By Buzz Byrne
After being tailed for a month and a half by Sergeant Doakes, Dexter- our most enjoyable serial killer- lamented that he was “All Jeckyl and no Hyde.” Now he has confessed to girlfriend Rita that he has “An addiction,” and she is pushing him into a twelve step program. This is not going to help his killing spree flourish. And superstar federal agent Frank Lundy has assembled his task force to capture the Bay Harbor Butcher (Dexter) and he has recruited Dex’s sister Debra, who is still shaky from her near marriage and murder to and by the Ice Truck Killer. Like the body parts on the ocean floor, so are the days of our murdering Miami lives.
Dexter’s first foray into Narcotics Anonymous goes poorly. He is bored after ten minutes of the “same whiney story,” he tells us, “no self control…lost everything.” Dexter is too careful to be in these people’s circumstances. Even the doughnuts are stale. So he leaves. He returns to Rita without his first day sober chip. Having been married to an addict she knows the program and this is a big deal. She tells him there is no relationship if he doesn’t work the twelve steps and that starts with staying for the whole meeting. Dexter can’t tell if being with Rita and the kids is important enough to carry out this cumbersome charade. “Someone with a heart could answer that question,” he concludes, and in his mind, that excludes him. Oh, the self-delusion of the truly insane!
Superstar Frank Lundy has his team and directs them to start ID-ing the bodies. The count is up to eighteen now. “IDs lead to a pattern and a pattern leads to our man.” He also says he will use food references a lot because, “I like food.” Given the opening title sequence of this show, superstar Frank Lundy is fitting in nicely. Debra however, asks off the team. Lundy is tepid but says okay.
Dexter is not doing well with all his work seeing the light of day. As he looks at the make-shift morgue of his victims, each with a stainless steel cart and an anonymous number, the room spins for him and he feels they are, “reflecting my darkness back at me.” What’s a killer to do under this pressure?
Stalk his next victim of course. He has a good one. Car salesman (hate him already, right?) Roger Hicks rapes and tortures and kills women. Two so far. He checks their credit report and when they match a profile of being a good victim, he does the deed. Dexter collects some DNA just to be sure, and damn if he doesn’t drive off the lot with a brand new minivan as well. Roger is good at his job.
Dexter also gives the NA meetings a second chance. Mostly to get the chip. A raven haired mystery woman, spotted at the first meeting, gets him to go for coffee afterwards and she says his attempt to spin a yarn about his supposed addiction was embarrassing. Dexter says he was telling the truth but it becomes clear enough that she may have the same addiction as he does. She tells him the pain is, “A thousand whispering voices saying this is who you are. You belong to this shadow self-” “This dark passenger.” He completes her thought. They are the same and he bolts.
He tries to tell Rita he has to go through recovery without a program and she breaks it off. Debra doesn’t get replaced on the task force and superstar Frank Lundy tells her it’s because she was strong enough to survive the Ice Truck Killer. Lundy and Dexter meet in the morgue and agree the only reason to kill, ever, is to save an innocent. This is bad news for Roger the car salesman. Despite the danger of taking another victim while being investigated, Dexter uses his adoptive father’s rules to justify it along with the new paternal figure, superstar Frank Lundy.
During Roger’s killing, Dexter comes to realize he is connected to Rita and the kids emotionally. He goes back to NA and as he tells his story, this time speaking honestly- except for the killing, he tells of the dark passenger. He says, “When he is driving I feel alive…no one else will love me.” But now he is connected. As he speaks, he isn’t embracing the podium. Rather he is against the wall, backed as far away as possible but he is still speaking. During the serenity prayer Sergeant Doakes comes in. This is the piece he was looking for to make sense of Dexter’s erratic behavior. He calls off his pursuit.
Dexter returns to Rita, embracing the program and ready to get on with life! If only his sponsor weren’t the dark-haired mystery woman, I’m sure everything would work out just fine.