By Couch Baron
LaGuerta's sights are closing on Dexter, but Captain Jack isn't so sure; regardless, they agree that if the real BHB is out there, he probably framed and killed Doakes, so they decide to look into Doakes' final days -- starting with the cabin in the Everglades where he was found. When they do, the owner tells them who he rented the cabin to -- and Captain Jack recognizes the name as one of the three drug lords that were responsible for killing Dexter's mother. When LaGuerta hears that Dexter watched his mother get chopped up like the BHB did to his victims, and that the Ice Truck Killer was Dexter's brother, she wants to question him immediately, but Captain Jack convinces her to let him do it instead, as he's known Dexter since he was a kid. That doesn't happen this week, but we'll see where Captain Jack's loyalties really lie week.
Quinn hears that Nadia is being shipped out to Dubai, so he and Batista hit the strip club, inside which Jason Gedrick essentially dares Quinn to shoot him -- and he does, dead (I think). To get himself out of potential trouble, he has Nadia shoot him in the shoulder with Jason Gedrick's gun to make it look like Quinn was defending himself. Despite Batista being 99 percent sure the story is bullshit, Quinn prevails on Batista to let Nadia take her passport and some money and get out of there, as otherwise the Koshkas will kill her. This storyline seems to have lost its relevance, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for the moment.
The Phantom Arsonist has struck again, five times in total now, and this time there were witnesses to him emerging from the flames wearing his protective silver suit. Also, one of the victims this time around was a six-year-old child, and Dexter has it in his head that Whack-A-Phil might be responsible. But when Dexter discovers that Whack-A-Phil has an alibi for one of the fires -- he was at a Civil War reenactment, and I'll just save the jokes for the recap so we're not here all day -- he's back at square one. But we, as it turns out, are not, as we see a young man board a bus, don the suit, spray everyone in it and light it on fire. Everyone but one person escapes, but seeing the bus's security footage of the incident makes Dexter really, really want to kill the PA. They get a print off the bus, and while it doesn't match any adults in the database, Dexter takes it upon himself to break into the juvenile records hall, and discovers the Phantom, who's been an arsonist since he was a kid. He captures him, sets up the kill room and tells him it's time to take responsibility for his actions -- and then, thanks to the discussion with Hannah below, he can't go through with it, instead leaving the guy (who didn't see his face) unconscious for MM to find.
Dexter brings up his Dark Passenger to Hannah, and even though she's a killer too, she's a bit flummoxed despite his attempts to explain the concept. Then her father (played by Jim Beaver, another great character actor), whom Hannah hadn't seen since he went to prison, shows up looking to apologize for being such a terrible father; this understandably brings up conflicting emotions for her, but she does agree to see him again, and soon, Dexter's at dinner with the two of them.
All seems to be going well until he hits her up for money for a new business he supposedly wants to start; when she turns him down, he drunkenly but deliberately drives a truck into her greenhouse and tells his devastated daughter that her criminal notoriety caused her mother to die of a broken heart, and the only thing that stops his tirade is Dexter's livid intervention. Once she's back to herself, Hannah tells Dexter that she saw the look on his face and is maybe starting to understand his Dark Passenger construct, but conversely, Dexter starts to question it himself, wondering if he just made it up to avoid responsibility for everything he's done. However, when Hannah's dad shows up to try to blackmail Dexter, saying he's got information that could lead to a murder conviction for Hannah -- namely a witness, "Arlene Schram," who saw Hannah put the rat poison in that sex-abuser counselor's food -- and that he's the one who sold Price a lot of his information, Dexter goes to Hannah and asks if she might want to solve her problem her special way -- but she can't. But one effect of Dexter ditching the Dark Passenger idea is that he feels free to go off code -- so he kills Hannah's dad and tells her he won't be bothering her anymore.
Whether she grasps what he did or not is unclear, but they say they love each other -- just as Deb, acting on a message Hannah's dad left before he died, resolves to track down Arlene Schram. Like I said, the walls are closing in on Dexter and Hannah, and neither of them knows it.