By Angel Cohn
Deb calls Dexter with the bad news that Brother Sam has been shot, which totally puts a crimp in Dexter's stalking of Colin Hanks. He and EJO are on a shopping trip buying some whorish clothing and talking about tramp stamps. It's practically a spa day, except for the whole murderous spiteful plots and whatnot. Anyway, at the Brother Sam crime scene, Dex wants to jump into the blood spatter examination, but Deb tries to tell him this is a bad idea because of conflicts of interest. He promptly ignores her and tells her that she needs his help so she doesn't look bad at her job. He's not exactly wrong. This, compounded with the fact that Angel and Quinn won't play with her because she's lieutenant, causes he to go crying to her therapist who suggests that she have a party to make herself feel better.
Dexter wants to exact vengeance immediately on the person responsible for shooting up the most interesting character on the show of late (and we can't say that we blame him), but he discovers it’s a dude named Leo and has a lovely conversation with Leo's baby mommy that cracked me up. Anderson, who is competent at his job (somewhat), takes out Leo in a firestorm of bullets before Dexter gets the chance.
But, because of a DVD with some surveillance footage on it, Dexter puts together that Leo didn't shoot brother Sam, Nick did. Nick, the dog whisperer, is a friend of Sam's who even got baptized and pulled into Brother Sam's whole "light" nonsense. Dexter figures this out and promises Brother Sam on his deathbed that he will kill Nick dead, no problem. But all Brother Sam wants is for Dexter to forgive Nick and find the light that's inside of him, and embrace the goodness. After Sam dies (boo!), Dexter takes Nick for a long walk on the beach. It's not romantic, but Dexter tries his best to understand why Nick would kill the guy who saved him from a life of awful crime. Turns out Nick didn't really buy the whole goodness thing and was trying to get back into his gang by shooting Sam. Dexter says that Brother Sam forgave him, and then Nick starts giggling about getting away with murder. Naturally, Dexter doesn't take too kindly to this and goes off book and kills him in the water. Not exactly seeing the light there. Instead he sees his very dark and twisted ghost brother Brian hovering over him asking him if he misses him. Welcome back, Bri.
On the Doomsday front, Deb gets an update from Batista and Quinn, who have finally realized there might be some religious significance to all of this, and learned about a controversial art installation based on these prophesies. They've even got a picture, which is of a naked woman with the same tattoo as Clarissa. Quinn panics because he doesn't want things to be awkward when his boss/ex-girlfriend finds out that he banged a potential witness. But Clarissa outs Quinn about the sex in the middle of an interrogation, and things get pretty bad from there. Deb almost fires him and then he gets drunk and shows up at her party with a random blonde, before hitting on Jamie in the most disgusting way possible. At least he gets punched in the face by Angel for his gross actions and Deb gets a bottle of tequila out of the deal. They still are no closer to finding the doomsday killer, though.
But that's OK, because Travis has developed a bit of a conscience. He wants to give their latest "whore" some painkillers. Gellar objects, so instead he makes her a sandwich. Then after a visit to see his sister teach some elementary school aged children, he decides to free the victim instead of branding her. It doesn't seem like this is going to go all that well for him, as EJO wasn't altogether pleased with his faltering emotions earlier in the episode.