Episode Report Card Mr. Stupidhead: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT To Burn Out Or Fade Away
By Mr. Stupidhead | Season 2 | Episode 11 | Aired on 12.08.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Still trapped in the cabin, Doakes tries to convince Dexter to turn himself in. They start to form a rapport with one another, and Dexter takes the advice to heart. Hoping to "finally get some sleep," Dexter starts making plans to get his affairs in order before letting Doakes bring him in: he has Deb sign a living trust agreement, and even gives Rita the minivan.
Meanwhile, Lila has decided to go ahead with pressing charges on Angel for the "rape." Luckily, Deb decides to use Lundy's power in the Bureau to do some research on LMPMT to see if there's anything wrong with her. Turns out that Tournay isn't Lila's real last name, because Deb can't find anything on her. Angel brings a microwave that Lila used at his place in to the station, and from her fingerprints, Deb is able to ascertain that Lila West is in fact in the country on an expired visa. Deb goes to her loft to tell her to get the fuck out of town, lickety-split, making Lila angry, obviously.
While Dexter's running around taking care of stuff, Doakes breaks out of his cage at the cabin. He makes his way to a swamp, where two guys in a boat find him. Turns out Doakes is really shit out of luck, because the two guys are friends of Chris Harlow (whom Dexter chopped up last week), and they're looking for the cocaine cabin. They knock Doakes out and drag him back to where he started, but Dexter returns just in time. He makes eye contact with Doakes, and their unspoken bond helps them overcome the captors. It's pretty awesome, and I was hoping that the new friendship would result in some other unspoken possibilities (namely, Dexter letting Doakes go, and somehow everything working out), but no. Besides, Dexter's gone too far in framing Doakes for it to ever really work out, which adds an interesting dynamic. So, Dexter puts Doakes back in his newly reinforced cage, and they share a really great scene where Dexter tells him he's thinking of turning himself in. Dexter even got Doakes grapes.
LaGuerta goes to Haiti to investigate Doakes's trail, and she calls Lundy when she finds out that Doakes wanted the slides analyzed. Lundy finds it interesting, because why would Doakes want that?
As Dexter takes Rita and the kids out on the boat, Lila (who's been trailing them) goes to Dexter's car and snags his GPS. After Deb confronts her, she heads to an address in the Everglades that she's not familiar with (i.e. the cabin). I know: not cool.
Dex invites Deb over for some steaks and to tell her who he is and that he's turning himself in, but when Deb tells him that he's her rock, and she couldn't have gotten through the whole ITK debacle without him, his confidence is boosted and he decides to go through with his frame-up of Doakes and not follow through with turning himself in after all.
The episode ends with Lila arriving at the cabin, and Doakes wondering who the fuck this British chick could possibly be. Oh, man, what's gonna happen? Well, it's Lila and Doakes, so I see some flames and some "muthafucka"s in our not-so-distant future. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously: Doakes caught Dexter as he packed Jimenez's body into his boat in the Everglades. They struggled, and Dexter put Doakes in a cage in the cabin. Nobody puts Doakesy in the cage! Sorry. LaGuerta told Deb that not reporting Doakes's phone call to her was "worth the risk," but Lundy saw it differently, telling her she compromised her own integrity as an agent of the law, and that she couldn't be trusted. Go Lundy! Dexter and Rita started to patch things up. Lundy and Deb got into some silly beef over what's going to happen when the whole BHB mess is done with. Angel and Lila boned (roughly), and then she took a bunch of roofies to make it look like he raped her, which is severely uncool. Dex decided he'd frame Doakes really hard, so he put his fingerprints all over his knives when Doakes was passed out, and then planted them by a dock where he knew a diving class would find them. Dex also found out from Matthews that Harry actually committed suicide, a rather demoralizing discovery.
We're in the cabin on the same night we left off last episode, and Dexter VOs, "I always thought hardened arteries squeezed the life out of my father." Dexter starts taking down the plastic wrap he used for Chris Harlow's killing. "But it was me. Harry gazed into the eyes of his creation and saw evil, pure and simple. My evil. It killed him." "That shit about your father?" says Doakes. "You want to talk about it?" "About what? That my life is one tragic mistake?" Doakes tries to comfort Dexter by saying, "We've all thought about that at one time or another. I know I have." "Did you happen to be stuffing a human leg into a garbage bag at that point?" "You want to make a change, Morgan? Now's the time. All you gotta do is let me out of here. It's over, man." Dexter, not wanting to hear that, rushes the cage and yells, "It is over when I say it is!" It reminds of the pilot episode, when he yells, "Open your eyes and look at what you did!" Doakes tells him it's good for Dexter to let his anger out. Dexter says that since he's "flying without a code," he could "unleash the beast," and Doakes could suffer the consequences. "Morgan, you know that's not the answer." "But it would feel fucking great." "Yeah, but you would hate yourself for the rest of your life." Dexter lies down on the table, feeling defeated, and says that everything Harry taught him was bullshit: "But it's the only way I know how to live." "Turn yourself in," says Doakes quietly. "Rule number one: don't get caught." Doakes tries to talk reason into Dexter by telling him it's only a matter of time until he hurts someone close to him, like Rita or Deb or the kids, "not on purpose, but you can't control that shit that's growing inside of you. It's like a cancer, and in case you haven't noticed, it's spreading." He continues to implore Dexter to "take responsibility" for who he is: "We'll go to the station together. I'll help you." Dexter looks like he's actually taking the advice to heart, and the two men share a long look at each other. Dexter's phone rings, and despite Doakes's request that he not answer it, he takes the phone outside.