THIS WEEK ON Dexter: Beauty and the Beast

When has Dexter Morgan passed the point of no return? When has the dude finally fucked up far too righteously to recover from? I ask, because if the dude hasn’t gotten there yet, he’s getting precariously close. If he hasn’t crossed the Rubicon, he’s certainly nuzzling up next to it.

Here’s a point for Would-Be savers of rape and homicide victims: when you’re trying to calm them down, don’t have them in a headlock. If you’re trying to assure them that they’re okay, don’t do it while administering a rear naked chokehold. Our boy Dexter misses that essential point in this episode, while trying to calm down the female he saved from Boyd’s writhing stache of prowess, Lumen.

“No no, seriously calm down! Everything is cool! Ignore the shed I’ve got you locked in, or the fast that I’m trying to give you the Boston Crab, or that I killed someone. Everything is fine. Dope. Solid even.”

Dexter spends the entire episode spiraling out of control. His life is in tatters, his existential status a tailspin of tremendous splendor. The dude just offed the coolest mustache in the state of Florida. Dang. His hot Irish baby sitter just quit. Double dang. And some uppity broad who isn’t cool with getting locked up in alligator country needs to be dealt with.

What’s a dude to do?

Why, consult Harry!

But man, Harry is stuntin’ lately. Like, big time. As I mentioned last week, Harry’s always served as the sensible part of Dexter’s smashed psyche. Or so we thought. Maybe Harry’s has only ever been Dexter’s most powerful survival mechanism. That would explain why he’s always told Morgan to adhere to the code; it was his best way of carrying on.

But now motherfuckin’ Dexter has a conscience and shit. What’s up with that! And all of a sudden, Harry is starting to spit shit that runs counterintuitive to Dexter’s little budding sense of morality. His morality is like, the tits equivalent of Awkward Chick at the Eighth Grade Dance tits. Poking out, sort of misshapen, but you just chalk that up to it them not being fully developed.

Or something.

So even though it seems like Harry is leading him wrong when he’s pushing for Dexter to slough off Save The Last Dance’s mortal coil, the dude’s probably only looking out for his well-being. Like always.

Good news though! Dexter doesn’t have to kill the chick. Nope. After he shows her where Boyd hid all the bodies, she starts to come around. And then he drops the line that the Irish Babysitter chick did on him earlier in the episode, imploring her to take “a leap of faith.”

Uhhh…What he the fuck is this, Home Improvement? Seriously? Dexter is bringing back a helpful conversation he had with a distributor of knowledge previously in tonight’s ep? Seriously? Jesus Christ. It’s like he went to talk to Wilson or some shit through the fence.

Dexter can learn things!

Of course, there’s a snag. Christ. Everytime you decide to let some blond chick that you held without their consent go, there’s a fucking snag. Typical. Apparently there was a serious amount of dudes who ran a train on Lumen and the other chicks that Boyd disposed of. A veritable Killing & Raping Posse. Do you think they all have sick mustaches like Boyd? That would be fucking awesome. Like, do get into their cult of fuckery and stabbery, you need to grow out a mustache and find a John Deere hat to wear backwards?

‘Cause I’m fucking in.

And now Lumen is going all Emperor Palpatine on Dexter, and telling him that he needs to “wipe them out, all of them!” and then maybe Darth Maul and him can fight in some reactor chamber.

Dexter dude, shit, maybe you should have listened to Harry. This bitch is going to be way more work than she’s worth.

If that isn’t enough, Quinn is stalking around the Mitchell compound like a fucking dumb ass. Like, really? This was Quinn’s brilliant plan. 1) Tail the FBI guy. 2) Accost the kid in a convenience store. 3) Not get arrested or called out by the bodyguard the FBI is providing the kid.

Wowzers.

I mean, if that isn’t setting yourself up to fail, I’m not sure what is. So I’m glad that LaGuerta called him out on it. She summed up everything I had been thinking, “You’re chasing down this kid in FBI protection based on a fucking Etch-A-Sktch you did that looked like Dexter Morgan? That’s god damn insane!”

She continued, “Almost as insipid and ridiculous as the storyline featuring my husband! It’s god damn bad enough that no one cares about me or him, but now we’re getting wrapped up in some Internal Affairs bullshit!”, and then she said a bunch of Spanish I don’t know.

So Quinn gets suspended, and set out on his way. Gets to bang Deb again though. But if it wasn’t obvious enough that it was all Quinn as Doakes, remind me again of what happened to Doakes in the season when he went all Jack Bauer on Dexter? Oh yeah, he got suspended. Christ, if we’re just rewriting previous seasons, I can do this shit.

I mean, stop me if you’ve heard this before, too! Dexter befriends someone reluctantly. Then they want to start getting in on the kill action. Then it all goes horribly wrong. Yeah, they called it season three. So this season feels like a hodgepodge of season two and season three, which is unfortunate. Particularly unfortunate, because season four was such an ass-clenching experience.

The good news is, Dexter continues to get sloppier and sloppier in his execution, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but maybe he’ll get caught. I don’t know when I switched from wondering how he would get out of his next jam into wondering and maybe sort of hoping he’d get caught, but I think I’m there. A little bit.

So Dexter can continue to rock out with his knife out with Julia Stiles. And they can take out all the dudes from the Fowler Posse, and we can continue to watch as she loses her shit. It’ll be awesome.