Hey, everyone! Welcome to my extremely-delayed written review of the sensational third installment in Dexter’s final season. (I’m surprised that I didn’t end up on Dexter’s table for this crime of killin’ innocent time. Or for that awful joke I just let slip.) We are not only on the cusp of San Diego’s Comic-Con 2013—at which the Dexter crew is throwing a bittersweet final hoedown—but also dangling precariously over the cliff that is next Sunday’s “Scar Tissue,” which has been heralded by some truly electrifying sneak peeks. So what IS eating Dexter Morgan, exactly? If you’ve scraped up what’s left of you and are ready to wade back through the violent waters of “What’s Eating Dexter Morgan?,” then skip the jump and let’s cut to the mad chase!
A powerful, provocative step forward in the
exposition of Dexter’s true self, “What’s Eating Dexter Morgan?” didn’t present
us with a cannibal just to stir
things up a bit in the department of monstrousness. Emotive and rich with
devastating performances—especially on the part of Jennifer Carpenter, whose
Emmy nomination I am waiting for with bated breath!—this episode saw Debra
seeking to shake her sense of self-loathing once and for all by coming clean (by
the time she embraced the mess of a few emptied brown bottles) and Dexter conceding
to his newfound sense of self-loathing over his dismantlement of Debra, an
innocent whose love he could not have betrayed more brutally. Dexter is the consumer; Debra, the consumed. “I
consume everyone I love,” Dexter bitterly concludes as he regards the
saucer-eyed cannibal strapped to his kill table—which is, according to Dr.
Vogel, the canvas of Dexter’s perfection as a psychopath. Yet, like the tummy-troubled
Harrison who put away an entire box of popsicles out of his love of frozen treats,
Dexter is sick from the way in which his love inflicted abuse on the beloved. In turn, he's far from inclined to live with himself in this state. Instead of leaving
a trail of sticky juice, he’s left a body count which now includes the person
his beloved sister once was. Where is the perfection here? Does his perfection
lie in discarding his overwhelming remorse, or in letting that remorse shape
the way he moves forward?
Dexter’s comical disgust at the reveal of the
finger-fouled stew (a reaction that could not be more opposite from his elated
regard of the Ice Truck Killer’s design in the series pilot) works hand-in-hand
with the way he seeks to restore Debra to the knowledge of her own goodness. Dexter
is disgusted with himself for putting Debra in a place where she lost the
ability to see what she offers to the world—something that has kept him
grounded since before he even knew the
word ‘love’ (‘fond’ was the closest he could get to that sense of loyalty and
need, once upon a time). While Vogel tries to deconstruct Dexter’s love for Debra
by insisting that its foundation is self-interested survivalism (a sort of
Hannah McKay/Darwinian model), Dexter subverts her every attempt to quantify
and make math of his faithfulness to Debra by going a shockingly altruistic
mile to prove to Debra that she has enacted good that endures and cannot be
ignored. Debra is convinced that Dexter’s dinner date scheme is just another
hellhole into which her broken self has been dragged… until Dexter gives her
hard evidence of her admirable character. Voila—just across the restaurant from
their little table sits the man whose life Debra rescued in the sixth season, along
with the family whom she spared from having to face life without a father and
irreplaceable loved one. It seems as if Dexter did learn a thing or two from the too-soon-departed Isaak Sirko,
who lithely pried at Dexter’s rigid adherence to a scientific regard for love
and human connection. Beautifully enough, Dexter uses his logical faculties to “prove”
to Debra how good she is as a means of loving and seeking the best for her. “You’re
a good person,” Dexter tells her, reaching out to take her hand in the first
physically intimate act the two of them have shared in a long time—arguably since that haunting last scene of the seventh season
finale, in which a dazed Deb is clinging onto Dexter’s arm as the two of them
weave through the exuberant throngs of people at the New Year’s party. This is
the first time since that tragedy that Debra has softened to the source of her
pain. She cannot help but look into the mirror Dexter is holding up for her,
one which reveals that there is still intense love and vulnerability behind her
crown of thorns.
In a sense, Debra’s toxic spell is broken by this striving on Dexter’s
part to redeem her. Sitting in the Miami Metro parking lot while throwing back
beers and watching and re-watching
the video of her heroic act, Debra’s conviction takes an extremely volatile
turn. This taste of redemption catalyzes a swift reaction in her unfiltered
mind. In a heartbeat, she concludes that the only way to fully reach this place of
salvation is to spew out the truth that’s been rolling around inside of her—an indigestible,
inescapable weight. Here is where we see Quinn’s role of increasing importance
in the season reach a new climax: he, of course, is the one to whom Debra is
ready to make this explosive confession. (And how refreshing is it that Quinn is finally a part of
the central bedlam of it all! No more sidelined, rabbit-trail crises that leave
us all shaking our heads, aside from a few less-than-fun and more-than-clichéd
encounters with the jealous girlfriend.) For once, alcohol seems to do Debra a
favor in that its sway over her is glaringly obvious to Quinn; granted, if he’s
to turn a blind eye for ANYONE, it’s Debra (I mean, really—he dropped his
entire freaking private investigation into Dexter for her sake in the fifth season). It’s like Elway says earlier in the
episode during his Debra-partnered investigation into an obvious affair that the
wife abruptly renounces: people get used to living in denial. Quinn’s as in
denial about Debra’s confession as Debra was in denial about Dexter’s truth. Maybe it's just that the "truth is overrated." This,
of course, seems to suggest that Quinn just might be the one to see the cat let
out of the weather-worn bag when all is said and done. Regardless, Quinn
continues to keep Dexter in the know about Debra’s unstable condition and calls
him up in the thick of her breakdown—much to the dismay of Vogel, who continues
to be baffled by the unexpected errands that keep popping up in her cherished
playtime with her surrogate son. I was truly floored by her conversation with
Dexter on their hurried way to the station; in fact, it is likely that she
feels compelled to speak out about what she believes Dexter’s “true motivations”
are in zipping down the highway to save his sinking sister. Surely Dexter is
only worried that Debra’s descent will mark his own, but Dexter stubbornly
insists that he just can’t give up on her.
Not on HIS life—but hers. It’s about
his fear of what prison would do to HER,
not of what her incarceration could spell out for his place in life. I’m
reminded of the lyrics of “Love’s Not A Competition (But I’m Winning)” by Kaiser
Chiefs: “I’m not sure what’s truly altruistic anymore, when every good thing
that I do is listed and you’re keeping score.” All these “good things” that
Dexter is doing for his sister are ripe for Vogel’s reinterpretation, in her
eyes. What a grand challenge, to contend with a subject who is so incredibly
certain he is capable of the impossible! A devil trying out angel wings from a
costume shop and endeavoring to take flight.
To say that Dexter and Vogel’s arrival at the
scene of Debra’s confession does not mark
one of the most jaw-dropping moments of the show, is to fail to give this wild
scene the credit it is due. Dexter’s razor-sharp reflexes and Vogel’s
chillingly calculating reaction thereto—“That
was interesting!”—leave us breathless as so many planets collide in the deactivation
of a smoke-spewing ‘bomb.’ We’re left to wonder just what exactly Vogel will do
when Dexter places one of the two most precious people in his life in her hands.
Even though it’s hard to argue that she’s the Brain Surgeon now (since we saw
her receive home threats without Dexter
there to perform for), Vogel’s intentions are no clearer than they were
when we first encountered those icepick eyes of hers. Will she endeavor to stay in
Dexter’s good graces and try to genuinely affirm Debra, or push Debra to the
breaking point that she may remove the most viable threat to Dexter’s ‘perfect’
psychopathy and continue on in her exploration without this confounding
variable? Leave your thoughts below as we ready ourselves to come face to face
with “Scar Tissue”! Thank you so much for reading!
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