Watching Showtime

With Dexter’s burial ground found by a pair of divers and his killing habits waning, Dexter’s having a severe crisis. Heading to the scene of the latest Miami PD crime scene, he finds Eva Renas, the mother of the murder victim from the last episode. Looks like Dexter’s need to kill Little Chino is still pumping through is veins, and now that he’s killed twice, hopefully it’ll help him kill with more ease.

The Hispanic community is up in arms over the lack of help the cops are giving them in their fight against the gang warfare and control of their neighborhood. Esme’s still having problems with her fiance, talking to him on the phone when she’s supposed to be doing her job at the crime scene. Maria seems to be acting like a good friend to her, however, giving her the chance to go deal with her personal problems and offering to write up the report of the investigation for her to simply sign later.

With the crime scene taken care of, Dexter re-institutes his hunt for Chino, only to find he’s still being followed by Doakes. Not only does he have the Chino problem and Doakes following him, he’s also got Deb taking over his apartment. She seems unwilling to move despite Dexter finding apartments for her to go look at. Don’t forget he’s also living moment to moment with his body-dumping habits having been discovered, and it being only Now that pretty much every part of his perfect little world is coming apart, what will he try to fix first?

Looks like Rita’s issues with Paul’s funeral are first on the list, as he tries to convince her to have the county bury him so she doesn’t have to use his insurance money on a funeral. Deb’s got her own problems as Maria tells Esme she doesn’t think Deb should be on active duty after her bar “brawl”.

With thirteen of Dexter’s victims found thus far, the Miami PD is bringing in some federal help, in the form of Frank Lundy, who is a rockstar when it comes to hunting down serial killers. Just then, who should walk into the station but Little Chino! He’s brought in evidence clearing him on direct involvement in Eva’s death, pissing off the department but pleasing Dexter who can now hunt him down again (hopefully finishing the deed this time).

With Lundy now on the case, he’s decided the bodies are not the result of the Ice Truck Killer, but are in fact attributed to a new killer, much worse than they’ve seen before. In order to clear his mind, Dexter heads out to kill Little Chino and get back on track.

Deb’s found herself a new gym for her work outs, and after her cardio she heads off to the heavy bags to try them out. She meets a guy who offers to help tape up her hands, but the sound of the tape starts to give her flashbacks and she runs out to go back to working out at home. At least when Dexter gets home, she opens up (if only for a brief second) about it. Dex heads off to find Little Chino, but runs into some serious setbacks and has to hide out in the sewers all night while his lackeys are looking for him.

Next day Doakes talks to Lundy about joining the task force, but is shot down for being more of a leader than a team member. Nice. While that might be true, he’s probably the best person in the department to hunt down Dexter, as he’s the only one who thinks there’s anything strange about him. Speaking of Dexter, he finally comes home from an all-nighter in the sewer to find Rita waiting for him to come to Paul’s funeral with her. While at Paul’s funeral Dexter realizes he needs to say goodbye to Brian and mourn his death rather than just trying to put the memory behind him. Deb goes door to door with Angel in the 29th Street Kings territory hoping to find someone willing to rat out Little Chino, and in the process Deb chases down the little kid from the beginning and scares him into helping them out. Too bad for the little kid he has to have Deb’s gun pulled on him because she’s still not stable. This outburst brings them almost every gang member, although the price may not have been worth it.

Dexter heads off to find Little Chino a third time, and just in time to save the little boy from getting killed for giving up the gang the way he did. How Dexter knew where to find him (Little Chino or the little boy) is beyond me, but it looks like had he been five minutes later the little kid would have been dead. Dexter carts him off to his boat, this time dumping the body along a strong current that will take it so far out to sea (and depending on the time he dumps bodies in the future, to different areas) no one will ever find them.

Once he dumps Little Chino’s body, he heads over to Rita’s only to discover she’s found Paul’s shoe and she suspects him of setting him up to get him out of Rita’s life. Rather than lie to Rita, he tells her he hit Paul to protect her. Where he screws up is that he tells her it was an impulse, but that he also stole the drugs from the police station. In the end, she decides to believe Dexter is a drug addict, and that while it was impulse to hit Paul, the knowledge of how to use the drugs is due to his addiction!!! Poor Rita, so desperate for love, offers to stay with Dexter while he gets into a program and gets clean!

Finally, Dexter gets a moment alone to say goodbye to his brother. He takes the head of the cut-up Barbie doll and dumps it in the water, the closest thing to a burial he can give Brian. Here’s hoping it sticks.

To catch up on old episodes:
season one recaps
it’s alive!

Dexter, Showtime, Dexter Morgan, Michael C. Hall, Rita Bennett, Julie Benz, Debra Morgan, Jennifer Carpenter, James Doakes, Erik King, Maria LaGuerta, Lauren Velez, Angel Batista, David Zayas, Harry Morgan, James Remar, Vincent Masuka, C.S. Lee