The Gathering Storm

S08E01

It's the final season, and if this episode is any indication, the show isn't slowing down any after last season's shockingly high quality. Six months have passed, and far from feeling any remorse over LaGuerta's death, Dexter seems to be thrilled at how it solved all his problems, leaving him free to coach Harrison's soccer team to a championship and get the band…er, "bowling team" back together. Doing somewhat less well are Batista, the new Lieutenant whose place is filled with boxes of LaGuerta's stuff, and Deb, who's quit the force and is snorting coke and sleeping with lowlifes in her new capacity as a PI, and also is popping a plethora of pills on the side and has pretty much cut Dexter out of her life. When Deb skips LaGuerta's memorial and Dexter gets a tip from Quinn that she's been out of town for a while, he tracks her down in Ft. Lauderdale, where she tells him he made her compromise all her values, and she hates him for it, even telling him she shot the wrong person. That's what I thought! However, Dexter learns the guy Deb's with, from whom she's trying to recover some stolen jewelry, actually robbed it from the Mafia and now has a hit out on him, and, stuck with Harrison for the night, he brings him along on this errand to save Deb from mortal danger. When Deb won't go with him, telling him she deserves to die, Dexter murders the jewelry thief right in front of her, whereupon she tells him she always thought she couldn't survive without him, but she realizes now it was the other way around. After temporarily losing Harrison and then having to pick him up with actual blood on his hands, Dexter realizes she's right – he's lost without her – while Deb, after calling in the homicide without involving Dexter, drives away – unaware the Mafia hitman is watching, presumably still interested in tracking down the stolen goods. Better clear that head, Deb – you're gonna need it.

MM gets a case in which the victim, after being fatally shot at point-blank range, had his head sliced open and a piece of his brain removed, presumably as a trophy. Deputy Chief Matthews, back out of the retirement LaGuerta forced on him, brings in a "Dr. Evelyn Vogel," a neuropsychiatrist and famous profiler played by CHARLOTTE RAMPLING, as a consultant on the case, and she tells the MM staff that the portion of the brain the killer removed is the part from which empathy comes. From the evidence suggesting the kill was planned with ritual precision, Dr. Vogel concludes they're dealing with a serial killer, and Dexter is understandably not thrilled that someone with such acumen when it comes to tracking down his kind is so close at hand. It becomes apparent from a couple telling bursts of anger that LaGuerta's death is actually weighing on Dexter after all, and some amount of panic starts to set in when Dr. Vogel casually mentions the Bay Harbor Butcher in a private conversation with Dexter, which only increases when he learned from Matthews that Dr. Vogel sought him out and is working the case free of charge. In the end, Dr. Vogel gives Dexter some murder drawings he made as a child, and when he threatens her with violence, she tells him, "You can't kill me. I don't fit Harry's code." She doesn't know how off-book he's gone lately, but still: DUN!

Over a montage of Harrison playing with a kite, a rainbow penetrating the dark and cloudy sky, an instrumental version of "What A Wonderful World" plays as DVO tells us there's nothing like a crisis to help define who you are. Sounds like Dexter's read Robert McKee's Story. The montage goes on with, among other shots, Dexter experimentally crushing a dummy head as Masuka watches and Harrison playing soccer; DVO tells us that a better person would have felt remorse, but the fact is that LaGuerta's death got him back on track, and he's even coached Harrison's soccer team to a championship and gotten the bowling team back together. We then get possibly the most gratuitous shot since Road Trip of a woman removing her top as DVO goes on that he's "made some new friends," although I will grant a lot of style points for Hannah's orchid mournfully dropping its bloom in protest of having to witness it.

With the montage over, Dexter, holding Harrison's hand, arrives at a dedication service for LaGuerta at which Batista is already speaking about how he knows LaGuerta never regretted one day of her public service. Well, it's a nice sentiment, but I have to think there are one or two things about that last day she'd change. Harrison proves he's old enough to handle a little new-season exposition when he asks if "Aunt Deb" is going to be there, and Dexter tells him it's hypocritical enough for him to be in attendance without bringing the woman who actually pulled the trigger to her victim's memorial, but they'll get together "real soon." After some words about how LaGuerta was first and foremost a friend to him, Matthews takes the stand, thanking "Lieutenant Batista" before presenting the Captain Maria LaGuerta...bench? No line item for sculpture in the Dexter budget, I guess. The crowd gives this a smattering of polite applause, which is really all they can do.

Afterward, Jamie shepherds Harrison away, and then the core MM group - that's Dexter, Batista, Quinn, Masuka, and that female cop I'm still not sure has a name - stand around the memorial, with Batista unsurprisingly complaining about the gesture he views as fairly miniscule. We learn it's been six months since the last season ended and that Batista still has boxes of LaGuerta's stuff at his place, and talk then turns to Deb, with Dexter making the excuse that she's working long hours but assuring them that she's great, with a delivery that suggests he actually has not the slightest clue how she's doing. Masuka lets us know Deb took LaGuerta's death hard, and Batista is like, I know how that feels, because when that cop from Chicago I knew for like five minutes was killed, it made me want to open a restaurant, which I guess I must have sold now, since LaGuerta's death made me want to chase bad guys again. Quinn then pipes up with some actually relevant information, saying that after she quit the force, he'd hear from her every few days for some informational favor or other, but for the past two weeks she's been silent, since she's up in Ft. Lauderdale. Dexter turns atypically but fairly hilariously maladroit at lying when he's like, oh, of course I knew she was out of town, in the Keys no wait Ft. Lauderdale, and when the others tell him it'd be great to see Deb, he's like, it sure would... I mean, I'll tell her! Hee. Once everyone starts to scatter, Dexter tries Deb's number but gets her voicemail and a message that her mailbox is full, so he calls to Masuka to cover for him as DVO notes that Deb's working through her feelings in her own way, but he wishes she'd talk to him once in a while...

...but she's too busy Hoovering coke with some shirtless lowlife at the moment. He gets a "business" call, so he takes it and berates the person on the other end about some illegal-sounding deal as Deb smokes and drinks and looks squirrelly as hell, and I don't think it's just the coke although that's surely not helping. When the call is done, Deb lightly probes for information - not like that, although it wouldn't have surprised me - and the guy does tell her his normal fences have gone to ground, but when she offers the back him up on his errand, he flatly turns "Debbie" down. After some idle talk about renting a boat for the day, the guy gives forth some hackneyed thoughts about how the simple act of her walking into the bar where they met changed everything, but I guess we can't begrudge him being a little philosophical when his death is really just around the corner. Soon, however, he decides that making out with Deb has more appeal.

In front of Deb's house, Dexter finds a stack of mail, and after someone unnecessarily asks what he's doing there, Dexter says with everything Deb's feeling, she might have "done something." I guess that place gets enough air that the smell wouldn't be a, well, dead giveaway. Inside, Dexter finds a typical mess but no sibling corpse, and someone reminds him that Deb asked to be left alone. Dexter wonders petulantly for how long - he hasn't talked to her in more than a month, nor seen her for two. He then finds prescription bottles for all manner of mood-altering drugs - Xanax, Paxil, Adderall, not to mention the roach from a joint - and worries about what the drugs must be doing to her, but someone still thinks the best thing Dexter can do for her is to stay away. I hate to agree with someone, but it's going to be clear from about eighteen different angles that he's right.

In an office building, Dexter enters "Elway Investigations" and greets the owner, a good-looking former desk jockey in the robbery division at Miami Metro and currently, apparently, Deb's boss - she's working as a PI. Elway is warm enough toward Dexter but tells him he, too, hasn't heard from Deb in a couple weeks - part of their deal is that she chooses her own cases and only checks in only when she wants to. He does concede, though, that this is a long period of radio silence even for her, so when Dexter asks about the case she's working, Elway tells him it's an "Andrew Briggs," who pulled a smash-and-grab and then skipped out on bail. Dexter wonders about how small-time the case sounds for someone of Deb's skills, and Elway agrees, but says Deb's rebuffed all his attempts to push higher-profile cases on her. "Your sister's a bit of a thrill-seeker." This makes Dexter vaguely unsettled, understandably enough, and when he asks for more details, all Elway can tell him is that if Deb brings back the stolen jewelry in addition to Briggs, she gets a cut of it. Dexter then gets a call...

...and then we cut to him turning up in a park with a bunch of law-enforcement types milling about, as there's a corpse lying on the ground, the victim of a gunshot wound, it appears. Nearby, Batista comes up with the incredibly awkward idea to push some of LaGuerta's old clothes on the female cop (okay fine, I looked it up, she's "Angie Miller"), and Angie's like, ummmmmm, so Batista lets it go, thank God, and heads over to the victim, 42-year-old "Robert Bailey," as Dexter tells him. Apparently the gun was in contact with the victim when it was discharged, but they're ruling out suicide, as the evidence shows the victim was killed elsewhere. When Dexter examines the guy's head, though, things get more interesting, as he discovers that the back of his head was sliced off - I'm talking through the bone here - and a small bit of his brain was removed, apparently scooped out with a melon baller, as appetizing an image as that is. Also, as Angie is just discovering, the killer left the gun behind, although with the rain the night, the prospects of DNA or prints are slim. The scene breaks up, and in his car, Dexter tries Deb again, only to get the same message as before. I'd think it was kind of a time-waster to see Dexter call her so many times, but it is fairly hilarious to see so many iterations of his annoyed face.

Back at the station, Dexter does a little research on Briggs and finds that he clubbed a jewelry-store security guard over the head and made off with over half a million bucks in merchandise. At first I was skeptical that that's the extent of a high-end jewelry store's protection, but given who we learn owns the place, they might not be used to anyone fucking with them. Briggs has also been arrested three times for assault, which does nothing to assuage Dexter's fears that Deb is in big trouble here, so he checks her banking activity (correcting guessing her password as "fucking password," hee) and finds that all her recent charges have been in Ft. Lauderdale, mostly at a market called, logically enough, "El Mercado." DVO tells us he can be there in half an hour, which, unless he's planning to make the drive at two AM, seems like hilariously wishful thinking...

...but regardless of how long it may have taken him, Dexter is staking out the place when Deb and Briggs pull up in his pickup and enter, with Briggs engaging in a little grab-ass along the way. Inside, Briggs goes in search of some tequila, leaving Dexter open to accost Deb in one of the aisles. She's not in the least happy to see him, but he pays her twitchy admonitions to leave no mind, so she tells him she's close to getting her hands on the jewelry before Briggs can fence it. Dexter wonders if she's sleeping with Briggs, but she tells him in no uncertain terms that her life is none of his business, and by the way, she's not returning his calls because she wants neither to see him or talk to him, "because you made me compromise everything about myself that I care about. And I hate you for it." Dexter reflexively tells her that's not true, but she twists the knife in going on that she shot the wrong person, and that one really looks like it lands. Briggs then returns and asks who Dexter is, but Deb tells him he's just some loser before dragging him away, leaving Dexter to look fairly forlorn. As random strangers will be learning, that's never a good thing.

In the car, Dexter asks someone if Deb really hates him before going on about how Deb is obviously lost and is using the job as an excuse to escape. Someone once again counsels Dexter to stay out of it, and then a guy in a pickup cuts Dexter off, so over someone's objections, he speeds up and runs the guy off the road, and after he road-ragily stalks over to the other vehicle, he starts throttling the driver - until he sees his young son in the back seat looking terrified. This prompts him to let the guy go, although he's still a seething cauldron of rage, and when he gets back in the car, someone suggests he might want to go home. Preferably driving the speed limit on the way, I'd add.

Jamie is, not to put too fine a point on it, riding Quinn hard when Batista's voice calls that he's home, so we quickly learn that (a) Batista and Jamie live together, which might or might not be new, and (b) Batista is unaware of his non-carnal life partner shtupping his sister. To keep (b) intact, Quinn goes out the side door while Jamie joins her brother, who tells her some charity workers are coming the day to take LaGuerta's stuff away. He adds that he's sad about it, so Jamie enthusiastically suggests he pick out a few things of hers to keep. In doing so, he discovers the warrants LaGuerta secured to trace both Dexter's and Deb's phones...and rips them up in disgust, saying it was her inability to let things go that got her killed. Well, that's not entirely incorrect, but I'm still not sure I agree with you one hundred percent on your police work there, Batista. Jamie, however, reminds Batista that LaGuerta was a cop, and Batista solemnly nods. "That's who she was." UNLIKE SOME PEOPLE AROUND HERE.

At Bismarck Metro, people are waiting for a briefing to start when CHARLOTTE RAMPLING walks in, whereupon Matthews, who's apparently taken back his old job (did LaGuerta's death just make everyone forget about the dead hooker?), introduces her as "Dr. Evelyn Vogel," a neuropsychologist and criminal profiler of some notoriety who once consulted with him on a case a couple decades earlier. Matthews goes on that Vogel was away from Miami for a number of years but has returned and is offering her expertise on their new case, and Vogel pipes up that when she read the details in the paper, there was one aspect that was particularly intriguing. Are gory details like that normally released to journalists that quickly? Regardless, it is an interesting point, as Vogel explains that the piece of the brain the killer removed governs empathy, and the hallmark of a psychopath is a total lack of it. She then gets some details from Batista - the victim had been missing for nearly a week, the drilling into the brain happened after death, there are indications that the victim was held captive in an enclosed space prior to death -- and Vogel thinks this all indicates an elaborate pre-kill ritual belonging to a serial killer, and when Dexter asks for an explanation, she says the amount of planning strongly indicates someone who's done this before. After Batista gives out orders and the briefing breaks up, Masuka, who seems to be the only one in the room besides Matthews who'd heard of Vogel, says the FBI calls her "The Psychopath Whisperer" and notes how lucky they are to have her. Dexter is like, yeeeeeeah...

...and then he's researching Vogel, whose impressive credentials only aggravate his feeling of dread her presence has inspired. Batista then enters with a little porcelain jug-shaped vase of LaGuerta's he wants Dexter to have, and Dexter's like, thanks? Batista takes his lack of enthusiasm as a reason to go off on a long-winded speech about how he knows things were awkward before LaGuerta "so tragically died," but Dexter once again signals that his cool façade is cracking as he snaps that LaGuerta died because she wouldn't leave things alone. Despite that being pretty much exactly what he told Jamie, it's unsettling to hear from someone else, particularly with such vehemence, and Dexter sounds genuinely thrown as he apologizes and offers with some sincerity that he doesn't know why he said that. Batista's not particularly mollified, but he recovers enough to say that he hopes Dexter can find it in his heart to forgive LaGuerta. Wherever she may be watching this from, I have the feeling LaGuerta's working blue to anyone who will listen. When Batista's gone, Masuka opens up the other door and tells Dexter Vogel would like to see him in the morgue...

...but let's first check in with Briggs and Deb, who are back at their fleabag motel when Briggs gets a text from the dude he's supposed to meet. After peeking through the curtains to confirm the guy's in the parking lot, he tells Deb to stay put. She asks if he's selling the stuff now, but he doesn't have it on him - he's just going to give him a little show consisting of the chain he affixes around his wrist. When he's gone, Deb rushes over and grabs her phone; keeping her eyes on the proceedings outside, she calls Quinn and asks him to look into the guy Briggs is meeting, "El Sapo" (which means "The Toad" in Spanish). He agrees, and she gets off the phone just before Briggs returns and smiles that he's going to be rich. In that case, maybe you can start shopping at someplace besides El Mercado? Albertson's has an above-average prepared-food counter!

Dexter enters the morgue and sees Vogel, the partially brainless corpse between them. Vogel thanks him for coming and asks about the DNA results, which were negative, as expected, so she smiles that they'll have to find the killer the old-fashioned way. Dexter goes on that the victim had no enemies, but Vogel replies that serial killers don't have enemies, which is what makes everyone a potential victim. Dexter, obviously feeling vulnerable, tries to kthanxbai right out of there, but he hasn't gotten to the door before she calls that she was interested in his take on the case. Dexter wonders why, as he's just "the blood guy," but Vogel wants to hear how he ended up in that position, so Dexter tells her his dad was a cop, which kind of steered him away from that direction. "This seemed like a better fit." Vogel confides that she was drawn to forensics as well, but she chose to focus on psychopaths; with a disarming smile, she notes that they both chose murder. "Maybe we're both a little crazy." Dexter, the room's harsh lights backlighting him to make him look both more evil and more exposed, agrees that it's possible, whereupon Vogel pontificates about consciousness coming from the brain - notions of trust and morality take shape, "unless you're a psychopath. But even then, belief systems emerge - as with the Bay Harbor Butcher." Oh. OHH. This scene really is well done, with Dexter all too aware that this woman may be coming for him but neither being certain nor having the ability to ask.

Vogel asks what he was like, and Dexter is unsure enough about what she may suspect to ask, "Who?" Get it together, guy. She clarifies that she means Doakes, so Dexter tells him he was angry and possessed of a short fuse, which she says doesn't fit the profile she'd expect - a psychopath would be disassociated from his feelings and thus not quick to anger. There's a deeper level here that the show is confident enough not to draw attention to, but the very fact that Dexter has been quick to anger this episode suggests that part of him is no longer quite fitting that profile. Dexter speculates that Doakes wasn't a psycho, but Vogel demurs, saying he had to have been "to masquerade the way he did." She goes on, though, that he was odd even among psychopaths, as the way he selected criminals as his victims points to a strong belief system, "almost as if he operated with some sort of moral guidelines." The hits are coming pretty quickly now, but Dexter gamely replies that criminals might have been attractive victims because fewer people are likely to miss them, and with Doakes' Special Ops background, he would have been likely to realize that. Vogel agrees that that's possible and smiles that it's an interesting case study before telling Dexter that she's looking forward to working with him, and while Dexter doesn't look any different, I'm guessing he emotionally aged about ten years in the last few minutes. Like everything else about the scene, the backward dolly shot that gets us out of it is vaguely unsettling...

...and Dexter wastes no time in running in to see "Deputy Chief" Matthews, who welcomes him in. Dexter's like, who is that woman? How do you know her? Has she really figured out I'm the Bay Harbor Butcher? Not quite on that last one, but Dexter's clearly agitated, not that Matthews acknowledges it. Part of me still thinks Matthews has known about Dexter all along, especially in light of how the episode ends, but if that's the case he's got quite a poker face. Matthews tells Dexter Vogel called him out of the blue, took him to lunch, and offered her help, and Dexter's like, that's cool - "I'm just trying to figure out if she's an asset or not." Matthews assures him she's smart, so he should use her to his advantage, and Dexter starts to go, but turns back to ask why Matthews thinks she called him now. Matthews is like, don't know, don't care - she's good and working for free, so keep her in the loop, okay? Dexter's reply is a smile that's fake even by his ersatz standards, and after he walks out, DVO wonders if he might be the reason Vogel is there now.

By Couch Baron

When they arrive at the motel, Dexter tries Deb again to no avail, so he looks at Harrison's sleeping form and makes a quick mental calculation...

...and then he's approaching the place. He looks through the window and sees Deb and Briggs, and I don't know if he checked any other rooms or just got lucky, but he's running out of time and he knows it, so it's a good thing that Briggs chooses this moment to use the can. Dexter softly knocks, and Deb opens up and is obviously chagrined to see him, but she steps outside so Dexter can explain about El Sapo. Deb's like great, now you can leave, and when he points out that she could die there, she steps forward and snarls that she doesn't fucking care. Intimidated and desperate, Dexter begs Deb to come with him and says she can't keep him away forever, but she sarcastically laughs that he doesn't understand anything. "I wake up every day thinking of every bad decision that I ever made because of you. And it kills me that I can't take any of it back." She tells him they can't undo any of their misdeeds, and if he wants to pretend everything's fine, great - but she can't do that. "Because I am not fucking like you." Briggs then joins them, and this time there are no easy explanations given that he recognizes Dexter from the market, so Dexter doesn't even bother to try, instead attempting to grab Deb and get out of there. When Briggs intervenes, Dexter shoves him through the door and knocks him to the ground; Briggs goes for his knife, but Dexter gets there first and fatally stabs him in the gut, to Deb's horror. Deb flips out, collapsing to her knees while choking out that she felt okay around Briggs, but Dexter, almost as upset, tells her she didn't belong with him. She orders him to go, and when he says that she's lost, she demurs: "I know exactly where I am. I am in some shitty fucking hell, which is exactly what I deserve. You are lost." He looks it too, as she goes on that she always thought she couldn't survive without him, but now she realizes she had it backwards. She then reiterates her command to go so she can call this in to the police, so he leaves, wiping his prints from the door (is he not going to do the knife too?) in the process as Deb gets the cops on the line. Once she's done, she cries again in earnest, but that doesn't stop her from retrieving Briggs' keys. Like she told Dexter earlier, she's a professional.

Outside, Dexter's life spins a little farther out of control as he sees the car door open and Harrison gone. It only takes him a few seconds to find him in another section of the lot, but they had to be some of the worst seconds of his life. Also not great is the fact that he's got blood all over his right hand, so he has to hold Harrison kind of one-handed as the kid asks him where they are. DVO: "Lost." That about sums it up.

By Couch Baron

Deb and Briggs are watching cartoons when he gets a call from El Sapo. After straightening him out on logistics, Briggs hangs up, and Deb tells him she wants to go with him, but he orders her to stay hidden, since he doesn't know the guy. Briggs is pretty fucking dumb not to question who this guy might be, I have to say. As Kent Brockman once prissily snipped at another reporter, "do your research!"

Harrison is bugging the crap out of Dexter by spinning around in a squeaky chair as Dexter researches El Sapo - turns out he's not a fence, but a hit man. And a hit man is kind of what Dexter resembles after Harrison knocks LaGuerta's vase to the floor, breaking it. Dexter yells, "LOOK AT WHAT YOU DID," whereupon father and son stare at each other in horror before Dexter shakily apologizes and tells Harrison it's okay. He asks the boy to give him a second, but when a call to Deb yields the same result as the other three thousand times he's tried this episode, he tells Harrison they're going...

...and in the car, DVO worries about what will happen if Deb's there when El Sapo shows up. He tries Quinn, but gets his voicemail ("This is Joey Quinn. Thrill me.")...

...because Quinn and Jamie are once again trying to have coitus without interruptus. No such luck, however, as there's an insistent knock at the door, and when Quinn angrily opens up, he finds Dexter holding Harrison's hand. Quinn doesn't seem particularly embarrassed by dropping an F-bomb in front of the kid, not that he should be given that he probably hears ten of them before breakfast any time his aunt is around, and Dexter has to admit that he doesn't know where Deb is, so Quinn gives him the name of the fleabag motel and sends him on his way. Jamie then emerges and asks if that was Dexter, but once again the conversation doesn't last long when it has to compete with sex, and soon Jamie's ignoring her phone, unaware that it's Dexter frantically calling. After muttering how no one answers their "fucking phone" (et tu, Dexter!), Dexter feigns a bright voice as he tells Harrison they're going for a drive. Harrison does not reply "Fuckin'-a!" but give him a year or so.

By Couch Baron

When they arrive at the motel, Dexter tries Deb again to no avail, so he looks at Harrison's sleeping form and makes a quick mental calculation...

By Couch Baron

Deb wraps up a real softball interrogation (she went out for a sandwich, is her solid cover story), after which she gets in her car and calls Elway to leave a message that Briggs is dead, but she thinks she has a lead on the jewelry. She then gets the hell out of there - unaware that El Sapo is watching her. I doubt he's as menacing as Ray Stevenson, but this is still no bueno.

In his apartment, Dexter picks up the stuffed animal Harrison has in the car and sees that, despite his best efforts, it's got blood on it. He puts it under the sink and starts furiously scrubbing, and then we head into a quick montage as DVO acknowledges that Deb was right - he is lost, and he doesn't know how to let her go. "Without her, I don't know who I am anymore." Cut to him sitting on LaGuerta's bench looking around at some abandoned toys when Vogel appears and says she was hoping to share something with him. He tells her it's not a good time, so she hands him a manila envelope and departs; when he opens it and removes the contents, he sees a few child's drawings of some grisly, psychopathic images - SIGNED BY HIM. He rushes after Vogel and pushes her up against a wall, but she tells him he can't kill her. "I don't fit Harry's code." She walks off without a look back, leaving Dexter - and us - reeling. Like I said, it doesn't feel like the show has lost any steam; I'm looking forward to racing toward the finish line.

John Ramos is a writer and film producer living in Los Angeles. His new film, a documentary on online privacy and the sale of personal data called Terms And Conditions May Apply, will be in theaters in July. (Hi, PRISM.) You can get news on it from the film's Twitter account. Also, you can email John at couchbaron@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/couchbaron, or check out his blog, "Pull Up A Chair," which he'd just love for you to stop by.