Hello. My name is Dexter Morgan. You killed my mother. Prepare to die.

Spoilers for "Dexter" coming right up (and, yes, I know I did the "Princess Bride" homage with a "Lost" post last spring, but it was too apropos to not recycle)...

Two different perspectives on the same situation: Dexter and Lila both believe that she’s helping him, but Lila thinks she’s helping Dexter beat his “addiction,” while Dexter thinks Lila’s on the verge of becoming his sidekick and confidante in serial killing. I don’t know if Dexter’s right, but considering the premise of the show, I don’t think Lila is, even though both of them came to these conclusions after she talked Dexter out of committing the most justified murder of his life.

Great episode, even if the red lighting in the bar and use of “Gimme Shelter” wasn’t so much a Scorsese homage as a bit of cheap shorthand. This is the most off the rails we’ve ever seen Dexter; even when he was screwing things up with Little Chino, he was at least sticking to the parts of The Code of Harry about preparation, concealing his identity, etc. Here, he just lost it, and it’s a mark of how well this show makes me both empathize with Dexter and understand his methods that, as he was in the middle of beating on and preparing to kill the man who killed his mother, all I could think was, “Man, you’re leaving fingerprints everywhere!”

(Of course, being methodical winds up potentially screwing him over in the end, as he goes to clean his boat of blood unaware of the surveillance camera Lundy installed at the marina. How exactly is Dexter going to slip out of that noose?)

If there was going to be a Scorsese-endorsed Stones song on the soundtrack, maybe it should have been “Sympathy for the Devil,” given the sales pitch on justifiable homicide that Dexter seems to be beginning with Lila. The question is how willing she’s going to be to buy into it. On the one hand, so much of Lila seems in synch with Dexter: the addiction, the use of mannequin parts the way Rudy used human bodies, the fascination with dead bodies, and now the news that she killed a man who did her wrong (albeit accidentally). On the other hand, Dexter is a badly-damaged individual, warped by an experience far more horrific than I imagine Lila has ever witnessed. Where he sees a potential sidekick, I see (or want to see) a woman who’s going to be dismayed if/when she finds out what Dexter really is.

Meanwhile, I’m curious to find out whether Frank Lundy’s anything other than the man he’s presented himself as so far. I admire the writers’ willingness to depict the man hunting Dexter as such a decent guy, not just a good investigator but an attentive father figure to Deb, who’s trying to teach her how to be a better cop and person while getting over her Ice Truck Killer trauma. The parallels between Deb with Lundy and Dexter with Harry are so strong, though, that this episode’s revelations about Harry’s secret relationship with Dexter’s mom makes me wonder what skeletons Lundy has in his closet. Is his interest in Deb entirely paternal, or will there (God, I hope not) be a moment where he reveals himself to be just another creep in her life? Does he, like every other character on this show, have some hidden kink, or is his role entirely to show what a fully functional human being looks like when thrown into Dexter’s sick world?

What did everybody else think?