Dexter 4×03

Sometimes, I lurk on TWoP in the forums. Sometimes, I wonder if they are making a conscious effort to be negative about everything that does not immediately and obviously go exactly in the direction that they favour. For example, Quinn and his plot gets called “useless” or “pointless” in a very angry manner, which is really odd because this episode made it very clear where this was leading. I really agree that Dexter has moments that look less like a natural part of the story as a whole, and more like a way to fill the series up, find something for every character to do, or whatever.The thing with Quinn definitely doesn’t belong there, though. I have no issue with it, but I know a lot of viewers have issues with Quinn’s mere existence, but this is getting ridiculous. Some complained that in 4×01, Quinn was being rewritten into a second Doakes. Except Quinn was not suspicious of Dexter because he got odd vibes from him, he was merely pissed off at him because Dexter screwed up at court. He was calling Dexter incompetent at his job, when Doakes had always respected Dexter’s ability to do his job.

This episode, Quinn complained to his journalist girlfriend about Dexter, and let it slip that Dexter and Agent Lundy were entertaining the idea that there is a serial killer in town. It’s glaringly obvious that this will drive the story forwards, and isn’t gratuitous in any way. There is going to be a newspaper article written, and who knows what this means. It could create a panic, it could tip off the killer.

Aside from that, while it is ironic to see both Dexter and Deb get annoyed by domestic life with their partners, Deb better come around and remember Anton is awesome for her. Like, not as old as her daddy, laid back enough to ground her, not a serial killer… There will obviously be drama down that road, with Lundy there… I’m not keen on it, I like to see Deb happy, and right now, she’s her own biggest problem.

I think it’s a nice choice to show us the Trinity Killer at work, while all the main characters have not even accidently shared scenes with him yet. The reveal the Skinner’s identity was a little anticlimactic (but probably realistic in its own way?) last season, so a different approach is much appreciated. The man sure has a weird MO… kills in pairs of threes, so far so good, but uses different methods every time. This time, it means he takes a middle-aged woman to an abandoned building and forces her to jump out of a window, making it look like a suicide… Only Lundy sees a connection to the previous murder, and only he believes it actually is another murder. I wonder how he figured out that there’s a serial killer at work in the first place…

Trinity dropped a little bit of ash to the ground next to his victim… and he seemed to be keeping an urn in his apartment or hotel room, so if the murders are somehow connected to a deceived person whose ashes he is spreading over decades and in creative ways… does that mean he’ll one day run out of ash? And stop? Eh, I guess it does not matter. If he kills in threes, then only one murder is left to happen anyway. In Miami, that is. Hmm.

What else? I cannot say how the other murder series  - the Vacation Murderers – will come into play yet, but it is sure a good reason why no one at the police is willing to entertain the idea of two murder series taking place at the same time. I hope Angel and Maria will be fine. I like them and people should not shoot at them.

Dexter’s domestic life and his boring neighbourhood: Maybe it’s highly time to put Dexter into a situation again where his lacking social skills become obvious. Yeah. Dexter feels cornered because a vandal keeps spray-painting stuff to walls, trashes things etc., ane the neighbours form a neighbourhood watch to catch him… obviously, Dexter isn’t keen on the idea and decides to find the vandal himself and scare the hell out of him. He suspects moody neighbour teen, but in the end it turns out that it was said teen’s father, who apparantly hates upper middle-class families with their nice lives and stuff. OK.

Dexter threatened the guy with something like “If you don’t stop what you’re doing, I’m going to come back, and I’m going to leave with your head in a bag. [pause] I already have the bag.”

THIS IS FUCKING HILARIOUS. It’s like from a Steven Seagal movie.

Finally, this sub-plot threatens to have some long-term consequences. When Dexter comes home after a job well done (a neighbour well-terrorized, a vandal well-cured…) he is for the n-th time surprised and blinded by the security lights that switch on as he approaches his house. For some reason, his reaction is on the dumb side, but probably illustrate his feeling of triumph over the neighbouthood watch threat: he smashes the lights in. What sucks? Rita sees him do it.

Funny how Dexter is both serialized and episodic. It’s a clever structure, I think, to have overarching storylines and developments, but still have every episode also contain a main plot that starts at the start of the episode, and ends at its end. Dexter has always (or often) been like that, especially in Season 1, I believe. I’m not saying it makes the show perfect, but it sure makes things more satisfying, and the episodes themselves more memorable. That having said… neighbourhood watch plot wasn’t the most exciting. I preferred the prior episode’s hunt-for-the-corpse.