'Dexter' recap: Accomplices

This week’s “Dexter” had a very clever opening, as the screen was saturated with blood red, then yellow, then green -- like the show’s introduction, the possibly-ominous image pulled away to reveal something innocent: in this case, a parachute being raised and lowered over a group of infants at a Mommy and Me class.  Then things turn dark(ish) again quickly, as Dexter suspects Harrison of inflicting a little scratch on one of the other babies, of being like him. Together they “flee the scene of the crime.” 

This episode left me wondering how Lumen relates to Dexter. Often when a major character appears in the show, it somehow reflects some element of him, like how he originally was attracted to Arthur Mitchell for being able to pull off a “normal” life. In tonight’s episode Dexter tried, repeatedly, to convince Lumen not to kill the people she claims raped and abused her, to go home and start a normal life. When they meet at cafe, she tears up sugar packets and dumps the remains on the table. After she leaves, Dexter reaches over and tastes the sugar. Does that mean something?

Trying to beat her to her first victim, Dexter heads to Boyd’s house to see if he can find evidence of any accomplices, but he sees that someone’s already been there: it’s Lumen, of course, and when Dexter checks out her hotel room, thanks to her wall-o’-obsession, he sees she’s determined to track these men down. Harry warns Dexter that Lumen’s not stable, and that she’ll bring him down.

Still tracking the beheading murders, Deb follows a lead on a possible identifying tattoo on a suspect, so Masuka, who of course wears leopard-print briefs and has a huge back tattoo of a bare-breasted woman riding a dragon and wielding a sword, takes her to his tattoo artist, who identifies the design as an eye. More intriguing of course was the aggressive shine the parlor owner (played by Katherine Moennig of “The L Word”) took to Deb. I’ve sort of been waiting throughout the entirety of this series for Deb to explore her sapphic side but alas, apparently Moennig is only signed on for this one episode. 

Dex thinks he’s onto a lead of a potential accomplice of Boyd’s (I liked the visual joke of the police department’s records lady saying, “Ooh, that face!” when referring to a picture of Harrison while the camera’s on a photo of Robert Brunner.) Dexter fearlessly (or foolishly) heads under the bridge, where the sex offenders and pedophiles are exiled, to try to find his man, and poses as a rapist to get close to Brunner. Dex needles him and takes him back to Boyd’s to kill him, when Harry appears and begs Dexter not to do this, that he could be the wrong guy -- which it turns out he is, thanks to an identifying monitoring ankle bracelet. Dexter dumps Brunner off under the bridge, shaken by what he almost did.

Dexter heads home where he finds Deb with Quinn, who gutsily tries to kiss Dex’s sister in front of him. Neither Deb nor Dexter know why Quinn’s not at work right now, but Dexter doesn’t care: he hates Deb dating Quinn, and I loved the confused, repulsed look on his face when she tried to explain what they're up to. Dexter requests that Deb not bring Quinn around Harrison.

Next, Dexter has to chase Lumen down back under the bridge again, where she’s ready to shoot Brunner from afar: he stops her and tells her to quit while there’s still no blood on her hands. Lumen says she just wants to feel better, and Dexter finally convinces her to go home to Minnesota.

Angel’s a really great husband. First he’s jealous of the money Maria makes and then he’s convinced she’s cheating on him. He spies on her via her cellphone and busts in on what he thinks is an affair between her and Jim McCourt of Internal Affairs, but instead they’ve just wrapped up a sting on a dirty cop and Maria is merely buttoning up her shirt after being unbugged. Those two still have some stuff to figure out, obviously.

Fortunately, the whole Miami metro “family” gets to work together on a homicide scene Deb and Cira have found, which appears to be the early work of the beheader. I liked the slow circus music playing as Dexter warmly looked around as his co-workers worked on figuring out what happened to these two long-dead, rotting, maggoty people.

Dexter takes Lumen to the airport, but I think we all saw it coming that she wasn’t actually going to go home to Minnesota. There were some unintentionally funny moments though during the scene where Lumen’s patted down at security -- I know we were watching the character of a rape victim feeling unsafe and having an anxiety attack, but a few of the (many) closeup shots of Julia Stiles’ panicky face were a little strangely amusing. Maybe I’m just a bad person. 


Happy with her new lead, Deb calls Quinn, who’s cooling his heels at the bar. He buys the fellow next to him a drink, who just happens to be the cop busted by Maria (who just happens to be Peter Weller, aka “Robocop”!) They’re both dirty, they’re both creepy, they both have it out for Maria, so of course Quinn offers him money to track Dexter. “The ... kinda name is Dexter?” he asks, agreeing to the task. Quinn is becoming the most evil person on the show, and now he has an unofficial partner to help him carry out his dirty work. Dexter had better quit messing around with that parachute at Mommy and Me and watch his back.

-- Claire Zulkey

Photo: Michael C. Hall as Dexter and Julia Stiles as Lumen. Photo: Randy Tepper / Showtime

Comments

[Jon]

This felt like a transitional episode. Not a whole lot happened.

[Kayla]

Hey Claire -

"How many ears must one man have before he can ear people cry?"

Your article was mostly well written but I have a major bone to pick with you on one point: Your amusement at Lumen's suffering

Having experience what her character has, I can tell you that the show's portrayal of what its like to survive prolonged attacks from multiple people is hauntingly accurate. People seldom understand that the attacks don't end when the men leave, Experiences like these are so deeply traumatizing that they actually shift brain chemistry and render the victim incapable of living normally within society, at least until the trauma have been addressed and coping mechanisms can be learned.

I can only assume that you've never had the misfortune of being completely and totally humiliated and dehumanized.

Your comment hurts me deeply, and I'm sure the countless other silent victims & survivors that have read your words. Perhaps I am wrong to expect compassion and respect from a woman writer that I have never even met and never will.

This is a cruel world we live in. I have always loved Dexter because it explores the gray area between good and evil, right and wrong. (A "moral" serial killer? Can there be such a thing?) I applaud the show for exploring areas that are confusing to us all.

My experience ended 7 years ago but I still broke down and cried for hours this Sunday when that scene came on. I had to stop the show and find my strength again before returning.

Traumatic experiences, sexual or otherwise, never really go away. They effect you every day of your life and pop up in situations that are completely unrelated to one's attack.

Men stare at me constantly when I am in public (this of course is a common experience to all young women). While the man is probably only trying to hit on me or get my attention, I become instantly terrified, exactly how Lumen reacted when the men were staring at her. It becomes very difficult to go anywhere without become terrified, as men are everywhere and always looking at women.

This fear was so severe for me that at one time I was unable to leave my house for a year. Please consider too, that someone like Lumen has no knowledge of who attacked her, so every man you see you wonder to yourself "Is he looking at me like that because he raped me?" No one can function under that kind of stress, always being afraid everywhere you go all the time.

So please don't underestimate or laugh. Or if you do, than do it privately. Reading your words was like a giant slap in the face.

I can only hope that for your sake you never understand what I am talking about. I hope that you can manage to live a happy life and never experience this kind of miserable existence

I know I am not the only survivor reading this. Consider your words. You reach more people than you know, and have the ability to effect them in ways you can't understand.

This brings me back to my original Bob Dylan quote

"How many times must a man look up before he can see the sky?
"How many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?"
"How many times can a man turn his head pretending he just doesn't see?"

Perhaps we're all just blowin' in the wind.