I'd Buy That for a Dollar
By Dustin Rowles | Posted Under TV Reviews | Comments (15)
Dexter’s voice over narration opens the episode. “We all have something to hide. Some dark place inside us we don’t want the world to see. We pretend everything is okay, wrapping ourselves in rainbows.” Dexter is still trying to wrap himself in rainbows as far as Lumen is concerned. She’s determined to seek revenge, murder those that gang-raped her, but Dexter — who would love nothing more than to add the blood of her aggressors to his collection of blood slides — is unwilling to reveal his true self to Lumen. As far as she is concerned, Boyd Fowler was a one-off. He advises Lumen to return to Minnesota. He doesn’t want her to start down a road that would lead her to where he is. Though she might be the only one that can understand Dexter, he doesn’t want a confidante. He has one in Harrison, who he is mindlessly grooming to take over his serial killing business, even as he suggests that Quinn — who he caught schtupping Deb — is a bad influence.
This week’s episode explored the lengths that Dexter will go to protect an innocent from her own dark side. As she sought to murder his captors, Dexter stayed one step ahead of Lumen, which meant abducting — and nearly killing — Boyd Fowler’s prison cell mate, only to realize that the cell mate couldn’t have been involved in the rape of Lumen. He was on probation; he had an ankle device. Subsequently, he prevented Lumen from making the same mistake that he almost did, before giving her a plane ticket and sending Lumen on her way. The trauma is too deep for Lumen, however. The frisking by airport security brought the scars back to the surface; Lumen is staying. Dexter will likely continue his pursuit of Lumen’s torturers, but he won’t realize that he’s in a competition with Lumen to get to them first.
Meanwhile, the Santa Muerte case continues. Deb and Cira uncover a roomful of rotting corpses, all of which received the machete treatment (is the Santa Muerta killer Danny Trejo? Please let it be Danny Trejo). I have no idea how this serial killer will tie into the other arc, unless the Santa Muerte killer was one of Lumen’s captors, but progress is slow on that front. Deb’s only clue, received from one of the killer’s hostages, is a tattoo, which turns out to be a stamp from a club, which means that the tattoo clue only existed to give Katherine Moennig of “The L Word” a single, flirt-y scene with Deb. As far as I’m concerned, that’s reason enough for the tattoo clue to exist (sadly, I think that’s Moenig’s only appearance this season, so no lesbian tryst for Deb. A shame, too, because Moennig is the only reason I stuck with “The L Word” long past its expiration date).
I still don’t understand fully what’s going on with Angel and Maria. It’s like a bad episode of “Three’s Company,” stranded in the middle of this season of “Dexter.” Angel suspects that Maria is fooling around with McCoy, the IA Agent, and every single clue suggests that she is. I might have suspected the same. Of course, she isn’t. She’s part of a undercover sting operation, which quite frankly has nothing to do with anything, except that it gives Angel and Maria something to do during this season. They’re gumming up the works, folks. I like them enough that I wouldn’t wish a murder suicide on their characters, but a quiet departure to another department in another state wouldn’t bother me.
Quinn is getting more evil by the week. On his suspended leave, Quinn decides to enroll a dirty cop busted by Maria (Peter Weller!) to follow Dexter. I get the feeling that if Weller caught Dexter in the act, he’d join in the killing. I have to concede, however, that in his old age, it took me a second to realize that Weller wasn’t Lundy back from the dead. He does present a fun obstacle in Dexter’s race to kill Lumen’s rapists.
Finally, my favorite moment of the episode came in the final minute, when Dexter delivered that wonderful fuck-you line to the obnoxious mommies. I wouldn’t mind at all if Dexter decided to expand his victims to aggressive, judgmental soccer moms.
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Comments
Posted by: sansho1 at October 26, 2010 11:48 AM
I wouldn’t mind at all if Dexter decided to expand his victims to aggressive, judgmental soccer moms.
Heh.
The season is picking up a little steam, but the storyline is less compelling so far than last season's. Julia Stiles is effective in the role she's been given, but there's no guilty pleasure in rooting for her as there was with Lithgow last season.
And yeah, "Three's Company" is right. All a big misunderstanding. The question we addressed last week has been answered. LaGuerta posed as a prostitute because...umm...the dude found out she gives a good blow job? So they're giving out blow jobs before arresting perps now? Him saying that line last week STILL makes no sense.