Dexter TV Show - First Blood - Dexter Recaps, Dexter Reviews, Dexter Episodes | TWoP

Recapped by Couch Baron · Aired 2010-10-24

...so let's cut to a close-up of Julia Stiles's hands tearing open a packet of sugar, and given the pile of granules on the table in front of her she obviously needs to find a different way to occupy them. I'd suggest a smartphone and a Twitter app -- while hardly more productive, they at least won't attract ants. Dexter walks into the coffeehouse where Lumen is most thrillingly occupying her time, and when he joins her, she notes that he always looks disappointed when he sees her, like he was hoping to find an empty table. "Guilty," replies DVO, and I think they tend to overuse the VO for exposition quite often but I will never tire of mental hilarities like that one. Dexter tells Lumen that she should really consider his advice that she leave town and go home, but she asks, "If you had something horrible happen to you, could you just forget about it and move on?" He replies that he'd want to, and I assume he's talking about his childhood trauma but I'd like to imagine he's referring to the cheap technique the writers just used there. Surely Dexter is aware of the parallel -- in fact, especially given what he's going through with Harrison, it's exactly why he wants to divert her from the path of revenge -- so for the writers to give us this on-the-nose line for a One To Grow On moment is insulting. I mean, I know I'm coming from Mad Men, The Show Where Unnecessary Dialogue Goes To Die, but still. Anyway, Lumen, after making sure that packet of sugar will never, ever hurt anyone again, asks Dexter to help her find those guys and kill them, as she saw him dispose of Boyd. "You knew what you were doing." Unfortunately, the arrival of the waitress stops Dexter from surveying her on the specifics ("Did you really think so? I thought I could have dragged out the death blow just maybe a second and a half longer"), and when she asks him if he'd like "the usual," I wonder about his choice of venue here, as it seems sloppy for him to be seen with sugar-packet-shredding Lumen by anyone who could pick him out of a lineup. When the waitress is gone, hopefully not to call Joey Quinn about the poster he dropped off earlier, Dexter tells Lumen in hushed tones that if she pursues this course of action, things will only get worse -- it will open up something inside her she'll regret ever learning was there. And while this is meant to frighten her in more than one way, as well it might given what she saw Dexter do, she kind of stupidly says she can't trust him, since she doesn't even know his last name.

By Couch Baron

LaGuerta comes home, apologizing for being late and acting shifty as hell while Batista is all "Dinner's in the oven," like, the role reversal is kind of funny but we know from that shit she pulled with Esme back in Season Two that she can be a better liar than this, so either she's not trying hard enough, or she doesn't have anything to hide and is just being squirrely for "dramatic" effect, which would be completely cheap. I mean, it's not like he surprised her, like with Dexter and Deb in the last scene -- she knew she was coming home and would have to tell him something. Get it together, woman. Anyway, after a palpably slow and bullshit excuse about staying in the office late because of "budgets," she goes to take a shower, leaving Batista to stew about what kind of McCourt fluids she's washing off herself. Oh, but first he checks her phone and sees she's got an appointment scheduled for "Tomorrow" at 2 PM at the "Beach Inn Motel," like, what kind of calendar doesn't list the date, and by the way, it's 6:49 PM, according to the phone, and they're both acting like she was burning the midnight oil. How long could he have been sitting there with "All day long I slave over a hot stove, and this is the thanks I get" thoughts in his head?

Dexter turns back up to the motel and conveniently finds that woman with the power to magically turn collection agencies off hosing down something or other, and she tells him that "his wife" was "asking about Tuttle Bridge," like, she has an ENTIRE BULLETIN BOARD devoted to these guys and has the NAME OF THE BRIDGE ON A POST-IT NOTE and IS ON HER WAY TO COMMIT MURDER, and she has to stop and chat about it? Anyway, Dexter freaks and gets back in the car...

...and then Lumen, wearing a hoodie while she apparently plans to commit murder in BROAD DAYLIGHT, is strolling through the shantytown, which by the way is so lacking in menace that I'm surprised Mommy and Me didn't have their outing here. (Okay, maybe not that surprised.) And actually, when Lumen, devoid of peripheral vision thanks to that stupid hoodie, bumps into some guy, he calls her...an "ASSHOLE"! Such language! I may have the vapors! Anyway, after Lumen looks around for approximately forty minutes, she sees a shirtless Brunner wandering around, and by the way, I wasn't under the impression that Dexter's Kill House was all that nearby, so how is it that Brunner's ankle tag didn't go off last night? For that matter, where are the sensors set up? What's the perimeter? Whatever, I can't believe there are this many plot holes in a single episode and I'm going to end up writing twenty pages if I keep obsessing about them.

By Couch Baron

Anyway, Lumen takes cover behind one of the bridge supports and, with shaking hands, takes aim at Brunner, but some dude gets in the way, and then he leaves again, and another eternity passes before, just as a train goes by, conveniently obscuring their sounds, Dexter appears and grabs the gun away from her, and then she YELLS at him about how he doesn't know what "those animals" did to her. "Passing me around. I couldn't move! I couldn't stop them!" Apparently you couldn't IDENTIFY them, either, if you were about to kill this guy who wasn't involved. Seriously, WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED TO HER? Instead of asking if she can SHUT UP before she gets them both killed, Dexter tells her it wasn't Brunner, and takes ten years to get to the part about the ankle bracelet, during which Lumen keeps yelling about how Brunner RAPED these WOMEN, like I am not denigrating her feelings at all but she is not going to get her revenge if the dozens of sex offenders decide to KILL HER DEAD. But actually, even though her hoodie's down and she's screaming like a maniac, she draws nothing more than passing interest, and seriously, Lauren Velez and David Zayas were both on Oz. Couldn't they have told the show how to write actual criminals? Once the idea that Brunner is the wrong man has sunk in, Lumen cries that she just wants to feel better, and instead of suggesting counseling or something that might actually work, Dexter can only tell her that "this is where it leads" and she needs to get on that plane and go home. Lumen cries for a bit more as the CHILD RAPISTS politely continue to give her space to work out her issues and Brunner also very considerately declines to take a few steps over to see what's up, which is nice because if he did he would see THE DUDE WHO STUCK A NEEDLE IN HIS NECK LAST NIGHT, like, why Dexter isn't the one wearing the hoodie I also can't imagine. Finally, however, Lumen tells Dexter she'll go home, and I think she's talking about Minnesota but I'd be satisfied with her just going back to the damn motel at this point.

By Couch Baron

We're back where we started, as Dexter is helping put up that canopy again as he tells us that rainbows are an illusion, which is dumb, but not as dumb as those two women from the first scene who are chatting loudly about how Harrison just had to be the one who scratched "Teddy," and then they talk about what happened to Rita and how "that boy will never be the same," like, nice to have any sympathy for a one-year-old whose mother was brutally murdered, and also you didn't seem to give two shits when it actually happened and NO ONE TALKS LIKE THAT. Dexter, who's come up fast beside them, sniffs that there's nothing wrong with his son, and it's not like I necessarily wanted him to kill them but maybe a "you dumb bints" would have made it remotely satisfying. You know, on second thought, killing them will be just fine. Dexter puts Harrison into the car and adorably tells him that he's sorry for ever thinking anything was wrong, and that he'll always be his son. Of course, then Harrison reaches out and scratches him, and while Dexter's "Ow!" is cute, it doesn't change the fact that that was SO PREDICTABLE, ugh.

Oh, and speaking of which, Lumen gets into a cab, but the driver tells her, "Welcome to Miami," like DUN DUN DUN! Except not really, especially since she's wearing, like, a tank top instead of a parka! And I swear, if she still has that same goddamn motel room week even though she was leaving the state, supposedly never to return, I just don't even know what. But unless Jeff's cable/TV is still on the blink you won't have to hear about it. I would have liked to have my Dexter shot be with a better episode, but what can I say, every show has its duds. Thanks for reading, and see you around!

John Ramos is a writer and film producer living in Los Angeles. You can email him at couchbaron@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/couchbaron, or get information about his most recent film "East Fifth Bliss," starring Michael C. Hall, at https://twitter.com/eastfifthbliss.

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