Dexter- Buck the System

By PopCultureGeek (Jennifer Carpenter) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

All hail the lizard brain! We actually get to see what happens when Dexter doesn't kill. Seeing his slow meltdown and visions of killing everyone around him lets us know that this isn't something Deb can cure. We knew that already, but it's interesting to see the failure in detail. Plus, who wouldn't love to see Masuka get stabbed in the neck by a pen? He's so annoying. Not as annoying as Louis though.

Finally, finally Dexter makes real moves against Louis, getting him dumped and fired. We love Jamie's reaction to Louis cheating on her. It sucks that she has to worry about STIs. This guy is so not worth it. "It's not cheating if you paid for it!" Nice try. Louis is still trouble though. He turned the baddies onto Dexter. At least he's dead now. We hated that guy. We can't believe he turned out to be useful to the plot. Very nice, show.

Yvonne from Chuck! She looks even prettier on this show, if that's possible. There was chemistry between Hanna and Dexter, and we approve, even though there's a lot going on this season already. It could help keep Deb and Dexter from hooking up. Thank God that seems to have been dropped. It's like the show is actually listening to its groaning fans!

The conversations between Dexter and Deb continue to rule. We love that Nadia came clean to Quinn too. That was a surprise. We were sick of seeing him screwed over in the romance department. The show never uses him properly, and giving him a role to play in one of the show's biggest story arcs is inspired.

We are so petrified of getting murdered on a date, so the baddie of the week creeped us out. The end was actually intense. The poor girl not making it went a long way toward convincing Deb that her brother's extracurricular activities are necessary. She hates it, but she gets it. Their sibling relationship has to change, and that's fine with us. We like the honesty much better.

We haven't been bored or irritated at all this season! Is this show back?!! For real? We've hardly ever seen recoveries like this. Usually when a good show starts getting bad, it stays bad. Exceptions include Scrubs (got lame around season six, but turned in a good season eight, which we consider to be the real final season/don't talk to us about the reboot), Grey's Anatomy (recovering from ghost sex, the ferryboat thing, and Gizzie), possibly Glee since this season has been better than the last two so far, and, now, Dexter. We're hoping Supernatural can pull off a similar resurrection.

This episode was tightly plotted, entertaining, fast-paced, and well-acted. It dispensed with the Rehab By Deb plotline, and set up a lot of interesting things. Deb finding out about Dexter was exactly what this show needed.
Episode grade: A