Review: Dexter ‘What’s Eating Dexter Morgan?’

When last we left off, our favorite serial killer was working with the mysterious woman known as Dr. Vogel, a sociopath expert that was crucial in the formation of his code of ethics.  Together, they were trying to track down the “Brain Surgeon” killer before he took out the good doctor.  Debra, in the meanwhile, was rapidly degenerating into a vigilante killer, shooting down hitmen that pissed her off.  This week’s episode of Dexter, “What’s Eating Dexter Morgan” focuses on these two main plotlines, with Vogel slowly getting inside Dexter’s head and Deb going even further down the drain.

Dexter continues to hunt down Vogel’s ex-patients, figuring that one of them is the person they’re looking for.  He gets called to a crime scene, that of the man Dexter had previously suspected of being the killer (and later found murdered), but someone has been tampering and making it look like a suicide.  The real Brain Surgeon is on to them and, to make his affections known, he sends Vogel a couple more bottles of brain. 

On the other side of the story, Debra gets busted for drunk driving and Quinn has to come to her rescue.  He begins to act as protector to Deb and, when she finally comes in claiming that she wants to confess for the killing of LaGuerta, he’s there to alert Dex to his sister’s impending mental breakdown.  Lucky for Dex, as he comes racing in with Vogel, knocks his sister out before she can do too much damage, and then hauls her away, leaving her in the care of the rather dubious doctor.

All this is broken up by debates between Vogel and Dexter in which she claims that while he is indeed a wonderfully efficient killing machine, he doesn’t have the emotions to deal with situations like Debra.  Though Dex tries at one point, it leads to further escalation of the problem rather than a solution.

While it seems fairly obvious that Vogel is manipulating Dexter in some way, either to study him or to craft him into some sort of super serial killer, this episode executes the transition of Dexter’s mindset in a clumsy and heavy-handed way.  The main focus was the downward spiral of Deb and Dexter’s acceptance of his serial killer nature, but I had a hard time believing any of it.  Dexter has made his distrust of Vogel known on more than one occasion, but now he simply accepts what she says about him being worthless in the human emotion department.  And then, despite this distrust, he leaves his sister in her hands unsupervised.

In the end, we have character development that should have occurred over the long run but is crammed into the 50 allotted minutes.  I was really disappointed by this week, especially given the great pacing and story development of the last two episode.  Hopefully this is just a writer hiccup and the show will get back to being better next week, but for now all I can do is cross my fingers and hope this doesn’t signal a downward spiral for the entire show.

For a sneak look at what next week has to offer, check this link for the trailer.

Photo Credits -           

Dex and Vogel courtesy of screencrush.com