sunlight streaming in from behind her, Deb enters the place. After she kneels down at roughly the spot on which LaGuerta died, Vogel – wearing a trench coat that can't be temperature-appropriate even in Florida's winter, which this most decidedly is not – appears and asks Deb to tell her what she saw. Deb says she doesn't want to talk about it, as it won't change anything, but Vogel's like, well, repressing what happened isn't exactly doing wonders for your psyche, so how about we skip the bullshit? I mean, she doesn't say it like that, but with her accent I kind of wish she would.
Deb, not listening, throws some expected shade, so Vogel remarks that Dexter's need to kill was born in a container not unlike the one they're in now, and I wonder if she knows about Dexter giving Estrada some poetic justice here or if she's just being generally astute. Either way, her point is that as a psychopath, Dexter will never be able to break free of his container-related damage, but she can if she'll relive the events of the night in question. Deb blurts out what she saw – killing Dexter instead of LaGuerta – so Vogel asks how that made her feel. When Deb confesses she doesn't know, Vogel asks what else she thinks she could have done, and when Deb tries to say she could have arrested Dexter or they could have run, Vogel points out that Death Row would have been the likely result for Dexter in either case. "You've become so obsessed with the life you've taken, you've forgotten the life you saved." Well, if last week showed us anything, it's that reminding Deb of lives she's saved doesn't always have the desired effect.
Deb snaps that of course Vogel is defending Dexter – she created him – but Vogel authoritatively tells her that they're not at issue – her mental health is. Deb gets up in Vogel's face, yelling that she doesn't know why she should trust her or why Vogel even cares about her, but Vogel, completely unintimidated, mildly inquires if Deb is upset, and Deb admits that she is, which Vogel tells her is good – she's no longer avoiding her feelings. She then tells Deb that they're done for the day, and Deb tries to take some calming breaths. I'd imagine they'll be more effective once she's left the scene of her murder, though.
| Season 8 | Episode 4
Deb blurts out that she did it because of Dexter, which is exactly Vogel's point – Deb is unwilling to face the hard truth that if she were to do it all over again, she'd still choose her brother. "In your heart, you know – you'll always choose Dexter." This looks like it hits Deb where she lives, and after a long few moments, she asks how to make it right, so Vogel tells her she'll have to accept that she's a good person who was forced to do a terrible thing. "That you made the best of an impossible situation." She goes on that Deb can walk out the door and get on with her life, and for the first time, Deb gets a look very similar to Dexter's in seeming like she's at least hopeful Vogel might be right. Given how horribly this goes wrong, I can really see how many of Vogel's patients would want to kill her.
At the station, Matthews runs into Batista and is like, hey, Quinn did great on the exam, but Angie did even better, and you wouldn't want to derail your career as Lieutenant before it's even begun by fucking up this decision, but hey, totally your call! Batista's face: "Greeeeeat." That's its default setting, but still.
At Helena Metro, Dexter enters his office and gets the prints results – three matches, all of women reported missing, the latest of whom was taken two weeks ago, and we can tell from the frizzy hair that it's the girl who's currently thankfully unconscious in Yates' basement. DVO declares his intention to find out of Yates is The Brain Surgeon – by posing the question once Yates is on his table. He walks out into the common area, whereupon a downtrodden Batista calls an impromptu meeting on Norma Rivera; early indications point to the ex-boyfriend, but Batista, obviously still annoyed about the night before, cuts off Quinn's attempt to contribute, and after Masuka comes up to leak hormones all over the proceedings, Dexter heads out to take care of more personal business. It might not be enough to peg him as a killer, but I bet reviewing security footage of all the times Dexter has left the building during work hours would at least be enough to get him fired. Also, Batista tells Quinn to solve the Rivera case if he wants the promotion, which is a thing that might happen and people might care about.
A cute college-student girl finds Masuka, and with an endearing note of shyness, she cuts through his bullshit to tell him he might be her father – he was a sperm donor in college. Masuka gets predictably stunned and terrified, which in turn makes his daughter embarrassed and sad, but when she turns to go, she knocks over some lab equipment, and the noise seems to break the spell, and soon they're both doing that goony laugh he's known for, which I guess cements the idea that they're father and daughter. Funny, because I don't hate her, but there's time.
| Season 8 | Episode 4
…and then they're cruising down a quiet road as Dexter tells Deb that Vogel counseled him to stay away from her, to which Deb smiles: "What the fuck does she know?" Fair on the overall merits, but in this particular case? She adds that Vogel doesn't understand them, and Dexter replies she said he might lose Deb. "But we'll always be together, right?" Gotta give Deb credit for not flinching at that one. Deb brings up the DVDs and asks Dexter if Vogel ever showed them to him, and he grimly admits that he saw a couple. With some difficulty, Deb mentions the DVD she just watched, which showed the last session Harry had with Vogel. After taking a moment, she asks the $64,000 question: Did he kill himself? After looking at her, Dexter admits that he did – a few years earlier, Matthews told Dexter that Harry ODed on his heart medication. Deb asks if it was because of Dexter, and Dexter humorlessly replies that he thought he'd created a monster, although hopefully Matthews didn't say that part.
As they start crossing over some water, Deb, looking far away, says she knows how Harry felt, wanting to kill himself – but then, snapping to life, she bites out, "But he only got it half right!" With that, she grabs the wheel and runs them off the road into the water – but a man fishing by the side of the lake sees it and jumps to action, swimming out as the car fills up around Dexter and Deb's forms, the airbags not having prevented them from losing consciousness. The man gets to Deb's door and extracts her from within, but he's unable to similarly retrieve Dexter without potentially leaving Deb to drown, so he swims her to safety as the car continues to sink, even more quickly now that Deb's door is open. As soon as she's ashore, though, Deb comes to, and when she witnesses Dexter sinking down to a watery grave, she realizes that this, too, is a scenario with which she can't live, and as such she heads right back out into the lake. We see several shots of an unconscious Dexter's life draining away before Deb dives down. As the moments tick away, the roiling bubbles caused by the car's submergence die away, and the water becomes still – but then Deb resurfaces, dragging her unconscious brother with her, before we cut to black. An excellent twist that makes the season's possibilities even more unpredictable – I can't wait to watch the one. See you soon!
John Ramos is a writer and film producer living in Los Angeles. His new film, a documentary on online privacy and the exploitation of personal data called Terms And Conditions May Apply, a New York Times Critics' Pick, is currently in theaters as of July. You can get news on it from the film's Twitter accountor website, or check out trackoff.us to learn how to protect your privacy. Also, you can email John at couchbaron@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/couchbaron, or check out his blog, "Pull Up A Chair," which he'd just love for you to stop by.