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lumendexter.jpg

What Kind of Name is Lumen?

By Dustin Rowles | TV | October 19, 2010 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | October 19, 2010 |


Now, we’re starting to get somewhere. In the latest episode of “Dexter,” we’re finally beginning to understand — perhaps — where this season is heading. A witness to Dexter’s murder of Boyd Fowler, Lumen Anne Pierce (Julie Stiles) understandably has to be silenced. What’s Dexter to do? Kill her, right? But what? What about the code? “Kill no innocents”? Harry doesn’t think that rule is nearly as important as, “Don’t get caught,” so Dexter is in a pickle. What to do? What to do? The easiest choice, of course, would be to kill her, especially because Lumen refuses to trust Dexter. And why should she? She’s been locked up in a dungeon, and she just witnessed Dexter plunge a knife into Boyd Fowler’s chest.

It takes some doing — and a close call or two that unravels the normally calm Dexter — but he eventually takes Lumen out to the swamp where Boyd’s victims reside and proves to her that he saved her life. Lumen is skeptical at first, but after she stabs Dexter in the arm with a knife, she changes her mind about him. Apparently, the ability to take a knife to the arm is all one needs to do to gain the trust of a woman who has been kidnapped and tortured. Who knew?

But the really interesting aspect of the Lumen storyline is that Boyd was not the first to lock her up. Apparently, so had her father — and others. And she can’t go home. What does this mean for Dexter? Will Lumen identify her captors, giving Dexter a series of victims that he can use to work through his grief? Or will Dexter simply rehabilitate Lumen? Will she become his next nanny? Or maybe there’s a reason she keeps getting locked up. Maybe she likes to kill, too. She was pretty good with that knife.

Dexter’s existing nanny, Sonja, is not so much a fan of Dexter right now, not after he left her with Harrison overnight while he was out murdering serial killers and tranquilizing young women trying to scratch his eyes out. In fact, the Nanny quits, but later on in the episode, agrees to return on the condition that Dexter doesn’t screw up again. It’s only a matter of time for Dexter, who spends an awful lot of hours running errands.

Meanwhile, Dexter is taking Harrison on a lot of his errands now, too. Is it because he has little choice otherwise, or is Dexter secretly hoping to groom Harrison as Harry had groomed Dexter? Is Dexter looking for a confidante? It’s only a matter of time before a child will rat you out to his mother if you let him watch television (trust me); how long before Harrison is old enough to communicate his whereabouts to others.

Dexter is getting sloppy. And he doesn’t seem too concerned about it.

Meanwhile, Quinn nearly got Jonah Mitchell to identify Kyle Butler as Dexter, but Quinn was interrupted by a set of handcuffs, and a subsequent indefinite suspension by LaGuerta for following up his crackpot theory behind her back. The only reason she doesn’t fire him is because she doesn’t want his theories a part of the public record. Indeed, LaGuerta seems awfully concerned with the public record, after LaGuerta shows concern that the IA Officer, Jim McCoy, has made the fact that she gives a good hummer a matter of public record. This, after Lopez drops the charges stemming from the barroom brawl against Batista, after Batista apologized. McCoy, however, won’t let it go. He seems to wants something out of the deal. I fear that what he wants is a blow job. Batista won’t be happy with that.

What do you folks, think? What’s going on with Lumen? Where’s the McCoy/LaGuerta subplot going? And does everyone figure that, now that he’s been suspended, Quinn will push even harder to connect Kyle Butler and Dexter? More importantly, who dies first? Lumen or Quinn? And what kind of name is Lumen?