‘Dexter’: Debbie Downer

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It’s hard to decide where Deb Morgan (Jennifer Carpenter) is weaker: detecting or choosing her boyfriends. In Season 1 of ‘Dexter,’ she dated the Ice Truck Killer, and wasn’t aware of that until he was about to murder her. Now, in Season 3, she unwisely falls in love with Anton (David Ramsay), a confidential informant. After finding out that her shady partner, Quinn (Desmond Harrington), had never officially processed Anton, did Deb report Quinn and his strange dealings? No, of course not. She told Anton that Quinn was off-duty when it came to being a CI for the skinning-killer case. Afterward, they made the date that all doomed couples make, where one thinks he or she is being stood up when in fact the other is being skinned alive. ‘Where IS he?’ Deb wondered, and I thought, ‘You dope, he’s dead, or close to it.’ I’d feel bad for her character if she weren’t so ridiculous. But bad decisions are what women in Miami seem to make. They all apparently date or marry criminals or, in the case of Ellen Wolf (Anne Ramsay), the assistant district attorney, open their door to people who knock during the middle of the night. Of course she didn’t know that Miguel Prado (Jimmy Smits) had just returned from a tag-team murder with Dexter (Michael C. Hall) and had a taste for blood, but even so, didn’t she have a peephole?

There was something creepily sexual about the way Dexter and Prado leered at each other after they knocked off their first covictim, but hey, maybe they were just enjoying getting away from the crazy women in their lives. I did enjoy seeing a hormone-driven Rita (Julie Benz) snap at Dexter, with him protesting that the marching music he listens to in his car ‘helps me think.’

Perhaps it’s better for Dexter to stick with Rita and the ‘monster inside her’ than to continue palling around with Miguel, who doesn’t know Dexter’s ‘Code of Harry’ and doesn’t really seem to care. He didn’t understand why Dexter would want to cut short a murder run after Prado was recognized. Then, after completing the murder, Prado decided he couldn’t have just one -- like a potato chip! So he apparently went on a murdering spree. This isn’t going to end well, and, based on the tantalizing peeks at next week’s episode, I can’t wait.

-- Claire Zulkey

(photo: Showtime)