Dexter - Morning Comes

 I really had a good time with this one because Dexter is getting it from all sides. He's currently with a bonkers psychopath crazier than he is (and that's saying something!), his sister and cop buddy are working one of Batista and Doakes' old cases, locating a hoarder who keeps extensive notes and is always spying on anyone outside the window of his apartment so the car taken from Miami Metro (and used by Dexter to drive the criminal away, easily attainable because he worked in the police department, with no reason to believe doing so would come back to him), and Doakes covertly sneaks into his apartment and locates his "blood drop slide box". So how will Dexter ever get out of this ever increasing vice?

I always like how Dexter is caught off-guard because too often he can stay one step ahead or get enough time to orchestrate an out for himself. But Lundy questions Dexter about a "case of bad blood work", actually purposely botched so he could kill the murderer once he was free. Lundy doesn't obviously know this, but he nevertheless wants to know why someone as impeccably thorough as Dexter could fail so miserably. Seeing Dexter unable to explain away the botch, instead just using the "overworked" excuse, is something I appreciated because there needed to be a monkey wrench thrown into the works sometimes in order for him to struggle to recover. The beauty of the show is Dexter encountering gummed up works that need to be corrected. Lila, becoming more and more a nuisance, certainly pushes the wrong buttons when she contacts Dexter's mother's killer and gives the guy the address to a local bowling alley...she wanted the Dexter who had nearly killed that guy in his bar and returned to her for "affection". So in Lila's warped mind, this guy nearly killing Dexter at the bowling alley -- cutting his arm with a blade, unsuccessful due to Batista and Vince being there -- would have similar results to when Dexter needed her embrace after nearly murdering his mother's killer the first time. Well, it did at that specific time, because Dexter did cuddle with her after she stitched up his arm and bandaged it...but when Dexter finds out she was the one who gave him the bowling address, the gloves were off.

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One thing about Dexter, that line you can't cross, is being a threat to the well being of Rita or her kids. That is a no-no. And taking the key to Rita's house, with Rita coming home with the kids and some pizza to an open door, Lila's shadow can be seen in another adjacent room. This is where we can see that Lila is starting to come apart. Dexter tells Lila he's working late, Lila comes to Miami Metro to a shit-eating grinning Deb who hates her guts with food for her man, and Lila assumes Dexter is with Rita. Not only that, but Dexter realizes when helping to clean up Lila's condo that he can see where she probably set fire to the place, noticing certain patterns that were disconcerting. With Lila acting as if her insurance is being a pain, it is becoming clear to Dexter she's becoming obsessive. So Dexter finds someone battling these urges, this compulsion, to act out in order to keep him in her life. With Dexter also contending with his own Dark Passenger, Special Agent Lundy adding special agents in suits to his task force and getting closer to him, and Doakes suspended (weighing leaving the force) with time to pursue leads against him; Season 2 is turning the screws on Dexter, for sure.

The Lundy and Deb 20 year gap romance is a subplot that seems to draw Deb away from Dexter's home, allowing Lila more space to try and tighten her control on him. But Lila's wildly outrageous behavior -- she wears a see-through dress allowing Batista and Vince to see her bra and panties while at the bowling alley, as well as, walks around Dexter's house without a shirt, letting her breasts "breathe free" -- pushes Dexter to the breaking point. Finding the address in the wallet of his mother's killer inside his kill-room, given to him by Lila, that is the last straw. He warns her of a monster she will want no part of.

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Seeing the metaphorical horns come up after Lila pushes his buttons too far, Dexter hardly ever stares down anyone with a sinister gaze, even when he's lording over a shrink-wrapped victim in his kill room. It was just this moment that speaks volumes about just how much of an aggravation Lila had become. All weepy and in tears, like this little girl wanting her daddy's whole attention, Lila had become precocious, dangerous, and a liability. I figure anyone watching the show at the time had to figure Lila was not long for this world. Add Doakes to that list to since he had found Dexter's "secret stash", avoiding a job opportunity La Guerta had set up. So Dexter has these complications that would seem to be unavoidable. 4/5