Summary
Dexter: Resurrection Episode 8 is a nice reminder that Dexter isn’t really the good guy, and his basest urges almost land him in trouble.
Dexter Morgan kills bad guys. He’s pretty particular about it, so it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking about Dex as if he’s a good guy. What I liked about Episode 8 of Dexter: Resurrection, which admittedly goes off the rails a bit, is that it’s a reminder of the fact that he isn’t a good guy. In it, his baser impulses get the better of him, and his desire to get someone on his kill table, even if it’s someone who’s generally pretty unpleasant but doesn’t necessarily qualify as a real target as per the Code, almost lands him in pretty serious trouble.
This is all to do with Dex’s desire to off Leon Prater’s entire inner circle. After successfully goading the Gemini Killer into a fatal stabbing, the only name left on his list is Al, aka Rapunzel, and Dex sets about choosing an appropriate venue for his end in “The Kill Room Where It Happens”. You can feel the excitement building, which is kind of the point. Anyone this excited about killing someone, even a deserving, creepy serial killer, can’t really be considered a hero in the traditional sense.
Dexter finds the perfect spot – a closed wig store full of bewigged mannequin heads looking over the kill table like a gallery audience. It’s one of the only kill room spots that looks less creepy covered in plastic. It’s an ideal choice for Al, and Dexter – not to mention his Dark Passenger – can’t wait to do the deed. And then Al calls to say he’s skipping town out of paranoia over what happened to Lowell (whom Dexter killed) and Mia (whom Dexter framed). It’s the serial killer equivalent of popping a Viagra and then getting called into work.
This leaves Dex adrift. He needs to find some use for that carefully cultivated kill table, and luckily, Harrison provides it in the form of Elsa’s awful landlord, Vinny. Vinny doesn’t strictly fit the Code, which Harry points out, but Dexter’s intense urges push him to flout the rules a bit. And Vinny is pretty unpleasant, to be fair. I don’t reckon he’d be missed. Even so, Dexter’s intentions are only to frighten him, but to do it in full Bay Harbor Butcher character to both achieve the desired effect and hopefully satiate some of his more intense feelings. It’s like those people who have stopped smoking but hang around pub smoking areas a lot.
But this doesn’t go to plan. You’ll recall that in the previous episode, Batista had dropped his AirPods in Dexter’s passenger door pocket, and has been using them to trace Dexter’s movements, establish his routine, and hone in on any anomalies. I’m a bit skeptical of this, given how quickly the battery drains on my AirPods, but that’s a nitpick. Either way, just as Dexter is working on Vinny, Batista is breaking into the wig shop to see why Dexter is spending so much time in there.
It’s a close-run thing. Dexter is able to get away, but he’s forced to leave his plastic-wrapped kill room behind, and to Batista, this confirms the Bay Harbor Butcher’s continued activity. He’s right, of course, but Claudette, whom he calls immediately, isn’t especially convinced. In fact, it’s Batista who looks suspicious. There’s no evidence that a crime took place or that, if it did, Dexter was involved. In his escape, Dexter seems to have found and disposed of the AirPods, so Batista can’t prove he was really tracking him, and when Claudette looks deeper into Batista, she learns that he’s no longer active law enforcement, and the Bay Harbor Butcher case is closed.
Truth be told, I don’t love the idea that Dexter’s nearest miss yet might have also inadvertently solved his Batista problem. It feels too neat and tidy, too contrived. It probably won’t take, but if Batista and Claudette end up killing each other without Dexter ever having been really aware of how close they were to catching him, I’m not sure how well that’ll come across. And there aren’t many episodes left for this to be resolved any other way (a potential second season notwithstanding, of course).
But there are other things to consider in the meantime. Dexter: Resurrection Episode 8 ends on a typical cliffhanger, with Prater just so happening to walk in on Dexter having dinner with Harrison. Since Charley is deeply suspicious of Dexter/Red and is smiling from the street outside, one imagines she has engineered this to prove a point to Prater, who earlier refused to accept the idea that Dexter was suspicious.
It’s an effective ending, for sure, and should lead into the penultimate episode pretty nicely. I’m not totally convinced that Al’s disappearance won’t be resolved somehow – the show won’t let him off the hook that easily, will it? – and I’m curious to see how Harrison’s burgeoning relationship with Gigi will come to matter, since I’m sure it will. There’s also the not-so-small matter of Dexter having fallen out with Blessing after he inadvertently spilled the beans to Joy about his past as a child soldier. With only two episodes left, one has to wonder how it’ll all shake out.
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