Summary
Dexter: Resurrection is surprisingly character-driven in Episode 5, keeping the murder to a minimum to focus on other dynamics.
Like father, like son, or so the saying goes, but the point of Dexter: Resurrection is increasingly becoming to disprove that idea. While Dexter got back into the swing of things, murder-wise, killing the Dark Passenger in Episode 3 and Lowell in Episode 4, he still hasn’t quite mastered the art of parenting, which is, in part, what Episode 5, “Murder Horny”, focuses on. Sure, there’s a lusty undercurrent that makes good use of Krysten Ritter and acknowledges Dex’s other innate impulses beyond murder, but the beating heart of the show is Dexter’s relationship with Harrison, especially in light of the idea that Harrison might not have inherited the serial killer gene after all.
Picking up where we left off, Harrison’s potential normality becomes obvious to Dexter fairly quickly. While I love Michael C. Hall’s little smirk when he talks about tracking Harrison through the fact that he chopped Ryan Foster’s body up into nine pieces, just like his dad, I prefer his agog look when Harrison explains how killing Foster is haunting him. Through a pretty effective use of sound, the ticking of his victim’s repaired wristwatch plays over Harrison’s moments of anxiety and stress, emphasising the crushing feelings of guilt and helplessness that he’s currently experiencing. And despite how capable he is in many scenarios, Dexter has no idea how to deal with that.
So, he turns to Mia. Who else? Dexter knows Mia can relate to how he’s feeling on some level because, as a fellow serial killer, she feels it too. But his reliance on her is also bundled up with the fact he’s still smarting from having missed the opportunity to jump in the shower with her, he’s all over the place because of Harrison’s rejection, and he has reassured himself that she is similarly bound by a steadfast moral code, which it turns out in “Murder Horny” she isn’t. And that’s a bit of an issue.
It’s an issue for several reasons and in several ways. In the context of Dexter’s loneliness, it means he’s going to be left on his own again if he can’t rebuild a relationship with Harrison, because in the context of Dexter’s guiding principles, he’s now morally obligated to kill Mia. But in the context of maintaining his cover with Leon Prater’s inner circle, it’d be a little bit too suspicious if yet another of the group happened to turn up on the news right after a new guy was introduced. It’s all a bit of a pickle.
Dexter’s solution is to kill two birds with one stone — metaphorically speaking — by framing Mia for Ryan Foster’s death, thus exonerating Harrison. It’s a pretty fiendish plan which involves Dexter agreeing to team up with Mia on a collaborative kill, sabotaging the date so she storms off in a huff in search of her own victim, planting evidence around her apartment — including that watch, which he tucks in her jewelry box of murder trophies — and then calling in the police while she’s going to town on her latest plaything. In true Dexter fashion, it works a treat.
Personally, I don’t think it’ll work for long, and Dexter: Resurrection Episode 5 implies as much. Mia is arrested, but Claudette doesn’t fancy her for the Ryan Foster killing, given she still very much considers Harrison a suspect, especially since he doesn’t have a great explanation for the random missed call he left her in the previous episode. And Leon can’t leave one of his inner circle in police custody in case she decides to spill. She reassures Charley, who poses as her lawyer, that she wouldn’t do such a thing, but it’s a little bit ambiguous whether she’s being earnest or making a threat. Probably the latter.
Speaking of Charley, in this episode, we learn that her mother is dying of cancer, which is an interesting detail given how thinly her character has been sketched thus far, and also draws an interesting, unexpected parallel with Prudence, who is also dying of cancer and has — unusually, in Dexter’s view — come to terms with her own mortality. Blessing, on the other hand, isn’t taking it very well at all. It remains a little unclear quite how Dexter’s surrogate family dynamic is going to play out this season, though we can say almost for certain that someone is going to discover the crucial evidence he hid in Joy’s old weed stash, but I’m interested to see it either way simply because Sharon Hope and Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine (seriously, go and watch Smoke) are so good.
RELATED:
