Dexter, "Do You Take Dexter Morgan?": Nice day for a red wedding

Spoilers for the "Dexter" season three finale coming up just as soon as I break my hand...

Yawn.

The worst part of this season was that there were a few really strong episodes late in the year that seemed to reverse all the slack pacing and dull storytelling from earlier on. Because of those episodes, I got my hopes up that the early duds were misdirection, or a slump that the production team pulled themselves out of, and that the end of the season would be much closer to season one (Dexter kills his brother) than season two (Lila goes insane and has to be put down). And so when we got to this underwhelming finale, it was a lot more disappointing than if I had just written off the season as a misfire a few weeks ago.

Having bumped off Miguel last week, the show spends most of "Do You Take Dexter Morgan" on quiet reflection, sort of following the pattern of shows like "The Sopranos" and "The Wire." The problem is that Miguel's death felt abrupt, and very little of the reflection felt earned. There were a couple of strong scenes -- Dexter taking the thorn out of Ramon's paw, Dexter forgiving Harry and committing himself to being a better father -- but overall it was a fairly aimless hour.

Among the missed opportunities from this episode, and from this season:

• How do you put Dexter in the clutches of another serial killer and allow him to escape so quickly? That should have been an entire episode right there, and now they can't even go there again because they did it here.

• Whatever happened to the idea of Dexter exploring what it means to kill outside the Code of Harry? Again, because they introduced the idea and then abandoned it so quickly in favor of having Dexter and Miguel get involved in their father-son/mentor-protege relationship, the writers really can't go down that path again.

• What exactly was the point of all the Quinn/IAD nonsense if it was never going to go anywhere? I suppose it was to show us that Deb earned her shield the right way, as opposed to taking Yuki up on her offer to rat, but that was an awful lot of time spent on an irritating character who wound up being a red herring.

• This isn't a missed opportunity, but it bugged me just the same: what was up with Miguel's wife's total lack of reaction to his death? I get that they were separated at the time and that she thought he'd been stepping out on her, but that is one cold fish if she's going about her business like the man she was married to for years wasn't just garrotted and skinned(*) to death.

(*) Speaking of which, given what a high-profile case this is, don't you think the coroner's going to notice that Miguel got skinned post-mortem, which doesn't match King's MO?

Really, if it hadn't been for that lovely shot of the blood dripping onto Rita's wedding dress -- a symbol of what this marriage really means for her, as well as something that felt like it should somehow be incorporated in the opening credits -- I think the episode would have been a total loss. As it is, I want to hope that his season was just a misstep for the "Dexter" creative team, but I've been worried for a while now that there's only so much life in the concept, and it feels like they've run out.

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Dexter, "I Had a Dream": Best man for the job

Very brief spoilers for last night's penultimate "Dexter" season three episode coming right up...

I hate the Internet some days. Every comment on the blog gets e-mailed to me as soon as it's posted so that I know if there's something I need to respond to -- or, on occasion, if there's something I need to delete. Last night, I came home late from giving a friend a lift home, put on "Dexter," and, as the opening credits were playing, checked my e-mail... and found a comment just posted to last week's "Dexter" discussion that spoiled virtually everything in the episode, including Dexter using a garrote instead of a knife on Miguel. So thanks a lot, anonymous d-bag.

Because of that marvelous specimen, I don't have a lot to say about "I Had a Dream," but I do feel like I would have been disappointed in the episode even if I didn't know what was coming. Having Dexter kill Prado with an episode to go was a surprise in its timing, but predictable in the larger scheme of things. We all assumed that Dex would eventually get Miguel on a table, and he did, with minimal difficulty. I would have liked the final showdown between these two men who were briefly kindred spirits to have been more complicated from an emotional and logistical standpoint. Dexter got to taunt Miguel about killing Oscar (and I guess we'll never find out exactly why Oscar was in Freebo's house), but the whole thing played out as you'd expect if you've watched this show for three seasons. Given their former close friendship, and Miguel's standing in the community, and whatever serial killer skills Miguel picked up from Dexter, I was hoping for something more.

Now, Dexter doesn't know that Miguel put the Skinner on his tail, but the Skinner was always a sideshow to the season's main story, and that's done in a fairly perfunctory fashion. (To be fair, it might have seemed brilliant and shocking if I'd been unspoiled, but I don't think so.)

Jennifer Carpenter gets beat up a lot here and on various message boards, but I thought she did a very nice job with Deb trying to deal with the news about Harry. And the scene where Anton talked about what it felt like to be the Skinner's captive gave us a different perspective on what it must be like to be the poor bastard trapped under Saran Wrap by Dexter. But I'm still waiting for the show to remember the business about Quinn being a dirty cop.

As always -- and especially after this recent incident -- I should remind you about the spoiler policy around here, which is no spoilers about upcoming episodes before they're written about by me. No talking about anything in the previews, anything you've read or heard elsewhere, about psychic visions you had, etc.

What did the non-spoiled among you think of the episode? Click here to read the full post

Dexter, "Go Your Own Way": Somebody messes with me, I'm gonna mess with him

Spoilers for last night's "Dexter" coming up just as soon as I ask the dry cleaner if they can get out cow's blood...

Okay, now this is getting fun.

Overall, I'm still underwhelmed by a lot of this season, but these last few episodes have been really strong. Dexter and Prado's cat and mouse game is the obvious highlight -- their pretense-abandoning argument on the rooftop was one of the show's funniest, most electric scenes to date -- but at last some of the less interesting subplots are getting tied into the main action. Angel's relationship with the vice cop gives Dexter a chance to prevent the creation of yet another homicidal vigilante in Miami's law-enforcement community. Deb's relationship with Anton provides fodder for Miguel to blackmail Dexter with (and push Dexter firmly into Prado Must Die mode), and the Skinner becomes Miguel's tool to take out Dexter once and for all. Even the wedding storyline gave us the delightful spectacle of Masuka in charge of the bachelor party.

Now, we all know that the Skinner isn't going to succeed in killing Dex -- not unless the show is going to change its title to "Miguel" or "Skin-NER!" (said in my best Superintendent Chalmers voice) -- but seeing Dexter at the mercy of another serial killer, and seeing how he gets out of this predicament, should compensate for a lot of the sluggishness we needed to get to this point.

While I still assume that Prado winds up Saran-wrapped to a table, he's proving to be a much more formidable foe than I expected. And Dexter's internal debate about the problems of killing such a high-profile figure -- and one with such a close personal connection to himself -- suggests that we might get a more creative solution in the end

Finally, this late in the season, let me remind you of one of the cardinal parts of this site's No Spoilers policy: no talking about the previews, or anything else you've seen/read/heard about the next episode, or the rest of the season. I just barely changed the channel in time to avoid something I was sure I didn't want to see, given the cliffhanger.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Dexter, "About Last Night": I feel so... used

Spoilers for last night's "Dexter" coming up just as soon as I quiz a vice cop...

Now where is this all going?

We're only nine episodes into the season, and yet "About Last Night" had the definite feeling of penultimateness. The Skinner was identified, and though he slipped away from Deb and Quinn, Anton was saved. Dexter realized that Miguel Prado was far more dangerous than he had realized -- and then, on top of that, realized that perhaps Miguel was more dangerous all along, and had simply been manipulating him into giving serial killer lessons. These two developments in the season-long story arcs would ordinarily come right before the finale, but we've got three episodes left to go, and that suggests a bunch of additional twists in the Dexter/Prado story, if not also in the Skinner subplot. I still think the season has to end with Miguel Saran-wrapped to a table, but getting him there may not be as easy (or predictable) as I had first assumed.

And the idea that Miguel was a monster all along -- if not a killer -- solves a lot of my problems with the recent progression of that story. If, as I had speculated before, Miguel had been using his brother Oscar as an avenging angel, and that he turned to Dexter as both a replacement and an attempt to get hands-on training in the art of homicidal vigilantism, then his lack of curiosity about Dexter past, and about the high probability that he's the Bay Harbor Butcher, makes much more sense.

Very, very interesting, and Michael C. Hall and Jimmy Smits continue to rock it.

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Dexter, "The Damage a Man Can Do": Life almost (but thankfully doesn't) imitate art

Spoilers for last night's "Dexter" coming up just as soon as I get some, uh, treats out of my cereal box...

First thing's first: rarely have I been as horrified by an act of fictional violence as I was by watching Miguel Prado plunge a knife into Billy Fleeter, because I knew it almost wound up not being fictional. When the scene was filmed, Jimmy Smits accidentally grabbed a real knife instead of a prop one and stabbed stuntman/actor Jeff Chase with it, and was lucky that he hit the small plastic plate covering Chase's heart. Even knowing that Chase survived relatively unscathed wasn't enough to prevent some massive cringing as I watched it.

(Also, because this story came out very early in the season, it completely spoiled the fact that Prado would wind up joining Dexter in the plastic-wrapped killing ritual. C'est la vie.)

There are still some major foundational problems here -- the Bay Harbor Butcher issue still hovers over every one of Miguel and Dexter's interactions, Deb is turning into one of those gullible "Heroes" characters who believes whatever story she's been most recently told -- but Michael C. Hall and Smits continue to do wonderful work. Dexter's excitement at finding what he thinks is a true kindred spirit (as opposed to Lila, who was just nuts) and Miguel's excitement at getting to dispense some first-hand justice were so well-played that I almost was able to ignore the fact that Miguel should be smart enough to connect the dots and realize he's dealing with a much scarier individual than even he thinks.

Also, the final scene with Ellen Wolf suggested that there's more to her history with Prado than either has admitted so far. The look on her face didn't say, "God, what is this hypocritical sonuvabitch doing at my front door?" It said, "Is this another booty call?"

And in terms of guesses for our serial killer, I'm assuming it's the head tree-trimmer -- not only because his underling was so terrified of him, but because, unless my eye is way off, he's being played by Jesse Borrego, who isn't quite a Hey, It's That Guy!, but still falls under the Most Recognizable Guest Star theory.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Dexter, "Easy as Pie": The key lime code

Spoilers for last night's "Dexter" coming up just as soon as I find my plus one...

In case you hadn't noticed it by now, that Michael C. Hall is kind of a good actor, isn't he? Even though the outcome of the Dexter/Camilla story never really seemed in doubt, Hall and Margo Martindale played the hell out of it, as Camilla pleaded for a painless death and Dexter wrestled with whether The Code of Harry was elastic enough to give it to her. Very touching work by both, and I loved that Dexter confessed to Brian's murder because he couldn't let Camilla's final thoughts of him to be completely pure. (That, or he really wanted to unburden himself about Brian's death, and chose the one person who would both understand and be unable to tell anyone else about it.)

All that said, I wish Dexter had either decided against euthanizing Camilla because it clearly didn't fit the Code, or else that the writers had followed up on suggestions from the season two finale and the season three premiere that Dexter was preparing to move himself beyond the Code altogether. Dexter's world seemed shaken when he accidentally killed Oscar Prado, but rather than use that development to examine a Dexter operating without a rudder, it's mainly been an excuse to put him into the orbit of Miguel. That story arc has had its moments, and I like watching Jimmy Smits play such an unhinged character after a couple of decades of playing super-cool hero types, but watching this episode reminded me of the greater dramatic opportunity that was there for the taking at the start of this season.

And the Prado storyline did give Dexter yet another chance to examine the Code (even though he's still clearly trying to operate within its limits) as he pondered indulging Miguel's request to take out Ellen Wolf. Midway through the season, Miguel's already going off the rails, and I look forward to watching Smits play that.

As for the rest of "Easy as Pie"? Eh. Masuka's outrage over *%&$ing Albert Chung was very funny even before we got the punchline about their obvious resemblance, and Deb and Angel's stories are interesting, I suppose, if you care much about either character independently of their relationship with Dexter. I just don't. And I'm glad that the slicer doesn't seem to be Quinn -- multiple serial killers operating under the same precinct roof would stretch credulity even on this show.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Dexter, "Si Se Puede": Partners in crime

Spoilers for last night's "Dexter" coming up just as soon as I find the perfect Key lime pie...

Bay Harbor Butcher.

These are three words that needed to be uttered in this episode, possibly more than once. How can Prado be smart enough to figure out that Dexter is capable of being a vigilante killer and yet not connect the dots to the vigilante killer operating out of Dexter's office a few months ago? How can Angel and Deb talk about the possibility of Ramon Prado being a serial killer without once invoking the name of Sgt. Doakes?

I can give the writers a pass (for now) on the Prado front, depending on what exactly this guy's motivations really are. If, as I've guessed in the past, Prado was using his brother Oscar for similar purposes, then maybe he knows exactly what Dexter really is, and has all along, and is somehow confident he can avoid suffering the same fate as Doakes. But if that turns out not to be the case, then Prado's an idiot, and he deserves the Saran Wrapped fate I think we all assume is coming to him by the end of this season.

The Ramon subplot's a little trickier. I can understand Angel being paranoid about going after a fellow cop (and the brother of an influential DA), but for him to be in disbelief about Deb's theory, so soon after they were told one of their own was a prolific serial killer? At the very least, they should have had Quinn, as the newbie, bring Doakes' name up to suggest that maybe our veterans have a blind spot about this kind of thing.

Whatever the reason, it was distracting, and in the middle of one of the season's more uneven episodes.

On the plus side, Michael C. Hall and Margo Martindale were perfect in their scenes together at the hospital. Dexter's relationship with Camilla, which we've seen going all the way back to the pilot, is yet another sign that our protagonist isn't the emotionless robot he so often claims to be. I'm curious to see if Dexter ponders putting Camilla out of her misery, or if his own experience with the nurse who tried to euthanize Harry would keep him from going there.

On the minus side, all the ancillary stories -- Laguerta with the defense lawyer, Deb with the terrible actress from IAD, Angel trying to date the vice cop -- felt as uninteresting as usual, even when the plots in some way (like Laguerta's) tie in with the main Dexter story.

And I feel like I missed a couple of steps in the Dexter/Prado relationship. Dexter went from freaked out to, if not comfortable with, then at least resigned to the knowledge that Prado knows his secret. And the scene where Prado was alone with the Aryan was confusing. Had this guy been threatening Prado's family for a while? (In which case, that's one hell of a coincidence that Dexter would select this guy as an example for Miguel.) Or had the threats only begun once Miguel started working on this plot to have the killer transferred to the courthouse?

Kind of a muddled episode that typified what's been to me, unfortunately, a muddled season.

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Dexter, "Turning Biminese": The death boat soon will be making another run

Spoilers for last night's "Dexter" coming up just as soon as I put on a suit and tie...

Okay, now we're getting somewhere. After several weeks where I felt like the show was dragging, the pace finally picks up -- and not just in the very funny and disturbing sequence where Dexter had to rush his way through the cruise ship kill so he could get off the boat in time. Michael C. Hall did a great job in that sequence of reminding us that part of Dexter's pathology is his commitment to the ritual. Having to rush through it was like bad sex for him -- it satisfied the need, but barely even that.

Meanwhile, the Prado thing starts to get interesting. Dexter and Miguel's confrontation at the episode's end was the highlight of the season to date, with Jimmy Smits continuing to bring this unsettling intensity and Hall playing Dexter in full retreat.

Now, do you suppose Miguel told Dexter about the wife-killer as a test? It seems a little too convenient and easy for him to have made that deductive leap if he didn't go into the situation suspecting the truth about Dexter, and that might also give us an alternate explanation for why Oscar Prado was at Freebo's place with a bayonet: maybe he was playing Miguel's avenging angel, and with Oscar dead, Miguel's trying to get Dexter to fill the role?

The supporting character subplots still bore me -- other than the detectives finally standing behind Masuka to get Ramon to go away -- because even though we have a bunch of good actors here (David Zayas in particular does a whole lot with almost nothing to work with as Angel), it's clear that the B and C-stories are always there just to fill time and keep Hall from exhausting himself, and little else. Maybe if the writers kept the ongoing story arcs confined to Dexter himself and used the B-plots for self-contained spotlights on the ensemble, the way that shows like "The Sopranos" and "Mad Men" have done, I might be more interested, but I just don't care about finding out whether Quinn's dirty or how Angel's going to seduce the vice cop.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Dexter, "All in the Family": Ac-ting! Gen-ius! Thank you!

Spoilers for "Dexter" season three, episode four coming up just as soon as I get my room upgraded...

I'm going to be brief here. This was the last episode I saw in advance, and it's now been so long that, even with my notes, I don't feel especially connected to it -- and that's even beyond the general dissatisfaction I had with the season when it started. Maybe my opinion will start changing as we move forward, and I don't want to dwell too much on a feeling of unease I haven't been able to entirely place to begin with.

One thing did really bother me about this episode, though, and that's the ease with which Dexter manipulated the brothers Prado. We've known for a while now that Dexter's claim to not have emotion is a lie, that he can't admit those feelings to himself or else it would be harder to cope with his monstrous side. But we also know that Dexter is quite socially stunted, and while he can fake certain basic modes of behavior -- having fun with the kids, buying donuts for the other cops so they'll like him -- he runs into trouble whenever anything more complicated is required. In the same episode in which he handles the pregnancy announcement and the subject of marriage so ineptly for so long, it doesn't feel right to then see him play a very elaborate mindgame on Miguel and Ramon. Either he has a strong understanding of social cues and what makes people tick, or he doesn't. And here, his behavior seemed less about being true to who Dexter is than to serving the needs of the script. Because of that inconsistency, I couldn't even really appreciate Michael C. Hall and Julie Benz's work in the scene where Dexter finally proposes the right way.

Anyway, enough complaining. Hopefully, the season starts clicking for me in the way it seems to be doing for many of you.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Dexter, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight": Have you seen me?

Spoilers for "Dexter" season three, episode three coming up just as soon as I steal some milk...

For a guy who claims not to have any emotions, Dexter sure puts a lot of them on display in "The Lion Sleeps Tonight": frustration at Miguel Prado's intrusions into his world, fear of how a baby might change his life and, most strikingly, pure, unadulterated rage at the possibility that Nathan Marten might have done something to Astor. We've seen Dexter kill while feeling scared, or remorseful, but we've never seen him this angry before.

And yet, as scary as it should be to see Dexter creating his own killing code, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" felt like a continued effort on the part of the show to make Dexter more likable -- or, at least, more human. He has feelings! He's just a lion protecting his little cub! Serial killers: they're just like us!

Character growth is great in most series, but what I really appreciated about "Dexter" in the early days was how they let us understand Dexter without ever asking us to like him. It's the nature of series television that extreme characters tend to get softened over time, but the more "Dexter" does this, the closer it threatens to become to the the moral abomination its detractors call it. I don't want to be in a scenario where I'm cheering on Dexter to kill someone, you know? I always appreciated the way the show drew the line about how Dexter only kills bad guys: yes, he's arguably doing something for the societal good, but he's made it clear repeatedly that he's not doing it for the victims (or potential victims), but just to feed his own hunger.

And then there are scenes like Dexter being dragged along to Rita's prenatal yoga class. Sure, it's funny to hear Dexter fantasize about killing the instructor so he doesn't have to suffer through another minute of this, but that also feels like an attempt to make him into a cuddlier monster. Serial killers: they hate yoga just like us!

Ironically, the only scenes in the episode that felt reassuring were the ones that were the most uncomfortable: basically, any interaction between Dexter and Miguel Prado. Jimmy Smits is doing some really interesting work as a guy who might just be in mourning or might be as crazy in his own way as Dexter. Whenever he's around Dexter, I feel off-balance, which is the way "Dexter" at its best makes me feel.

Some other thoughts on "The Lion Sleeps Tonight":

• Even beside the yoga story, this was one of the more quip-tastic episodes they've done, between Masuka's assertion that "there's a lot more cannibalism in this country than any of you realize" or, after Vince claimed the cops had insulted him and his people, Angel speculating that Vince's people were "Little scientists, I guess."

• Boy, Forensics Quarterly has a much quicker turnaround time than any magazine I've ever heard of, particularly a quarterly one. All these episodes seem to be taking place within days of each other, yet last week Vince was still waiting to hear if his article was accepted and this week he has a stack of signed copies.

• So Freebo didn't kill Teegan, eh? Is there any chance that Dexter has another brother floating around Miami?

• Even with the introduction of Paul Buchman's sister-in-law as the defense lawyer, this Chickie Hynes subplot continues to be boring because it's all tell and no show.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Dexter, "Finding Freebo": Dexter dearest?

Spoilers for "Dexter" coming up just as soon as I borrow a Buddha and a crucifix to help my next article get published...

"You couldn't picture this, could you? I could've surprised you. There's no reason it couldn't turn out like this." -Dexter Morgan

Some of my proudest moments as a father are when my daughter does something that I know she inherited from me. Some of my lowest moments as a dad come from the same thing. As parents, we want our kids to copy all of our best qualities, and fear that they'll duplicate the worst. And we're just regular people. Try to imagine being Dexter. Did he and his brother turn out the way they did solely because of that traumatic experience, or is it a path they would have followed under any circumstances? And what does that mean for a hypothetical Dexter Jr?

To me, the strongest moment in this episode -- maybe in the four episodes I've seen -- is the one quoted above, where Dexter tears into an imagined version of Harry, wondering if this really was the path he had to follow. From the flashbacks we've seen of Dexter as a kid, it seems like Harry did try to steer him elsewhere, but it didn't take. But did Harry do everything he could, or did his fear of letting the rest of the world find out about Dexter -- say, by sending him to therapists -- end up sabotaging any attempt to reform the kid?

While I enjoyed Dexter facing the fears of impending parenthood, the rest of the episode felt pretty flat to me.

I think Jimmy Smits is giving a very interesting performance as Prado; there's something clearly off about this guy beyond his simple grief about his brother, and so his attempts to push his way into Dexter's life are as unsettling to watch as it must be for Dexter to experience. My problem with the character, and with the Deb subplot about Internal Affairs, is that it trades so much on things we have to be told rather than shown. Prado and Laguerta have some history that they talk endlessly about, and then Angel uncovers info about some case that we're told was a big deal for Prado, but all of it -- plus IAD's interest in Detective Quinn -- is so abstract that it doesn't engage me at all.

Dexter has really been the only fully-formed character on the show, with Deb the only other one who comes close. When someone else's story in some way ties directly to Dexter -- Prado coming across Dexter moments after Freebo's death, for instance -- then I care about them. But as soon as they leave his orbit even slightly, my interest level plummets.

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Dexter, "Our Father": Killer cravings

Spoilers for the "Dexter" season three premiere coming up just as soon as I go to the dentist...

This is going to be a weird review, and possible a weird season of reviews for me with this show. Like I said in my column on Friday, and as I hope I made clear all through season two, this is a show I have loved and passionately championed for two years, and even though there's not one thing I can put my finger on that's wrong with the new season, what I've seen so far has frustrated me. In fact, there were moments in various episodes -- good moments, with Michael C. Hall saying and doing interesting, Dexter-like things -- where I really had to fight the urge to put something else on instead.

Maybe this ennui goes away the deeper into the season I get, maybe not. I wrote a few times last year that "Dexter" feels like a show that should have a very limited shelf life, that the concept and character aren't built to run for season after season. And though there's no shark-jumping or fridge-nuking or Landry-killering to be found in "Our Father" or any of the next few episodes, I can't help thinking that I've seen as much of Dexter Morgan's world as I need to.

If that feeling solidifies as I see more episodes, I may just taper off on these reviews, or simply shift to open thread posts at a certain point in the season. After all, the episodic discussion last year was pretty good with or without me involved, and until or unless I can articulate my unease better, it may be pointless to keep weighing in on every episode. I don't want to be a weekly killjoy if I can't find anything to complain about other than the show's continued existence, you know?

Now, for some specific thoughts on the themes of "Our Father" as opposed to my malaise:

Can Dexter change?

That's the question he asks himself at the end of the episode, and the question Harry asked himself years ago. Harry decided the answer was no, which has led to the Dexter we see before us today. But Harry's long gone, and we've seen that Dexter is capable of doing and being more than either he or Harry ever imagined. His relationship with Rita, started as a cover identity to support his true passion, has become real. He cares for her, cares for her kids, even if he insists to himself (and to us, his unseen confessors) that he's incapable of feeling anything but a need to kill. But so long as things stayed status quo, Dexter was never going to have to challenge Harry's (lack of) belief in him, and his own self-doubt. But with Rita apparently pregnant with Dexter's child, things are going to change, and Dexter's going to have no choice but to change with them. And once he realizes that he can change, what then? What does he become at that point? More normal, or less?

The end of last season had Dexter promising to explore new rituals, new ways of killing, but as we return to his life, he seems to be going about things the same way as always until he accidentally kills Oscar Prado, youngest brother of powerful Miami DA Miguel Prado, played by the mustachioed Jimmy Smits. As Dexter says, he's never killed anyone before that he didn't "vet" according to the Code of Harry. For most of his life, the Code has successfully channeled his psychosis into the most socially constructive path possible, short of incarceration or death. Dexter has convinced himself that he has to kill according to the Code; what happens if he discovers that he's not very troubled by going off-mission? He doesn't join Deb at the bar to toast Harry because he wants to let go of the old man; does that mean letting go of the Code, too? And how many bodies get dropped if that happens?

(I should say, by the way, that I'm not fake-speculating based on what I know is coming in the next few episodes; these are the thoughts I had when I watched "Our Father.")

Again, these are promising directions, and even if I wasn't in the tank for Smits based on "NYPD Blue," I would find him a very good choice to play off of Michael C. Hall this season. But for whatever reason, I'm having a hard time stirring up any emotions about it all -- which feels oddly, disturbingly Dexter-like.

A few other random thoughts:

• With Doakes' unfortunate passing, it makes sense that Angel would wind up as the new sergeant, though all of LaGuerta's talk about the responsibilities of that rank never seemed to apply to how Doakes carried himself. Taking Doakes' place as a body in the squad, meanwhile, is Desmond Harrington as Quinn, the object of Internal Affairs' interest. As always with "Dexter," all the office politics are only necessary in that they prevent the producers from overworking Michael C. Hall, but they always pale in comparison to the main storylines. That said, I did like David Zayas and Jennifer Carpenter's drunken bonding at the bar.

• Not a fan of Deb's much-discussed new haircut. Anyone else?

• I laughed at Masuka asking Dexter, of all people, to proofread his article on the Bay Harbor Butcher. He has no idea how perfect that choice is.

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