Showtime
We’re almost halfway through the final season of Dexter and things are really picking up. What’s going to happen to Dexter, Deb, and the rest of the players? Let’s find out in Dexter S08E04 “Scar Tissue”.
LOSER: Vogel’s perceptiveness
After Deb tells Dr. Vogel about her fantasy that she shot Dexter instead of LaGuerta, tells her that she doesn’t know why she’d trust Vogel, and then yells spastically in classic Deb fashion, Dr. Vogel declares, “You’re upset.” She’s one hell of a psychiatrist, I’ll give her that.
Vogel insists that Deb wants to get better and that she’ll help Deb get there. TBD I suppose.
WINNER: Psychopathic cable men
What’s the perfect job for a psychopath? A cable installer, obviously. Dexter chases down AJ Yates, another former Vogel patient who could be a candidate for the brain surgery serial killer.
But Yates wasn’t marked as someone with brain surgery at Vogel’s hands. Turns out he did have it and Vogel just didn’t mention it. Seems like an important detail but I guess Dr. Vogel has a lot on her mind. Until the dude chops out her brains I guess.
Dexter snoops in Yates’ house and finds a bunch of single female shoes sitting around. Yates catches Dexter’s snooping on closed circuit cameras in a room where he’s currently holding a woman tied up and gagged against a fence. Doesn’t necessarily mean he’s the brain surgeon but he’s got some problems beyond just upselling people on Showtime.
WINNER: The old tapes of Ghost Harry
Deb gets a front row seat to the therapy session videos with Dr. Vogel and their father Harry. Vogel tries to help Deb understand that the Code is just a way of helping Dexter control his serial killing energies…it’s protecting Dexter the same way Deb protected him in the shipping container with LaGuerta.
Vogel tries to install some degree of understanding in Deb that Dexter is who is he and Deb is who she is.
For some reason, Vogel allows Deb to keep the tape. It’s always a good idea to let a woman who desperately wants to confess to the police and let Dexter fry for it keep evidence material to his serial murdering. Smart stuff, doc.
WINNER: Shipping containers as therapy breakthroughs
Vogel takes Deb to the shipping container where she shot LaGuerta and uses it to try to convince Deb that she chose Dexter and that doesn’t make her a bad person. Deb made a choice to do the wrong thing to protect Dexter. But Vogel insists that doesn’t make her a bad person.
She does get Deb to stop drinking — at least for now — when Deb passes up a beer after some heartfelt conversation with her private detective boss, Elway. Progress!
LOSER: Quinn’s chivalry
Quinn overhears someone talking shit about Deb and decides to go to war at a bar with him, even though he’s with Jamie and Batista. Nothing women love more than defending your ex-girlfriend’s honor in front of her.
Quinn’s hot head pisses off Batista, too, because he’s been backing him so hard for sergeant. Aaaand…
WINNER: That black girl in the police department
You know that black lady who showed up this season and seems perfectly competent and unnoteworthy? Apparently she’s also up for sergeant. And she tested higher than Quinn on the sergeant’s test, an item noted by Matthews. Matthews also notes that this will be Batista’s first promotion in the department and will heavily reflect on him.
Do we pick the perfectly competent black lady or the former alcoholic loose cannon? Dozens of years of TV say that door number two is the only logical solution for where we’re going to end up.
WINNER: Masuka’s proximity to incest
Masuka is visited by a hot girl who’s been trying to meet him. Being Masuka, he acts like a creep to the girl (best known as the mixed race hot girl from Friday Night Lights
Weird little plot thread given how serious the rest of the season is but hey why not.
LOSER: Vogel’s entirely too candid journal
Through his Yates sleuthing, Dexter finds that Vogel has been keeping notes on all of their meetings. Naturally, they don’t come across well when Dexter reads them aloud as he confronts her. Dexter tells Vogel that when he kills Yates, their time together is done.
As Dexter closes in on Yates while he was visiting his dad, Yates pulls the plug on his dad just to escape — simultaneously proving that Yates isn’t the same kind of sociopath that Vogel says he is. Nice guy that Yates.
LOSER: Impromptu car rides
Deb, overcome with feelings of disgust towards Dexter’s murder after watching another Harry tape in which he explains Dexter’s kill process, drives them into a body of water. And then decides she doesn’t want Dexter to die so she rescues him as he”s about to drive. Women.
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Is Yates actually the dude? If so, not exactly the big threat I would expect for a plotline taking up about half the season. That said, the look into Harry’s problems with Dexter’s path is an interesting plus with the Vogel plotline. The relative confirmation that Vogel has been manipulating — or at least using — Dexter moves the plot along nicely as well and will hopefully mean that we’ll get a read on her intentions sooner than later.
More importantly, it seems like Deb has finally turned a corner on who she really is. I’m not ruling out that we’ll have another four episodes of Deb waffling back and forth but it seems like the dramatic drowning and saving should put a ribbon on her existential crisis around Dexter.
Episode gets three out of five submarined automobiles because this Yates guy just kind of sucks. Still optimistic as we near the second half of the season, though.