By Buzz Byrne

Last week we saw Dexter (Michael C. Hall) impotent, blocked, and unable to kill. Yet when his watery graveyard of victims was discovered, he felt exhilarated. How much is Dexter a monster? Is there a human ghost in this killing machine? To be complete, to act and function true to his nature, this week he must engage in an emotional release- a ritual of letting go.

Gang enforcer Little Chino got off twice last week. First when a witness against him turned out to have a drug history (the DA wouldn’t build the case on such a shaky witness) and second, when Dexter couldn’t contain him or dispatch him. This week Little Chino sends a message to his territory by offing the would-be witness with a machete.

Elsewhere, Debra (Jennifer Carpenter) is still reliving the trauma of her involvement with Rudy/Brian/The Ice Truck Killer. The FBI is sending in super agent Frank Lundy (Keith Carradine) to assemble a task force to identify and capture the “Bay Harbor Butcher” (aka Dexter). Rita (Julie Benz) is determined to have proper burial for abusive ex-husband Paul and Dexter nearly falls into Little Chino’s hands by breaking one Harry’s rules.

“I need to clear the decks and my head.” Dexter says of this. Maybe he even said or meant, “Dex.”

Debra has a mental break where she pulls a gun on an unarmed child who in turn gives up the location of the 29th Street Kings’ gun and drug stash. This is Little Chino’s gang. When Little Chino seeks revenge on the squealing child, Dexter is laying in wait and gets his chance correct his earlier errors.


As Dexter collects his sample of blood, Chino asks why he is doing this. “I’m not so much doing this to you, as for me.” Dexter absently tells him. His hand is steady, his knife is true and as Dexter plunges it into Chino’s chest, they both exhale. Chino for the last time and Dexter, well it feels as though maybe he is breathing life in.

The Gulf Stream becomes Dexter’s new place of rest for his “Bodies of Work.” As he is dropping off Chino, Rita calls him. They need to talk. She confronts him with Paul’s shoe, the evidence that Dexter attacked him, that he did not have a relapse, the proof that he didn’t deserve to be in jail. The place where he eventually died.

Flush with his success of dispatching Chino, Dexter seems to dally with both experimenting in human honesty and perhaps finding a way out of this relationship- Dexter confesses that he did attack Paul.

Trying to connect the pieces of his erratic behavior and his ability to lay his hands on drugs and the proper preparation of these, Rita asks him if he is an addict. Now Dexter is looking for the door and says ironically, “I have an addiction.” But because the humor is dark, and because Rita is a fractured woman, she embraces him and vows to get him into a program and stick with him.


Dexter may sweat this, but Rita showed him how to heal. She put her husband to rest properly and said goodbye. Dexter finds he needs to do the same with his brother Rudy/Brian/The Ice Truck Killer. He casts the talisman his brother enticed him with out to sea and with it his emotional turmoil around killing the one person who would ever truly understand him. He said goodbye to, “Reconnect with what is really important, with who I am, with who I need to be.”

There is little doubt that Dexter is getting primed to join the new task force and try and escape the grasp of the FBI. Will we get a new serial killer to take Dexter’s fall as well? We can hope.