‘Dexter’ is back and ‘Living the Dream’
Leapfrogging ahead six months, “Living the Dream” finds Dexter adjusting to family life. In the season four premiere, our favorite serial killer is already a new daddy. With Astor, Cody, and baby Harrison in tow, Dexter and Rita have relocated to the picturesque suburban Miami landscape. (This is the house we saw Rita eying with Sylvia Prado late in season three.)
Struggling with a multitude of new responsibilities, the normally meticulous Dexter botches a court appearance by bringing notes for the wrong case, and a killer is set free. As Dexter hatches a plan to right this wrong in his usual way, he finds himself overcome with sleep deprivation — at one point nodding off while stalking his prey, Benny. In his efforts to catch up on some much needed sleep, Dexter can’t even escape Rita’s unassuaged libido.
One of the things I like so much about “Dexter” is the somewhat unique strategy of using each season to tell a (mostly) self-contained story. This season? Miami has a new serial killer in the form of John Lithgow, dubbed the “Trinity Killer” by the returning — and newly retired — Special Agent Lundy (Keith Carradine). Trinity first appears in a stark, ritualistic murder scene, steeped in perversion, and startlingly eerie. Though he leaves the body behind, as Debra, Quinn and Dexter arrive at the scene, we learn that it’s been painstakingly cleaned of all blood and other evidence.
Back in the lab, Dexter learns that the scene doubled as the sight of a similar murder thirty years earlier. Lundy, fighting a personal battle to catch “the one that got away,” had only believed Trinity to be active for half that time. Eluding capture — and, Lundy tells us, suspicion — for upwards of three decades makes Trinity the world’s most successful serial killer. This inspiring feat triggers Dexter’s curiosity.
At episode’s end, Dexter finally finds the time to corner Benny and right his wrong. Knife in one hand, cell phone in the other, he receives an urgent call from Rita. Baby Harrison has an ear infection, and she needs Dexter to drop everything and go to an all-night pharmacy. Pleading with her that he’s “right in the middle of something,” Dexter quickly realizes he needs to put family first when Rita firmly reminds him of his priorities. Towering over Benny’s rigid frame, Dexter wonders: “Can I have it all?”
Acklowedging there will be no time to savor his ritual, Dexter plunges the knife into Benny’s chest and hastily commences cleanup. Piling limb-filled trash bags into the trunk, Dexter appears to be homeward bound. But, still exhausted, Dexter falls asleep at the wheel. As his vehicle veers off the road at high speed, it flips, landing upside down in a chaotic mess of wreckage and debris. How does it end? Dexter is alive, but the many pieces of Benny’s body are still in the car.
P.S. Lt. Laguerta and Sgt. Batista are revealed to have started a secret relationship some time between seasons three and four. I like the pairing, but couldn’t help but cringe at the expository nod to Angel’s breakup with Detective Gianna. As in, “Hey, Angel, whatever happened with you and Detective Gianna?” (I’m paraphrasing.) We can put two-and-two together, OK, guys?
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