Dexter TV Show - Dirty Harry - Dexter Recaps, Dexter Reviews, Dexter Episodes | TWoP

Aired 2009-10-25

Meanwhile, Dexter breaks into Lundy's hotel room so he can find clues about his Trinity investigation. Harry's already beaten him to the punch, of course, and what Dexter finds isn't so much a clue to Lundy's investigation but rather the whole fucking investigation. Dexter explains to Harry (i.e. us) that Trinity as the killer makes more sense in light of leaving Debra alive -- which I kind of don't get, considering killing Lundy represents as much of stepping outside his usual pattern as killing Deb would have been. Not finishing her off seems as odd coming from Trinity as it would coming from the Vacation Murderers. (Or from, say, Anton? Much as I would hate to see that be the case.) But anyway, Trinity seems to be what we're going with (for now). Harry once again makes the fairly obvious explicit: If Trinity tried to kill Debra, Dexter must kill him. "That's MY blood down there too!" he yells, getting awfully proprietary for a manifestation of the subconscious. The first order of business is for Dexter to pack up all of Lundy's materials so they won't get logged into evidence.

At a diner, Trinity sits at the counter and watches a report of "an FBI agent" killed, supposedly by the Vacation Murderers. He's intensely interested, almost nervous, but ultimately inscrutable as to whether he did the killing or not. The waitress fucks up his Denver omelet and Trinity angrily demands she put the order in again, rather than give him the missing diced tomatoes on the side. In other news, every crotchety old man at a diner is secretly a serial killer.

At home, Rita's got baby Harrison on her hip as she tries to hustle the kids out to school and assure Cody that Aunt Deb isn't gonna die (aw). Dexter's phone rings and she tells Astor to answer it, in case it's the hospital. It's not -- it's Dexter's landlord. From his apartment. Rita figures this must be a misunderstanding, but once she's on the phone, we see it's not.

By Joe R

At the hospital, Dexter's sitting by Deb's bedside when she wakes up. She's groggy -- whatever painkiller they're giving her is some good shit -- but she manages to try to play off her injuries as not severe. Didn't even need surgery. Dexter asks her if she can remember anything, but once he presses for specific info, she recoils. She expects that stuff from Angel, but Dexter needs to be her brother. I appreciate these semi-subtle instances of Dexter needing social cues much more than the episodes upon episodes where his voice-over hammers home that he doesn't understand human behavior. "Tell me what you want me to do," Dexter offers, backing down, but Deb doesn't think there's anything anyone can do. She ends up describing what she can: She was on the ground before she even knew she was shot, and two shots later, so was Lundy. She notes the look in his eyes, almost apologetic, and remembers her helplessness. Even now, she can't even walk herself to the bathroom. Dexter picks up on that cue and helps her along, then stands awkwardly outside the door while she pees. Weirdly, it's the sweetest moment these two have had all season.

While Deb's indisposed, Anton comes charging into the room. Ohhh, it's a good thing Dexter can't fully realize just how awkward this moment is. Anton sees the empty bed and freaks, before Dex tells him she's on the can. Observing none of the decorum Dexter does, Anton follows right in behind her. At this, Dexter finally feels sufficiently awkward and heads out into the hall.

Ahh, but there's no escape for the poor married bastard, because here's Rita, pushing Harrison's baby carriage down the hall like she's Jack Nicholson in the hedge maze from The Shining. Ironically, in the context of this season, she is. To her credit, Rita asks after Debra's condition before ambushing Dexter with the news that a pipe burst in his apartment, flooding his kitchen. And yes, she did say his apartment, all dun-dun-DUN! Also, as an aside, it's a good thing Harry is busy psyching Dexter up to go after Lundy this week, because if he realized that pipe burst because Dexter failed to address that leaky faucet last week, there would be no end to the shit he'd give him. Anyway, Dexter's quick response is that he's only hanging onto it until the lease runs out, so he can get his security deposit back. Wow, THAT'S the story he's been keeping in his back pocket for just such an occasion? Yikes. Rita's like, "Well then why did you tell me you got rid of it?" Dexter's like, "...Did I say that?" Wow. Brilliant. Harrison starts crying at what an awful liar Daddy is today, and Rota decides this isn't the place to have this argument, what with Deb and all. "Family comes first," she says, because that's the theme today.

By Joe R

Dexter goes through all of Lundy's research, every tape, every photo. "Trinity's a lone wolf," Lundy's voice says. "Unable to connect, except with his victims." He runs down the sequence of murders: Lady bled out in a tub; mother forced to jump from tall building; older man bludgeoned. Dexter muses to Harry-come-lately that he figures Lundy had all the pieces, he just wasn't able to put them together. He thinks he's got a unique perspective on how Trinity's killings comprise a "sacred ritual." Lundy was simply an obstacle to that ritual. "If anybody has deserved to be on your table," grunts an increasingly incensed Harry, "it's this son of a bitch."

Speaking of that son of a bitch, Trinity's at a hardware store. He's staring at a wall of hammers, morosely asking the clerk which one he should buy for the big project he has ahead of him. "So much work," he muses, "but I have to finish what I started, right?" The clerk suggests a framing hammer, for its heft and versatility. He doesn't mention its "murderability," but that's unspoken.

Out in gritty Miami, or so the steel drums would have me believe, some grubby looking street chick is tweaking her way down the street when she stops by a newspaper box. "VACATION MURDERER IN STD DATABASE," the headline screams. Oh, hello, Nikki Wald. Flip out about this, won't you?

That night, Dexter's perched outside the office building where Trinity bumped into Lundy. He's finishing Lundy's tapes, where he notes that with the hundreds of rooms in the building, many of them empty, Trinity will likely set up shop in the surveillance room and wait for his victim to be alone. Dexter goes through the photos of the victim 30 years ago, a bartender, father of two, bludgeoned by Trinity. So Dexter's found the place, but as Harry notes, he has no idea who he's looking for. (I could quibble about Dexter being a bright enough killer to know when a man old enough to have been killing for 30+ years shows up at a half-empty office building in the middle of the night, but it becomes moot anyway.) Dexter says Lundy was methodical enough to note the man's size and appearance if he had run into him, but there's nothing in any of the tapes. Harry gently nudges Dex into realizing that Lundy had his recorder on him when he got popped. The last tape would still be in that recorder. Time for a trip to evidence storage. He's still got one more day before Trinity's expected to complete his cycle anyway.

By Joe R

Elsewhere, it appears Christine and her very visible breasts are quite enjoying whatever she's getting up to right now. And that would be Quinn, his face buried in her nether regions. She climaxes, and Quinn crashes down on the pillow to her. Seems like now that Christine has become of use to Miami Metro, Quinn has rather energetically thrown himself back into her bed. "Complications" be damned, he's like a kid whose mom has just lifted the ban on sugary sweets.

The morning, Dexter leads Deb gingerly into her temporary residence in Astor's room. She apologizes for displacing the kids and notices when Rita gives Dexter a chilly send-off to work. Rita declines to elaborate right now, saying Deb should just make herself comfortable and take her painkiller. Deb offers her sincere thanks. When Rita's out of the room, Deb winces in pain as she tries to lie down on the bed. She can barely reach for the bottle of painkillers, but when she does grab them, she drops them in the trash. Not fun to be Deb right now. She can't even curse properly.

Out in the kitchen, Rita manages to include the word "apartment" in every sentence she says to Dexter, who is trying to rush out the door without an argument. He says now isn't a good time to discuss it. Rita's of the opinion that any time is a good time to discuss deep lies and betrayal. Dex pulls the Deb card (low? perhaps) and says they shouldn't do this while Deb's here, and he needs to focus on finding her assailant, besides. Rita is forced to relent. Emotionally manipulative and avoidy? Who says Dexter isn't a good fit for married life?

At the station, LaGuerta, noting how Angel didn't come over last night, apologizes for going to Matthews behind his back. "If you haven't noticed," she smirks, "I'm a bit of a control freak." He's noticed. She just thought going to the brass would mean one less thing to ruin what they have. Angel says the only thing that could ruin what they have is not being honest with each other. So...honesty. Is the plan. Complete honesty. On this show, I can't see how that plan could go wrong.

By Joe R

Dexter's in his office, forwarding through Lundy's last tape. He's looking for a description of Trinity while his voice-over is telling us things we already know. While we get a sepia-tinted flashback of When Trinity Met Lundy, Dexter listens to Lundy's description. Afterwards, he heads out into the commotion in the bullpen: They've got word of a motel shooting, the victim matching Johnny Rose's description. The whole team heads out, but Masuka tells Dexter to hang back, since he can't work the case anyway. Though he fervently hopes Deb "is finally gonna get some justice." Yes, her long day-and-a-half search for closure has finally ended.

At the crime scene, Masuka notes the "karma" inherent on Rose's dead body, and counts three bullet holes. The team -- Quinn, Angel, LaGuerta -- assumes Nikki did it, per Angel's planted story. They get a call that Nikki's out in a nearby alley. Indeed she is, pacing and screaming and twitching and holding a gun. Angel and LaGuerta don Kevlar vests and try to reason with her. Yeah, reasoning with Maim-y Winehouse over there is maybe not the best idea. (Yes, I know the VMs didn't maim anybody, but let me have my fun.) Angel and LaGuerta gingerly close in on her, while Nikki continues to rant to a not-present Johnny about everything he promised her, all the lies he told, et cetera. "YOU PIECE OF SHIT!" she screams, just before Quinn nails her in the back with the taser. Tasers: Is there any unstable, gun-wielding crack whore they can't disable?

Back at Dexter's, Deb gets the call from Quinn that Rose is dead and Wald is in custody. Quinn, because he's a good cop but not a smart person, is psyched as he tells Deb about how they nailed them and how this should provide her with some peace of mind. Deb's all, "Oh. Totally," but Quinn's too busy about "taking this skank down to booking" to notice.

In the hallway, LaGuerta laments to Angel about all the killings, over what appears to be one junkie promising another junkie a trip to Bermuda. "Hell hath no fury like a meth addict scorned," Angel notes, hopefully retiring that cliché for a few hundred years. And like a rain cloud over an otherwise productive day, here comes Matthews to call LaGuerta into her office. He gives her props for closing the case, though she tries to deflect it to Angel and his awesome newspaper story idea. Matthews says that's all well and good, but they can't risk the courtroom sideshow that could ensue every time a defense attorney brings their relationship up in court. Which is why Matthews is transferring Angel out of homicide. LaGuerta flips on this "bullshit" -- they followed protocol and everything! Matthews is all, "Hey! I'm giving him a promotion too! No worries." He's a dick. Even if it's maybe the right call. He tells Maria to have the papers on his desk by Monday. Matthews crosses Angel's path on the way out the office, and Angel can tell by the look on LaGuerta's face that it's not good.

By Joe R

Dexter drives while his VO gloats about how much killing he's gonna do to Trinity, but his reverie is interrupted by a glum Deb, who calls him and needs to see him. Dexter tries a couple times to weasel out of it, but Deb says she's at the hotel, where Lundy was shot, which sounds creepy enough that Dexter shows up. He sees her standing at the spot where Lundy died, just staring at the ground. What follows is something of a designed Jennifer Carpenter tour de force, which isn't to downplay how good she is, because she is. But these "now you GRIEVE" scenes have become a little too expected to hit as hard as they should. That said, assume that J.C. is being amazing throughout.

She starts by giving Dexter shit about the apartment -- he can't go throwing his marriage away, seemingly on purpose. She's the fuckup in the family, not him. Dexter comes clean and says he sometimes feels trapped. Deb's not feeling that sympathetic to that -- not that she ever would, but especially today, she's not understanding how three great kids and a wife who adores him could be bad. This time yesterday, she had Lundy and Anton. Now she has nothing, and it's her fault. She's decided: no matter what she does, it's gonna be the wrong thing because SHE'S the problem. She's so irrevocably fucked up that everything she ever does will be wrong and everything she touches will turn to shit. You guys, think back to the beginning of the season, when we were all loving smart, strong, socially thriving Deb. I think we all knew she was being set up for a fall, but seeing it like this is heartbreaking. She breaks into hysterical, hiccupping sobs, crying, "I'm broken!" Evenly, but not unemotionally, Dexter tells her, "You're not. I am." It's the most honest he's ever been with her, even if she's not equipped to take it for anything but trying to make her feel better. He tries to get her to come back to the house, but she doesn't want to be touched. She's freaking out. Dexter finally grabs her into a hug and lets her wail. The voice-over, meanwhile, plots some vengeance on her behalf.

By Joe R

Apparently, VO has been going for a long time, because when Dexter gets back to his apartment, it's nighttime, and VO is still yammering about killing Trinity. It manages to shut up when Dex turns a corner and finds Rita sitting on his bed. Oh, awesome, time for The Talk of What Your Lies Have Done to Our Marriage. Love that. She's somber as she notes that Dexter's landlord, who let her in, had no idea he was married. She wanted to see the apartment, see if he's doing drugs again (well, "again," but don't make me remember that storyline). She says she went through everything in his apartment looking for an answer, while Dexter's eyes go wide at what she could have found. "What [could] be so horrible," she asks, "that my husband would have to keep a place to hide it from me. Or his own sister." She came across Dexter's Big Box o' Death but says she didn't want to be the person to break into it. She doesn't want to be the person snooping around apartments, either. She just needs to know what he's hiding. Dexter opens the trunk and shows her what's inside: it's Harry's rifle. He explains that he didn't want to keep it in the house with the kids, while his VO reminds us that his implements of death are in the secret compartment below. One case with a disassembled rifle doesn't seem to justify paying rent on a whole other apartment (why not keep it at Deb's?), but to Rita's credit, she doesn't entirely buy it. Or Dexter when he assures her he has "nothing to hide." The car accident. The apartment. The security lights. As Rita packs Harrison up to go, she tells him the most disturbing thing is how good Dexter's gotten at lying. And you know? She's completely in the right. And yet, when she tells him, "When you're ready to come home, we have a lot of work to do if this marriage has any hope," it's hard not to hate her, at least a little. Dexter really HAS made her the bad guy.

By Joe R

Now that all that boring marriage business is out of the way, let's get back to the killin'! Back at the Bludgeon Building (former site of Fisty McBludgeon's Pub), our old pal Security Guard patrols the halls alone, his head unadorned and just waiting to get bashed in. Outside, Dexter pulls up, VO yammering as always. He's got to get to the surveillance room and head off Trinity there. Harry, ever the backseat driver, shows up and notes the absence of the security guard.

Cut to a pan up Trinity, clad neck to toe in what looks like a plastic safety suit, wielding a hammer, while a man whimpers in pain and abject fear. Meanwhile, Dexter urgently heads inside and notes the photos on the absent security guard's desk. Two kids. Just like the victim 30 years ago. "It's the security guard," Dexter says, gravely. Back to Trinity, as his unseen victim screams. Dexter heads for the elevator, but before he can push a button, it dings. He darts out around a corner and watches...as a very un-bloodied Security Guard disembarks. So...not Trinity's victim, then.

No, sports fans, if you'd guessed that the Sandwich Guy introduced in the first act would go off in the third act, you're right. Poor bastard. Trinity works on his knee while, in the lobby, Dexter sends the elevator up to 12 to get the Security Guard to follow it, out of his way. Trinity, meanwhile, dons a face shield. You guys, when the guy working you over with a blunt instrument is thinking this seriously about splatter protection, it's just not your day. "Please," Sandwich Guy begs, "I'm a father!" Trinity grabs him by his shirt and pulls him up to his feet. "You were no father!" he growls, then starts savagely beating him with the hammer. Blood is spattering everywhere, it's totally disturbing, and Trinity keeps repeating, "You made me!"

Meantime, Dexter breaks into the surveillance room, and Harry notes that the recording disk is gone. Probably just as well for Dexter -- he doesn't want the cops taking care of this. He frantically searches the camera feeds until he finds the one showing the Vicious Bloody Death channel. Trinity's still working that hammer, producing so much spatter that even Dexter seems horrified. Finally, Trin turns the hammer claw-side out (would not blame you if you checked out of this paragraph at those words) and winds up for one last particularly juicy shot to what I can only hope is the long-since-dead Sandwich Guy.

By Joe R

So Dexter makes a good note of Trinity's face as he un-shields. He also finds out he's in room 407, so it's off to the races. Dex flies up the stairwell, but the door is locked. Back downstairs, Harry teacher's-pets that, since the elevators aren't moving, Trin's taking the stairs. But which stairwell? He can't risk guessing wrong, so he heads outside to try to head him off. Unfortunately, Trinity drives off from the parking garage below street level. Dexter somehow manages to get into his car in time to follow Trinity's van, and the chase is on.

"No way I lose you again, Trinity," Dexter voices-over as he follows him through Miami's seedier neighborhoods. "He's scurrying back to whatever hole he crawled out of," Harry sneers. I'm digging how angry Harry's been ever since Deb got shot. Dex obsessively stares down the "lone wolf's" van, as he mentally imagines slicing him up real good. But the van just...keeps going. Out of the slums and onto the highway. Dexter keeps following, but he's clearly puzzled that he's being led to...what is this, the suburbs? "He doesn't belong here," Dexter says, confused, as Trinity pulls into the driveway of a comfortable-looking upper-middle-class abode.

Dex pulls out his syringe and starts following Trinity to his front door, but he has to stop short. Greeting the man who Dex just saw hammer a man's skull in is a pretty young woman who seems an awful lot like a wife. And through the front window, Dex spots a pair of kids. Are we all feeling the juxtaposition? Are we letting it sink in? Lundy was wrong, Dexter says to himself. Trinity's not a lone wolf after all. He's got a family. Just like Dexter.

Joe R senses a very special Thanksgiving episode coming soon! He can be reached for comment at joseph.reid21@gmail.com.

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