A quick review of tonight’s “Dexter” coming up just as soon as I eat a whole box of popsicles…
A couple of important things to note with “What’s Eating Dexter Morgan?”(*) First, Jennifer Carpenter continues to do fantastic work as Deb falls apart over LaGuerta’s murder. The moment in interrogation where she absolutely loses it once Quinn mentions Dexter was fabulous, and Carpenter and the creative team have so effectively shifted our sympathies towards Deb that I think the series could go in a very anti-Dexter direction in the final episodes and get away with it.
(*) And I bet the “Dexter” writers were watching every episode of “Hannibal” this spring getting increasingly annoyed that Bryan Fuller had swooped in and stole their cannibal cuisine thunder.
That said, what’s most interesting about watching Dr. Vogel work with Dexter is seeing how she misunderstands who Dexter is and what he’s capable of feeling based on her ancient history with him. We know much more about Dexter’s relationship with Deb than Vogel does, and a lot of these scenes seem to be pointing in the direction of her having turned him into a serial killer when he may not have fit her pure definition of a psychopath. If that’s the case (and it’s entirely possible the story will go in a different direction as we get deeper into the season), then the creative team may be letting Dexter off the hook to a degree: he didn’t have to be this way, but Vogel turned him into the Bay Harbor Butcher.
What did everybody else think of the episode?