‘Dexter’: Deb does good
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Deb Morgan (Jennifer Carpenter) hasn’t always been a fan favorite on ‘Dexter.’ On many a message board since the show debuted last season, viewers have literally called for her head. Maybe it was her impulsiveness, her immaturity, her obliviousness as a cop. However, this season a female more odious than Deb appeared on the scene: Dexter’s (Michael C. Hall) NA sponsor, erstwhile lover and ‘soul mate’ Lila (Jaime Murray). Last night, Deb finally redeemed herself. Sure, she stood up for her boyfriend, Special Agent Frank Lundy (Keith Carradine), and her ruminations on how she was able to survive after escaping the clutches of the Ice Truck Killer convinced her brother not to surrender to the police as the Bay Harbor Butcher. But more importantly, she managed to track down Lila’s real identity and had a showdown with her. Deb’s personality and language had sometimes been grating up until this point, but it all came together when she told the British artist to quit messing with the people she loved and to get out of Dodge.
Dexter had a lot to consider in the episode: whether he was in fact evil, what could be done about it, what could be done about his captor, Sgt. Doakes (Erik King). However, the actual evil in the episode wasn’t in him, it was in Lila, who had already shown that she wasn’t afraid to cross boundaries by invading the personal space of Dexter’s girlfriend Rita (Julie Benz), by potentially ruining the life of Dexter’s coworker Angel Batista (David Zayas), and by doing violence to get attention. Maybe this is why Dexter seemed to get some pleasure out of telling Lila that there was nothing she could do to touch him anymore -- he fights evil after all, in his own way. But we’ll still have to see what will happen when Lila works her magic on Doakes. The happier Dexter gets, the crazier Lila behaves, and Dexter seemed pretty content at the end of last night’s episode, which does not bode well for Lila’s next ‘friend.’
-- Claire Zulkey