DEXTER (Season 5)

“Dexter,” Season 5, Episode 5: “First Blood”

“Dexter” is kind of my show. I’m in love with that show. I force people to watch it and they end up loving it too. So what I’m about to say is very painful.

I know as soon as I say, I’m going to regret it. But I’ve been sitting here for 10 minutes trying to think of how to write this recap. It normally comes so easily for me. But not this time. And that’s when I first realized it and now I’m going to say it.

I HATE this season.

That was hard. I feel so terrible. I feel like I just kicked my dog or lied to my Mom. But it’s true. I hate this season. So far. I’m still holding out hope that it will get better.

I don’t care that someone is forcing people to clean out their bank accounts at an ATM then end up getting their eyes ripped out. I don’t care that Dexter (Michael C. Hall) hired a nanny. I don’t care that Lumen (Julia Stiles) is there. I don’t care that Deb (Jennifer Carpenter) and Quinn (Desmond Harrington) are sleeping together.

I don’t care about any of that stuff because I don’t quite understand it. ALL of those storylines are developing so poorly. There’s just something missing in each of them. I’m really confused about the ritualistic killings Deb is investigating. I keep wondering if I’m supposed to be suspicious of the nanny or if I’m supposed to be happy baby Harrison has a mother figure. I don’t get what kind of person Lumen is either. Is she good and scarred or just plan bad? And Quinn and Deb? So what.

Now that I’ve gotten that all off my chest, I’ll recap.

Dexter tries to get Lumen to leave town but she’s set on tracking down the other guys who assaulted her. Dexter decides to beat her do it before she does something stupid. He goes in Boyd’s house to find someone had already been there. He finds a print, runs it and it turns out it’s Lumen. She was there to find out who Boyd’s associates (and her attackers) are and where she can find them.

Dexter tracks one of them down under a bridge. Apparently in Miami pedophiles and sex offenders live under bridges because no kids live under bridges. OK.

He finds the guy, chats him up, knocks him out and is ready to kill him. But Harry steps in and reminds Dexter that the guy is on house arrest and couldn’t have been involved with Lumen’s attack. Dexter barely escapes another kill outside the code.

Lumen goes after the same guy and is ready to shoot him when Dexter stops her. He convinces her to take an airline ticket he bought her and go back home to Minnesota. She agrees.

Deb and Quinn are still fooling around but Deb is more focused on her current case. She finds two more victims, rotting in their house. It was a pretty gross site. Unless you paused and looked really close like I did. Then you’d see those weren’t maggots. They were rice. Rice pieces? What’s the plural form of rice?

My favorite part of the episode (besides Deb’s comment to Masuka about his penis and a needle) was what’s going on with LaGuerta (Lauren Velez) and Batista (David Zayas).

Batista’s been under investigation by internal affairs and it was made to appear that LaGuerta was going to have to perform her world-famous oral pleasures to get him out of it. Batista even believes that’s what’s going on. He snoops on LaGuerta’s phone and finds that she’s scheduled to meet with the IA agent at a motel the following day.

The next day he goes to the hotel, looks in the window, sees LaGuerta buttoning her blouse and breaks down the door. She quickly reveals that she’s involved in a sting operation. Which is better than my theory. I was convinced she was really taking secret ballroom dance lessons with the IA agent.

But it turns out they were working on an internal case against a dirty cop played by Robocop himself Peter Weller. We later find out that was just his introduction. It seems he’s acquainted with fellow dirty cop Quinn. The two men are sharing a drink and talking smack about LaGuerta when Quinn asks him to check into Dexter for him.

So there you have it. It’s going to be Dexter vs. Robocop. It’s starting to look more and more like Season 2. And next week’s preview backs that up even more as Dexter is almost caught killing Chad Allen. If it’s another one of those seasons where Dexter almost gets caught every episode then it won’t get better. But I’m not giving up.

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