Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B | 53 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT Fava Beans And A Nice Chianti
By Couch Baron | Season 8 | Episode 3 | Aired on 07.14.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Batista puts Quinn up to Matthews for sergeant, and Matthews literally laughs in his face, so Batista takes it upon himself to help Quinn study for the test, but after getting frustrated with Quinn's thickheadedness, he unwittingly blows up his spot about leaving to bail Deb out in the middle of the night. When Jamie hears the truth, she's understandably pissed off and sad, so it's just as well she doesn't see what Quinn gets up to the rest of the episode.
To clarify what's referenced above, Deb gets arrested for drunk – like, wasted -- driving, and still not wanting to have contact with Dexter if she can help it, she calls Quinn to pick her up. Quinn succeeds in making the charges go away, but also tells Deb that when she turned him down, he hit the bottle much like she's doing now, and he's wondering what her reason for doing so is. She seems to want to tell him, but of course can't, so Quinn goes straight to Dexter with the news. When Dexter gives Vogel a quick summary of the fact Deb knows about him, Vogel is struck by Dexter's depth of feeling for his sister, and she later asks why, when she found out what he was, Dexter didn't kill her. Dexter tells her it's because he loves her, but Vogel points out that psychopaths see love differently than others, so he asks him to be specific, and when he obliges, she points out the things he claims to love are more about him than her. She also offers to try to help Deb, but Dexter refuses – initially.
MM finally tracks down Sussman's cabin – but when Dexter arrives, he and he alone knows that the crime scene has been altered, as Sussman is no longer hanging (from a hook stuck straight into his head, not from a noose as I originally thought). From the changes The Brain Surgeon (presumably) made, the evidence points to Sussman having killed himself, and this leads MM to close the case. However, Vogel gets a text from an unknown source telling her to look outside, whereupon she finds two "presents" on her doorstep – one for her and one for Dexter -- and unless the show is playing unforgivable shenanigans we can safely discount her as the killer. This time, The Brain Surgeon left her the occipital lobe, which is responsible for vision, and as such Dexter takes as a message that TBS is watching both of them. On the plus side, Dexter has been hard at work researching Vogel's "client" list, and he goes to check out one of the guys, who's currently selling fitness equipment at a mall. His investigation reveals that the guy isn't The Brain Surgeon – but he is a cannibal.
Elway gets TMI with Deb again about her sleeping-with habits, and on the one hand he seems reasonably nice and possibly normal. On the other, though, after getting a new case involving a cheating husband, Elway, sensing her hangover from across the room, gives Deb another "electrolyte" solution. Dexter then turns up all worried about the almost-DUI, and Deb reluctantly agrees to go to dinner with him, literally only so he'll go away and leave her and her headache in peace. At dinner, Dexter points out a man sitting happily with his family – who just so happens to be someone whose life Deb once saved in the line of duty – and tries to convince her that she's a good person. This only increases Deb's PTSD, though, and she drunkenly staggers into MM and tells Quinn she killed LaGuerta. Thinking she's just wasted, he drags her away from prying eyes, and although he obviously still doesn't believe her, he does suffer her to write down everything she remembers from that night while he goes to call Dexter.
In desperation, Dexter takes Vogel to the station with him, and on the way, she does point out that Deb accepting her punishment might be the best thing for both her and Dexter, but Dexter doesn't want to hear that, surely not least because Deb would have to bring him down with her. Dexter is forced to agree that Deb needs professional help at the very least, so with Quinn guarding the door, Dexter knocks a hysterical Deb out with an injection ("That was interesting!" Vogel HILARIOUSLY comments) as Vogel smoothly scoops Deb's confession while assuring Quinn that she'll treat Deb for her PTSD, and Quinn gets them out of there with no one else the wiser. Vogel assures Dexter that she can help Deb, so Dexter leaves his handcuffed sister in Vogel's care while he goes, I think, to dismember the cannibal? Hopefully that's as far as he takes the poetic justice.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!…while Vogel is packing up, presumably getting ready to go to Sussman's, when she gets a text from an unknown source telling her to look outside. As I mentioned in the recaplet, there's no one there to be taken in by the message and her scared reaction except the audience, so either this eliminates Vogel for The Brain Surgeon or the producers are going to end up losing parts of their brains. Of course, that doesn't mean she's not a killer herself or that she doesn't have some nefarious private agenda, and it's not even like some of the ones we're aware of are all that upstanding. She arms herself with a letter opener and heads to the front window; seeing nothing, she steels herself and opens the double-locked door. From the front, it looks like she sees nothing, but the upward camera angle suggests there's something at her feet and sure enough, when she casts her eyes down, there are two tidy boxes gaily wrapped with red ribbon and bearing cards with "His" and "Hers" in flowing script. Selecting the gender-appropriate one, she haltingly removes the top and gasps in horror…
…and later, we see that each box held a container with a piece of brain in it as Vogel tells Dexter TBS is escalating. Dexter guesses that the pieces belong to Sussman and that TBS blew his head off to cover the damage to the brain, and when Vogel tells Dexter the samples came from the occipital lobe, which controls vision, Dexter realizes that it's a message from TBS that he's watching them, adding that the "His" box means that TBS is now aware of Dexter's association with Vogel. Vogel apologizes for dragging Dexter into this, but Dexter notes that TBS sending both packages to Vogel suggests that he might not know how to find him or even his name. Vogel: "Yet." She has a way with words. Dexter urgently agrees and says he's got to catch him soon; to that end, he's been going through Vogel's book and vetting suspects and so far he's eliminated two names, leaving him up to a "Ron Galuzzo," who apparently strangled his best friend as a teenager. Honestly, I'm not sure how that doesn't happen more often just based on TV depictions of high schools alone. Dexter goes on that Galuzzo convinced Vogel that his victim was a bully, and she recalls that he had her fooled for a bit so she recommended leniency at his hearing, a decision she reversed after she got him to admit he'd been lying. They think this could be sufficient motivation for Galuzzo to be after her now, but they're interrupted by Quinn calling Dexter over to tell him about Deb's latest, adding that he got her out of it but he's obviously worried. All Dexter can do is somewhat helplessly offer that Deb's been having a hard time, but when Quinn asks what they're doing to do, Dexter tells him he'll figure something out before thanking him and heading off -- whereupon Batista appears and lights into Quinn for shirking his duties after Batista put him up for sergeant.