Dexter - S8E5 - This Little Piggy
Previously, on Dexter: “Scar Tissue”
FAMILY THERAPY
It’s a little tense at the opening of this week’s Dexter. Dr. Evelyn Vogel has both Debra and Dex sitting in front of her for what might possibly be the most fucked up family therapy session ever. Dexter isn’t really feeling Vogel’s casual tone describing Deb’s attempt at a murder suicide. Seriously, you could fry an egg right on his blood red shirt. Full.of.rage. Deb tries to point out that she saved him, that she was traumatized and living in a fog, but that doesn’t forgive the fact she almost orphaned her nephew in Dexter’s eyes.
Vogel is trying to explain that the attempt was truly Debra reaching her rock bottom…but Dexter doesn’t have time for these bitches that are, in fact, trippin’, and he walks out. Deb tells Vogel she has never seen him so angry, but Vogel reminds her that sometimes when you try and murder your sibling their feelings get a little hurt.
DINNER DATE
It’s the next morning, and Dexter is screening Debra’s phone calls. While making Harrison’s lunch, Jamie is meddling her way into the episode by suggesting they have the neighbor Cassie over for dinner. Dexter has no reason in the world right now to want to date but reluctantly agrees.
MIAMI METRO
Happy Deb isn’t there, Dexter is looking forward to just locking himself in a lab, but Miller and Quinn summon him to the briefing room. Pre-briefing, Masuka confirms that he does, indeed, have a daughter a la sperm bank donation. “That hot chick that was in your lab?” Nice, Quinn. Quinn then proceeds to plant the seed that Masuka should be careful with this girl just popping up like that.
QUINN WORKS FOR THE MONEY
With Batista gone, Quinn gets to run the show and prove he can actually function. They are working on the Norma Rivera case…the body they found when Quinn’s passing of the Sergeants exam stole her dead thunder. Forensics shows she had sex with somebody right before she was killed. No match on the semen in the criminal records, no defensive wounds, and they were able to rule out the ex-boyfriend. Fellow staff Rivera worked with believed that she was having an affair with their boss, Ed Hamilton. They reached out to Hamilton but he got lawyered up immediately, so Quinn, Miller and Dexter are going to have to head over to get a court ordered DNA sample.
Batista shows up holding A.J. Yates’ mug shot and saying that the dumped stabbing victim from the basement torture room gave the name of Yates’ in her statement. Batista will head over there to check it out, but Dexter knows Yates is definitely on the run.
“Old, rich men don’t like having their dirty laundry aired, especially when it’s the maid doing the old, rich man and the laundry. Make me Sergeant now.”
Leaving the briefing, Miller approaches Batista and is wondering if Quinn leading the briefing is any indication that Batista is picking him for Sergeant, but he hasn’t made any decisions yet.
Deputy Chief Matthews sidles up to Quinn at the elevator to let him know the Hamilton family is friends to Miami Metro, and to be discreet about whether or not the head Hamilton was banging his maid. Especially if Quinn wants to move it on up in the department.
CASA HAMILTON
At the Hamilton Mansion, Quinn, Miller, and Dexter show up for that DNA Swab complete with a warrant. Hamilton admits to having an affair with Norma Rivera and that, once the lady of the house found out, Rivera was fired. Hamilton also had sex with Rivera on the day she died, when she came to pick up her things.
Alarms go off for Dexter as Hamilton’s teenaged son Zach is lurking around the pool and asking what is going on. Ed Hamilton angrily shoos him off. As Dexter is leaving, the son approaches his car wondering what they found at Norma Rivera’s. A whole lotta none of your goddamned business, kid. That’s what. But Zach assures Dexter his father might be an asshole…but he’s no killer.
COME TO CALL
As Vogel is pleasantly enjoying her teatime and opening her mail, A.J. Yates smashes her back window and tackles her. Yates tells Vogel he’ll kill her if she tries to get away. Deb, still not able to get a hold of Dexter, stops by Vogel’s house to talk and finds the smashed window and empty house.
SECRET GARDEN
Dexter is at Yates’ home investigation and they have been digging up graves. Three bodies so far, each covered with a rose bush, and three more rose bushes to go. All the bodies have broken toes and a single stab to the chest.
Deb shows up at the scene to tell Dexter that Vogel is missing and that she desperately wants to help him find her, no matter how much Dexter hates her. Dexter doesn’t hate her, but telling her he loves her is definitely stuck in his throat. He wants to know why Deb saved him, and she spills that when she saw him sinking she knew she couldn’t imagine life without him. Dexter agrees to let her help and jump off by gathering Yates’ receipts for Cable Bundling and hope he has Vogel stashed somewhere in an empty summer home.
MIAMI METRO
Dexter gets by with a little help from his friends at Miami Metro and a lead on Yates’ ATM use, narrowing the radius for he and Debra’s search.
Quinn is telling Matthews that even though a street vendor, just a few hours ago, identified Hamilton’s son as being in the area at time of the killing, that he has now recanted that statement. Quinn wants to bring Zach Hamilton is anyway and press a confession out of him, but Matthews tells him he has no case. Matthews tells him to leave the kid alone. I’m pretty sure Quinn is going to listen.
WHO’S THAT GIRL
While Deb is at Elway Investigations mapping out her search, Masuka shows up and asks her to run a confidential background check on his daughter, just in case she is in it for his money.
DINNER PARTY
Dexter completely forgets he made dinner plans and walks into an apartment full of Jamie, Quinn, and neighbor Cassie. He tries to get out of it, but Jamie insists he stay or she’ll leave. So Dexter fires her on the spot and tells her to get the fuck out of this season! Kidding. He stays, but manages to pull a charming side bar with Cassie to get out of it before suggesting they make plans again.
MOMMY DEAREST
Meanwhile, Yates does indeed have Vogel in an empty home and is ready to start his torture ritual. Vogel attempts to connect with Yates through the abuse she knows he suffered at the hands of his mother, through his need for surgery, but its no dice. The shoe comes off and the pliers come out. In a last ditch attempt to fend him off, Vogel begins to verbally and violently attack him; pretending to be his mother in a rage. She slaps at him until he starts to bleed, and Yates pushes her back onto the couch to tend to his own wounds.
While he is in the other room, Vogel uses his phone to call Dexter and places it back down on the table. Dexter, with Debra in tow, is now listening to the mind fuckery of Vogel trying to get into the Brain Surgeon’s head. Debra calls in the unknown phone number to Elway, and he runs a trace and gets the address.
COME OUT COME OUT
Dexter and Deb are racing to the scene, while still listening in, and they hear Yates tell Vogel that she shouldn’t have hit him. Vogel is telling him she understands; that no child should have to hide under the bed from a parent. Vogel is working him and telling him to trust her, but Yates spots the cell phone and there goes that.
Deb and Dexter break into the home and see the blood from Yates’ injuries dripping throughout the house. Hearing a noise upstairs, they go gun-first, scoping out the rooms, until they find Vogel tied up in a closet. No sign of Yates, until Dexter spots a single drop of blood on the floor by the bed. Knowing Yates had nowhere else to escape, he swiftly grabs a curtain rod and plunges it through the mattress, the bed frame, and Yates with the force of a Ginger God! Deb’s cool with it. She just wants to blow that popsicle stand.
THE FAMILY THAT KILLS TOGETHER
Dr. Vogel gives Dexter the brain sample “gifts” to plant with the body. Vogel is happy it’s finally over, and we all know that’s gotta be bullshit. Vogel is glad that Dexter and Deb have found their way back to one another. Debra’s resiliency and Dexter never giving up on her has impressed Vogel. Something to put in the Christmas letter, fo sho’.
Out on Dexter’s boat, Debra and Vogel join him in dumping the body. Asking why Dexter wanted them to join him, he says, “I wanted to be with family.”
This is so far from over.
That moment when Dexter has to point out to Deb that Harrison would be orphaned…. awesome. Dexter the serial killer is more responsible than the former police lieutenant. I’m trying to put words to it, but having trouble….. I can’t decide if the writers wanted us to go, “oh, I see what you did there” or if I’m just reading more into it than there was. The guy who is supposedly a monster by “civilized” standards is the only one to think about the tragic ramifications Debra’s flippant actions would have had on the innocent child if she’d succeeded. I love that!
Oh, I definitely think they’re showing us the exact opposite of what Vogel keeps insisting, “Dexter doesn’t know how to love. He doesn’t have empathy.”
Dexter is not going to play out like Vogel’s Puppet. Just saying.
She’s bat shit. Dexter hearing her attack Yates is a big heads up.
Also, is it just me, or was Deb’s reaction when he killed Yates a little…. “Damn. That was hot” and less, “I can’t believe you just did that!”
It’s not just you. I think Deb is turning into a monster!! 😉
So not just you! I wanted Deb to mount him…did I just type that?
“As Vogel is pleasantly enjoying her teatime and opening her mail…. and listening to some crazy, extremely groovy 60s flower power tunes…”
Is there anyone else who thinks this is one psychotic lady? Is she really an evil genius uber serial killer who got all these patients to do more killing for her? Is Dexter’s life just part of an elaborate pyramid scheme of serial killing? Is she now trying to clean up her mess at the end of her life? Will it all culminate in HER taking out Dexter after he kills all of her other former patients??
I do love this character…
Psychos….takes one to know one.
indeed!
But I feel like this is a character that could be the only character able to bring this shit full circle.
She clearly gets off on serial killers. But man, Vogel is an amazingly manipulative person. I’m wondering like everyone else, is she the “big bad” of the final season?
One of Charlotte Rampling’s first films was “Georgy Girl” 1966; the music was similar. British Pop from the mid-60s. I think it was an in-joke for Rampling.
Yes! When she bitch-slapped Yates, I thought, “this ain’t no normal psychiatrist…”
I think she’s a serial killer who works via other serial killers.
Meghan, great review. It was one of the better episodes of Dexter in a while. I’m glad you mentioned Dexter’s red shirt; it seemed to me all the colors were super bright, almost hyper-real in this one. I like how the writers have brought Deb along, psychologically.
I thought he looked fantastic in that color.