Dexter and Julia Stiles embark on the rough and tumble road of captor and prisoner to best friends and fellow murderers, and things go pretty well, if you look at the big picture. I mean, a little Dexter blood was shed, and a good chunk of Masuka's pharmaceutical stash went missing in the process, but after a few days Dex and Julia were swapping stories of murdered wives and being sex-trafficked like only the best of friends can do.
Deb, on the other hand, is having a hell of a time catching these Santa Muerte bastards. With a little help from Dexter, she tracks the beheaders' cigar butt down to a tenement they're renting that they've filled with not only their freaky machetes and skulls, but about a dozen immigrant families as well. One of the beheaders was home during the raid, but he outsmarted Deb immediately and fled. Sucks for her, but at least we got to see some blood squirting out of his hostage's neck before he left. It was a little regional Shakespeare festival, but still -- that's nice of him.
And in the other storylines, for which I care very little: Dexter's nanny quit, but later decided to come back. Angel apologized to the cop he beat up, but IA is being their jerk selves about it and turning the whole thing onto LaGuerta, because if some drunk guy says you gave him a blowjob a million years ago it must not only be true, but you deserve to be in trouble for it now. So that's still going on. Luckily, Quinn's feeble little Dexter hunt is currently on hold, as he broke safehouse protocol to get to Trinity's son and show him a photo of Dexter in a convenience store. The son didn't talk, and LaGuerta suspended Quinn without pay indefinitely. That's probably the most useful thing LaGuerta has ever done. I hereby forgive any blowjob she's ever given. Now let's stop talking about them, please. -- Mindy Monez
You know how sometimes Dexter's dad shows up and just sort of bitches and bitches forever without getting to his point, because there is no point, because he is imaginary? This is one of those times. That flat-faced dirty urchin that Shawn Hatosy was keeping on ice at the tourist center and saw Dex kill him finally and then flailed about?
Well, that flurry of activity was I guess the last of the urchin's reserves, so now it's all blood and scars and Dexter cleaning the dirt and blood off one inch at a time. How Dexter that instead of just getting a hose he's going to tend each wound carefully and scrub tiny clean places off the person one at a time before getting to the presumable murder part.
Daddy Morgan runs through all the things that Dexter has done crazy so far this season, and how this season even more than usual is really just a metaphor for a Republican senator's secret life. "What's the first rule of the Code? Don't get caught when you go out hunting for men at night. What's the second rule of the Code? Don't do it in a public bathroom. What's the third rule of the Code? You need a new wife or people are gonna start asking questions."
So basically Dexter feels like he's gotta protect the matted gnarly urchin by -- still not sure -- and Dad feels like he needs to protect Harrison and himself by killing it dead. At some point during this conversation between the serial killer and the other people in his head, the urchin wakes up and gets a wonky-eyed view of Dexter trying to be "friendly" and "unassuming" and "comforting," which goes poorly of course, and then it's an urchin puddle on the floor, and some Nell-type noises, and grunts and groans and struggles and spelling W-A-T-E-R on her hand and finally he gets annoyed enough to go searching through all that hair and blood and filth for a spot to hit the urchin with some more M99.
Thinking that you can't really do this every four hours, forever, Dexter gets so nervous that he takes off his shirt and does a little dance. That helps me too sometimes when things get out of hand.
Deb calls and he yells at her and then he finds out that this whole fight with the urchin and his Dad took all night, and now it's tomorrow. "Masuka's trying, he really is," [he really is], "But the blood just doesn't talk to him the way it does to you. I really need your help on this!" Dexter realizes that not only does he have an innocent witness to deal with, but also he left the insane Irish nanny with Harrison all night so she probably turned him into a pudding because you know she's got some crazy up her sleeve. But because he loves his sister, Dexter decides to take a moment and help her out.
Just kidding, it has nothing to do with Deb and everything to do with his realization that doing Masuka's job of doing his job while he's on leave from his job will give him ample opportunity to use the laboratory and its many apparatuses to figure out who the urchin is, under all that hair. Spoiler alert, it is Leonardo DiCaprio.
Or someone with a marked resemblance. So Dexter hangs up on Deb being sweet, puts his shirt back on sadly, and gets the heck out of there. Instead of calling the babysitter or doing anything proactively mature, Dexter heads over to that botanica where people are constantly be murdered while surrounded by magical artifacts, and still nobody seems to believe that it's a voodoo situation. Dexter calls the situation outside a "bit of a circus" and Deb responds, "Are you kidding me? It's Barnum & Bailey." Which is a circus, so... Whatever, if we focus on the chronically tone-deaf ass-stupid dialogue on this show we'll never get anywhere, and besides that's not why we like it.
The gathered poor people yell and yell at the cops and the loose translation, per Deb: "The general complaint is there are fewer beheadings in the rich parts of Miami." To me, this is less about socioeconomics and more about being in the right place at the right time. Trust, if #beheadings starts trending in my neighborhood? I don't care how broke I am, my poor ass is moving somewhere less beheading-adjacent.
Anyway, there's fuckin' useless Masuka with his hands down his pants doing a not-great job of being Dexter, but a real good job of being the main reason it's hard to give a shit about this show, and then Dexter does his whole Blood Whisperer deal and amazes everybody and tells everybody the last thing the person ate and what was on their mind when they died and whatever. Then he finds some evidence that everybody else missed, which is a tiparillo butt that will lead directly to the voodoo killer(s). Masuka sucks some more, while Dexter tries to ignore him long enough to get all his Leonardo DiCaprio evidence together.
Irish nanny puts a fork through Dexter's hand and bounces, having fired him with a nice little proverb: "Never lie to someone who trusts you, never trust someone who lies to you." I respect that. Dexter and Harrison both just seem confused by it. Then when she leaves Dexter sighs and Harrison acts sad and sort of insulted, and Dexter says he misses Rita. Not because he loved her or is capable of emotions, but just because when he was out all night picking up guys she pretended not to notice and just stayed home with the baby like they're supposed to. And she sure as hell didn't quote self-righteous little Irishisms at him.
Quinn is "hot on the trail" of Kyle Butler, if by "hot on the trail" you mean "still basically at the same place of not really having any reason to be obsessed with connecting Dexter to the Trinity Killer, considering the connection is how he cut Rita all up." In terms of the fruitless mission to find Trinity, which will never happen, I guess it makes sense to pursue the lead. But it's going a pretty long way around to get to what really just amounts to Doakes 2.0 and, more importantly, giving Quinn something to do.
He has a long phone call with an FBI buddy about how the guy won't let him talk to Trinity's family, because they're in a safe house, but is willing to show them the picture of Dexter. Since that's not happening, Quinn pretends to get all disappointed and hang up, but really he's been watching the guy the whole time they were talking, from down the street, so then it's just a quick tail -- those FBI guys don't know from getting tailed, the rooks -- and then there he is: Jonah Mitchell, in the safe house, being adorable. Pinkies all healed, polo even tighter than last year, looking pretty happy altogether. He's so sweet, you can read his lips saying something like, "Thanks for the soda, ma'am. The bubbles tickle my nose!"
I mean, considering the hell that was his life is now better in every measurable way: No more hypocrite church all the time, no more scary crazy sister trying to fuck her way out of the house with everybody down to like the cable guy and census workers, no more walking in on Dad "rehearsing" in the bathtub, no more head getting knocked through the wall just because Murder, She Wrote is no longer in syndication.
Deb throws a big old police party to celebrate the tiparillo butt. Either she's more sleep-deprived than she's letting on, or it's just dim days in Miami. So that little girl who is a cop, the one that always comes around yelling ¡Santa Muerte! every six seconds, she's there. She's sort of a star of the show, actually, because she found a thumbprint on Dexter's butt which is now being reconstructed in the lab. Then they will know something and that will lead that somewhere. Dexter brings in Harrison to distract everybody and then there is a riot of cooing and snatching and grabbing at the baby, and Dexter's like, "Mental note, babies work better than doughnuts!"
Which is funny, and fun, so of course Ghost Dad's gotta show up and shit all over everything and yell forever and ever. Dexter steals some meds from Masuka, because the Leonardo urchin is close to death due to all these serial killers locking him up and tying him up and injecting him with things all the time. Dexter finds out that the urchin's name is Lumen Ann Pierce, which is a real name that a person might have, and he is from Minnesota. No warrants, no traffic violations, no missing persons report. Dad points out that this means Dexter can go cut the urchin to pieces, and that this isn't some "fairytale" with the "handsome prince" who rides in and "saves Leonardo DiCaprio."
Deb heads home to take a nap, because one thing I've forgotten to mention is that fully half of this episode is just Deb's sleep schedule, constant updates on her circadian rhythms, how's she doing, is she sleepy, is she feeling alert, what's her sleep number. It never ends. So yeah: Deb Morgan is Sleepy. Major plotline. Dexter sends Harrison home with his sister, and of course leaves out the part where he abandoned his child and pissed off the babysitter, because that kind of thing is the opposite of doughnuts.
LaGuerta tells Angel to go to that douchebag's hospital and apologize for almost killing him. See, LaGuerta's pretty awesome but what keeps her from being totally awesome is she doesn't say, "I'd go over there? But I'd probably just blow him." You know Angel's ass would be in the car immediately. Angel whines about how almost killing a man still doesn't add up to insulting his property, and LaGuerta's like, "I know, you're a macho stereotype with a lisp, it's fine. Go do it or else." Angel goes and does it, because LaGuerta is scary.
Dexter goes back to the urchin and is flesh-crawlingly "nice" some more, but it's all for naught, because as far as Leo's concerned this is just Shutter Island II: Shutterer and nothing he says is real, not even "Try these delicious antibiotics! I see you've been keeping your open wounds in a puddle of stagnant water and I think these just might help" or "You probably have a headache due to all the synthetic opioid I've been pumping into you, how about an aspirin?"
Leo lies when he cries, and finally when he speaks he lies some more and says his name is Rachel. Since "Rachel" is a real name -- while "Lumen" is merely Easy-Reader Latin and not a name at all, just something the angel says in Angels In America right before she starts cumming lasers -- you could almost believe him. It's more believable than the other way, I mean. Either way the urchin is not being helpful.
("Look, you! The second you started doing those Stoli ads your ass was mine! I pay your fucking salary!" This sort of thing is a major reason I can never be a truly successful serial killer. Because that is no kind of argument at all.)
Dexter tries to explain himself, but guess what: It makes no sense. Dexter's like, "Okay, I know you saw me kill that guy: My bad. But that guy was already keeping you in nasty lockup and you're covered with scabs, so: Zero sum in my opinion. I can't take you to the hospital, so here are some drugs: Advantage Morgan. I can't evvvver let you go: I'll give you that point." So they're at an impasse. Leo's like, "You see the logical issue here? Like, we can't just sit here staring at each other forever. At some point something is going to happen." (Harry Morgan's all "Blah blah blah," of course, but honestly, whatever keeps James Remar on my screen is fine by me.)
Dexter goes, "Let's just try to get your fever down. I want you to feel nice and healthy when I bash your skull in or whatever." Leo thinks about that time with Tilda Swinton on The Beach and he goes, "The fuck is that going to help? How about you just kill me?" Also, Leo asks Dexter not to sell him, which seems important. Dexter refuses to do either of these things, and leaves, because in Dexter's Miami they don't have Showtime so he can't explain that he is a serial-killer-serial-killer type of serial-killer, because that is a thing that doesn't exist. Such is the burden when you're fictional and high-concept.
But also, what about when Shawn Hatosy was all, "You have no idea what you're getting into"? The last time somebody said something like that that on Dexter's table, Rita was bleeding out. So you kind of have to pay attention now when the killer-killing victim is like, "There's more to this story than you arghhhfblargle." Chances are, you opening a car of worms. (Or, you know, formaldehyde in this case.) But whatever, he doesn't want to think about it right now because it doesn't make sense. Even Dexter is like, "Dad, this time your bitching from beyond the grave is correct. I really did not think this one through." And poor old Leonardo DiCaprio being like, "Locked up in places! Is bullshit! I am so tired of being locked up places! I would rather be dead!"
Sexy old Angel goes over to see the blowjob guy in the hospital and does that thing they always do on this show where instead of trusting us to not be totally retarded, he talks like Dora the Explorer: "I apologize. Lo siento. Lo siento means 'I apologize.'" Anyway, I guess it's fine. There's a lot of bro talk but not really the important thing, which is that Angel was totally in the right and this guy was blatantly asking for it. Not like "violence is never okay," but as in, what the guy was saying was, "Hey, could you punch me in the fucking face? I really want to get the shit kicked out of me tonight and I've decided you're the man to do it: El hombre. Hombre means 'man.'"
Dexter has one of those conversations with himself where you realize half of being a serial killer is just taking your inner drama queen to the absolute limit: "The babysitter doesn't trust me because of the lies, Lumen doesn't trust me because of the truth. There must be a name for that. Oh, right: Dexter Morgan." The fuck you say? I mean, you gotta be one sad-sacking mo to look in the mirror and talk to yourself about what a mess of contradictions both light and dark, etc., that you are. Anyway, Dexter would like to find out more about Leonardo DiCaprio using the internet. First 90,000 hits: Dated Gisele. Then, an unpaid motel bill.
Deb comes into the living room and if you're wondering how much sleep she's had since we saw her last, let me just quell that suspense for you right away: The sleep situation with Deb is not great. She has not gotten the rest that most adults require, of late. Harrison did not allow her to sleep and so she didn't sleep. To repeat: Deb Morgan is still in need of approximately forty winks. I'll continue to let you know as this situation develops.
Deb sits on a toy and then grumps at Dexter about nothing really. About how her life has gone to shit ever since, you know, her brother's wife was brutally murdered and his two shitty children went to live at Disneyland. Now there's all this clutter. As though he is doing her a favor, Dexter grabs the baby and runs out the door so that he can stalk Leonardo DiCaprio and test out this whole baby > doughnut hypothesis again.
How do you spell the urchin's name, the motel lady wants to know. "L-E-E-L-E-E S-O-B-L-E-E-B-L-E-E." Okay, Leonardo prepaid for two weeks but now has been disappeared for a month, probably off stealing information from somebody's dream with the help of a small Canadian lesbian, or realizing his own dream of combining hip-hop and classical dance. Maybe he's on a road trip with Greg Kinnear and Jack Nicholson. Whatever the reason, motel lady has sent it to collections but somehow has the magical power to unsend it to collections if Dexter hands her some cash. She smokes an entire cigarette in the baby's face, gives the baby a cigarette and lights it for him because his chubby baby fingers lack the dexterity to use the lighter, turns on some porn for the baby, and finally Dexter's counted out all the money and gets the hell out of there with Leo's luggage.
Inside the stuff there's a letter to Leo from his mother, Maggie Seaver, as follows: "I know it feels like the end of the world right now, but it's not. I understand why you felt you had to leave. And believe me, you have nothing to be ashamed of. And as for your father, I know he said things he regrets, even though he'll never admit it. We miss you. We love you. Take all the time you need, but then please come home. It's not a family without you."
See, who knows what that's about. In the fairytale, the dad sold her to the monster to save his own ass. So maybe mom just doesn't know that? Or the title of this episode isn't really as interesting as it seems. Leo reads the letter when he wakes up -- Dex brought all the luggage, unseen, like a midnight dancing candelabra -- and weeps and weeps. But, despite having plenty of clothes right there, Leo still refuses to change out of the stanky shirt he's been wearing as a dress since this nightmare began.
But Jacob, you're saying: What about Deb's sleep patterns? Very good, very important question. And I will tell you that she has finally gotten enough sleep, and is now back to being in a good mood. She explains that it's okay that Dexter went on a drive to steal luggage and visit his prisoner in his people zoo, and that it's okay for him and all his stupid crap to live at her house forever, because Dex and Harrison are the only people she really cares about anyway, and she doesn't have much else besides them. Dex goes to fetch her a beer, because that's what humans do to make other humans be nice to them.
day, Dexter and Harrison head over to the little-known Irishtown district of Miami -- where everything is tiny and the lawns are oh so green -- to bother that poor nanny some more. She asks them to please leave her alone like she asked them five times before, and Dexter's like, "You know how I'm obviously a liar and cannot be trusted at all? Here's some bullshit I think you'll really appreciate. See, there was an emergency where this girl was badly hurt, very near death, and I spent all night trying to help her. Then, I got called to a crime scene by my sister, and it's one of those crime scenes where phones don't work. Then, instead of telling you this at the time you were quitting, I just sat tight for a couple of days. Doesn't that sound totally believable?"
Apparently it does, because it turns out this woman is totally stupid. She says stupid shit like, "Oh... What do they call it? A leap of faith?" Like she had to search her memory banks for that obscure phrase. Dexter's like, "Yeah, for both of us!" And then they act like they just learned that phrase for the first time and they're trying to think of ways to use it in a sentence today. And that's all it takes, I guess, so Irish nanny is back. I was on the edge of my chair about that one. And she's got the total upper hand so when Harrison starts turning up with tiny little melon-scoop bites taken out of his thigh, nobody will suspect her. Canny, this one.
Masuka... Ugh, who cares. Masuka is the kind of person who watches Dexter. I mean, I watch it and you watch it, everybody watches it. But it's written for real-life Masuka. The most useless goddamn person on this planet. Quinn tells Vince that Dexter would never steal meds, for some reason that's a point he needs to make, and also that he is not sleeping with Deb, which is definitely a point you need to make in front of Masuka. Masuka masturbates and does a funny dance and makes some puns of a sexual nature and whatever bullshit he always does and Quinn flips him off and leaves.
Angel tells the IA guy, McCourt, about his visit to see Sgt. Lopez, and that it's all "jake." McCourt tells him that it doesn't matter if Lopez is jake, nobody is jake, because they've decided to make a big fucking deal about this for no reason. I think by "they" he means himself, because clear the way for some major sketchiness in a minute. So LaGuerta comes and chases Angel off right before he starts chewing the guy's throat out for continuing to be a dick about it, and LaGuerta spirits McCourt off for a little chat and some coffee and some... Major sexual harassment.
LaGuerta does her "I'm leveling with you" face and tells him that this whole thing is stupid and that she wants it to go away. And instead of rolling over like they usually do, McCourt's like, "I think the most important part of all of this is: Do you really give the best blowjob in Miami?"
Angel watches them through the window of LaGuerta's office -- which, like a third of this show is just shit happening on one side or the other of that window, have you ever noticed that? -- but since the thing that happens isn't LaGuerta shooting McCourt in the eye about one hundred times, I'm guessing she is going to work this another way. I don't really think Jimmy Smits's behavior was called for, a lot of the time? But I would sure enough give him that dude's address.
What a fucking nasty, freaky, scary thing to do to a person. Why is IA always corrupt? Is it that way in real life? I can't handle it. The whole point of cops is that they're better than us, and it's rarely true but it's nice to think about. It sits on my brain-shelf to pretending that Superman is real and Hal Jordan is an actual guy. But then IA is like, the level up: They're supposed to save you from people like this blowjob guy. And if they're not going to do that, then where do you from there? All the way up to the Pope, and he's like, "My bad." It makes me feel kicking things-crazy, shit like this, because you can't have an IA for IA, but always on TV that's how it goes. Maybe because it's the scariest thing they can think of? It literally is the worst thing I can think of.
Angel is distracted from watching his wife be demoralized because of him long enough to hear the good news that Dexter's butt has given them some firm results: The tiparillo smoker is a Carlos Fuentes, who lives with his brother Marco at some address, which is totally how those machete murders appeared all along: Just like two brothers, who live together at the same address. Literally, Deb says: "Two of them! Does that sound like what we've been looking for, or does that sound like what we've been looking for?" It sounds like... An integer. Sleep did not help Deb's dialogue at all. This whole episode she's talked like some kind of internet trolltard that doesn't feel like they're being heard in real life so they overstate everything on the internet to make it more intense and so she doesn't just dislike a film but "hates it with the fire of a thousand nuns." ("More like Barnum & Bailey!") The worst characteristic in a person. They head out to catch Carols and Marco, and Deb wonders where Quinn is, but not that much.
Quinn is, of course, back at the safehouse, staring at Jonah's delts and sorta bummed that he's missing this assault on what is clearly a den of voodoo magic. Deb's SWAT team, including that tiny little girl that's always around, is about a hundred people. Subtlety goes out the window when your perp is into ritualistic beheadings. They go into the apartment building and there's music playing and a guy that runs away and everybody acting like they're INS. Into the apartment, finally, and you see why everybody's so scared: There are about one million people in that apartment, squozen in and terrified, like a phone booth or Michelle Duggar's vagina or a clown car.
Nobody will tell them where these beheaders are located, they are totally pretending they don't speak inglés, which is just so typical: When you're already being held hostage by voodoo guys with machetes, and then the white man comes in with his SWAT teams and his guns and his white man agenda, the only English you really want to know is, "Where the fuck were you when I was having an average shitty day in your stupid city? Yeah, the machete guy is right over here. But don't tell him I told you, because he's got this machete?" One guy finally does do that, like, cocks his head toward a closet. Inside this closet, Deb finds a hole cut out of the wall and some towels hung over it. Instead of calling for backup or something, she goes through this hole and comes out in Narnia. Just kidding, it's more slums.
Carlos or Marco has first of all a sweet little Narnian studio that somehow gets more light and has more room than the apartment it is inside of. Also, he has candles everywhere and dead animals and clearly an innate sense of ambience, because he has decorated his place to be a real pantydropper. And the third thing Carlos or Marco has is a cute young man with a machete to his neck. It is this last one that really puts him over the top, as far as leverage.
Deb and machete guy yell at each other for a long time about whether or not she is going to drop her gun or he is going to cut up the cute boy. When Angel calls for her to check in on roll call, the guy pressures her to say she's clear, and after he tells her to do this a couple of times, she finally does. Then, of course, he slits the kid's throat with his huge sword-knife, tells her she's a stupid bitch, and jumps out the window. Batman + Voodoo = Either way scary or way sexy, I can't decide. Point is, he's gone. Bounce like Paltrow, flash like Gordon.
It's pretty traumatic. I mean, it would be if it were you or me. Deb, she's pretty much seen it all, but you never know what's going to crawl up her nose. I guess this is going to, because for no reason at all beyond crayon-level ideas about character development she yells at the paramedics, "Don't you dare let him die!" Like they were going to, but now it's a favor they're doing her because she feels so guilty about getting his throat slit, etc. It's dumb, everything she says is dumb, the dialogue is always so dumb. Deb needs another nap probably. Somehow they managed to make that a more intriguing and well-wrought emotional arc than this flailing bitchy regretful-cop nonsense. Take your Daughter To Work Day is all, "Yeah, but you saved a life! And did you see how ¡Santa Muerte! it was in there?"
Dexter, this is his thought process: "If I can get the crotchety judgmental babysitter from Ireland to trust me, I say why not Leonardo DiCaprio?" Yeah, they're totally the same thing. And but Dexter, you never know, maybe they are. Maybe he thinks he offended them both the same amount. Leo's lying dead on the floor in a pool of blood but then surprise Dex gets a wrench upside the head and then Leo is off across the landscape.
Luckily Dexter outweighs Leonardo DiCaprio by like 100 pounds so the padlock on the door doesn't really stop him. And then they are off! Chasing, chasing, chasing. Stop off in a little cave to chat with Patricia Clarkson about the nature of reality. Write a diary about basketball! Eat some gilbert grape! Blow Verlaine and pretend to be an airline pilot, then an airline pilot pretending to be an airline pilot! Joseph Gordon Levitt! Matthew Damon can't remember who he is! Ten things you hate about Dexter: Quick, make a list! Nic Cage, defeat him with bees! That old lady dropped it in the ocean at the end!
Leo ends up on the road and some bros are driving by and they offer him a ride but clearly there is historical trauma here because instead of getting in the car with the helpful bros, the assumption of rape is made and then some more grunting and running. As in every movie ever made, Leonardo DiCaprio is soaking wet. Those dudebros seemed pretty gay so probably it would have been safe, but you never know in Miami. Dexter literally jumps out of the bushes on the side of the road and tackles Leo to the ground.
I know he does the Batman voice and everything, yes, it's very scary, but this whole thing is genius because you know he can't let Leo get away, so you're hoping he catches up and takes down his prey or else the show will be over. You know he has to kill Leo or do a clutch move. Those things are true, both inside the show and outside the show. But for Leo, what is happening is that he is being chased by a serial killer through the swamp. And this is also exactly what is happening. You know what I mean? Usually I think it's an easy and lazy and stupid at this point, or really ever, to be all amazed by the magic of television here -- "We are identifying with the serial killer!" -- because duh, that's what the show is about. But this time it's actually quite clever, because Leo is correct: There is no dichotomy between what we think is going to happen and what they think is going to happen. No irony, in the classic sense.
But there is a difference that changes everything: This person is not only not a serial killer -- "innocent," in the ethos of the show -- but pretty much an Everyvictim, giving off vibes of everything from kidnap to torture to multiple-assailant sexual assault, the same kind of meta-victim as Dexter is a meta-killer. So we know, and Dexter knows, that there's total safety here, at least for purposes of the plot. And yet, if Leo doesn't pull it the fuck together and soon, there will be no option but murder, which flips it inside out again and makes this an actual chase. I don't know, it's good. I liked Lila and I loved Trinity, but in terms of Dexter's always having a main person for the season, I love everything about this scenario. (Except for the name.)
Quinn lies in wait for Jonah to leave the safehouse, and finally they do, so he follows them. Meanwhile, Dad's yelling at Dexter in the car about how now he's gotta kill Leo, no way around it, and there's neat acting because of course both actors are in the car but Leo can't physically react to him in any way, and there are lots of fun camera angles and then, best of all, Dexter saying "Quiet" to his dad, but with his Level 10 Serial Killer Voice so really he's saying it to both of them. I am so much more comfortable with Dexter when he's like this. Like, the only time he doesn't give me the heebie-jeebies is when he's got somebody taped down and he's doing that crinkly dead voice at them.
Because Quinn is naturally the least trustworthy-looking person in the universe, Jonah is not immediately interested in getting chatted up. Also, they are at the convenience store, which is either super dumb or super sad: "Yeah kid, you can get out of the house. All the way to 7-11 for some Slim Jims and then it's right back home." I can't imagine a more depressing place to remember what human society was like.
Well, like Fashion Bug. Can you imagine if they only let you out of your safehouse to take trips to Hot Topic? Or like a Subway that always runs out of tomatoes, and they put the cheese triangles on there the wrong way, every time? And the guy always has a sinus infection and makes these terrible noises while he makes the sandwich? Or, "You can go to this Payless Shoe Source as many times a week as you like, kid." What would you DO?
Anyway, even worse is, Quinn is there. He convinces Jonah that he's a cop, sure, but then when he pulls out the picture of Dexter Jonah's like, "What is that you want from me, and why do you want me to identify this person as Kyle Butler?" Because Kyle Butler did him like seventy favors and basically is the best person Jonah has ever met, in his life. Before Quinn can get more sleaze juice all over his flawless self, Jonah's keeper people jump all up in Quinn's lifestyle and take him down to jail for creepin' on sweet little Jonah and his perfect eyebrows in the back of a 7-11. Maybe he will die somehow as a result of this.
Dexter puts on his person-killing gloves and cuts Leo's ziptie, the better to shove and pull and yank his prey out into the swamp. The same swamp where Shawn Hatosy kept all his barrels of ladies. Dexter's deadman voice is all, "Look at these dead ladies. Listen closely. This is what happened to the girls before you, this is what was going to happen to you. Every one of these barrels has a body in it. Boyd preserved them in formaldehyde. So he could come and visit, do you understand? I saved your life."
Leo is like, "Um, or you killed all these girls and we're still in your movie where this is part of freaking me out." Dexter totally goes, " It's a leap of faith. For both of us!" Which is embarrassing, and so symptomatic of why this show is at best "lovably dim," that I don't want to go there any more than I have to, but come the fuck on. We are not idiots. "My wife was murdered. Brutally. By someone like Boyd. I don't want to see any more innocent people die." Technically true. Then he hands Leo a knife.
Then, duh, Leo stabs him. Good one. Dex is like, "That sucked! Are you done?" Leo's like, "Yeah, thanks for letting me stab you." Then Leo has a fifty-minute breakdown in the middle of the nasty swamp and Dexter tries to remember what a hug is, and then they are friends. Not total friends, but his point is made. It was a stabbing of faith. For both of us.
Fresh off being humiliated by the wormy little blonde douche from IA, LaGuerta now has to deal with Quinn violating some basic no-no stuff like safehouse protocol and not pissing off the FBI. And how come again? Oh, that's right, the totally insane-looking collage Quinn assembled from various crude drawings that looks like somebody who might look like Dexter Morgan. Or Tracy Morgan. Or Morgan Fairchild, or Buster Poindexter, or Randy Quaid's wife. You want crazy? God knows what other crafting projects Quinn gets into when he's alone.
LaGuerta screeeeeams at Quinn for infinnnnnnity and it is soooo satisfying, just the sound of it, the rhythm and the cadence, that you can almost forget this is mostly about blowjobs and not really about protecting Dexter from Quinn's stupid Doakesy obsessions that much, but whatever: He is suspended, without pay. Quinn's like, "Really?" And I do think that's harsh, because at least we got to see Jonah without having to sit through the emotional chemotherapy that is Secret Life Of The American Teenager.
And um, I'm still not sure what the big deal is about Kyle Butler anyway, or why it seems like such slander to suggest that Dexter is him. ("He just lost his wife, for chrissakes," LaGuerta hisses at Quinn's back.) If you got fingered for being Kyle Butler, wouldn't you just be like, "Yeah, okay. And what happened then was, Trinity cut my wife's femoral artery and left my newborn son in a pool of her blood. So I say bygones, because lesson fucking learned: No hanging out with serial killers and doing carpentry projects with their dewy offspring. Got it. Thanks, Quinn. Glad we're all on the same page now."
"Hey, Skeezy," says Deb to Quinn in the parking lot, which is just totally winsome and sweet somehow. They talk about the raid and how the perp got away and Quinn tries to turn her guilt frown upside down about that kid getting his neck cut because the cup is half full of how the kid didn't die. Quinn stares at Deb and he's like, "Are you sleeping well?"
Just kidding, he thinks she looks crazy and guilted and way strung out over Santa Muerta, which she is, and she's like, "I'm not okay but I'm not sure what it is, but I'm feeling sort of guilty and self-destructive and you are absolutely the worst thing I've ever put in my body to date, so would you mind once again letting me sleep with you and then pretending I'm too good for you after the fact?" But no, because Quinn loooooves Debra Morgan now and can't bear it so he tells her that he is "no good" for her.
Which I mean, of course that's how a boy would look at: Like they're a cause and not the symptom. She tries to reiterate about how that doesn't matter and they are going to be having some sex, and he acts all destroyed and emotional about it, like he's weak for letting her -- a grown-ass woman -- make her own decisions. Which is gross, but fits this show. And in fact he should be feeling gross. But only because while sleeping with her demonstrates respect for her choices, letting her sleep with him at this point demonstrates how little respect for him they both have, which should bother him more, frankly, but I doubt he could even see his way there. Maybe it's best. I just know she better hold onto this thing she's got going, or else the whole world is headed south on her. The only way sex with Quinn could possibly be good is if you hate him, because on paper he is a Masuka-size loser.
Apparently in the time it took for Leo to stop screaming and having post-traumatic stomach cramps and pull it together and get to work bandaging Dexter's stab wound, the sun has gone down. Yes, Dexter explains, his wife was killed. Funny story, actually: With a knife! It really was a stabbing of faith for both of us. Leo finally starts explaining some shit for us.
"I'm sorry that I cut you. I thought you were a monster, like Boyd. I thought you were gonna kill me. Or worse." Noted. Facts, please. "I was locked up. I don't know where, or for how long. All I know is that it was horrible. And I thought it would never stop." Hmmm. Like at the rest stop? Dexter's like, "Okay, but it has stopped. You can go back to the Seavers. They'll say Show me that smile again and before you know it you'll be smiling again and you can teach Ben to pluck his unibrow and Carol to eat something every now and then and Mikey can read to you from the Bible. You can go searching for Boner together, like God intended. You'll see. All this... These were just growing pains."
Leo is like, "Not so fast, buddy. You are not my first mister. Remember how Shawn Hatosy was like, 'Can of woorrrrrms bargleargh!' Well, Something along those lines but I'm going to explain it in a very abstruse way so that it feels like a cliffhanger. Ready? Shawn Hatosy wasn't the only one who did this to me. There were others. It's not over."
Which, what does that mean? Selling, that was part of it. "Kill me or worse," that came up a lot this week. So is there an underground network of kidnapping enthusiasts who somehow sell these people on like some sicko eBay? Because I don't see the way that economy could work. There's a certain number of people who like torturing, or Eyes Wide Shut-type shenanigans, but don't kill the person? And then once the torture guys are like, "This one is done," it gets to Shawn Hatosy, who kills and cans them? I say it's Tony Robbins guru and this is all a pyramid scheme that got confused and at the end he'll show up and be like, "When I said take it I wasn't trying to imply raping and torturing and putting girls in barrels. You guys, come on. I was talking about junk bonds, shit like that. You jerks." And won't they feel silly then.