Dexter Season 8 Episode 5 Recap: This Little Piggy

By Damon Martin – Editor/Lead Writer
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With a splash and a crash, Dexter’s ongoing family crisis with his sister Deb took a decided turn for the worse last week. Following the discovery that her father committed suicide over the strain from helping to create the monster that Dexter would soon become, Deb makes up her mind that her adopted brother doesn’t need to take another breath.

As the latest episode picks up on Sunday night, it took Deb about two seconds to realize her horrific actions and jump into the lake to save her brother. Now in therapy under the guidance of Dr. Vogel, brother and sister and trying to find peace with one another after nearly dying together just hours before.

According to Dr. Vogel, Deb pulling the wheel and crashing the car effectively trying to kill Dexter along with herself was an act of a person truly hitting rock bottom. Like the alcoholic who wakes up in a puddle of their own vomit with money missing from their wallet, there was only one direction for Deb to go from here and that was up.

Dexter wasn’t nearly as happy about the diagnosis, given the fact that for Deb to finally reach a place where she could learn how much she needed him in her life, he almost had to die and his son would have grown up an orphan, but he starts to move in that direction when a common enemy rears its ugly head.

The Brain Surgeon On the Run

In a very anti-climactic turn of events last week, we learned the real identity of the serial killer known as the Brain Surgeon. He was a former patient of Dr. Vogel, who she tried to cure by having a lesion on his brain removed that was near the epicenter where a human finds the need for violence and anger. Needless to say, Vogel’s treatment failed and her raw piece of raging clay has now turned into a murderer who saws off other people’s heads while taking a piece of their brain as a souvenir like a Mouse hat from Disneyland.

Following her family therapy session with Dexter and Deb, Vogel sits down to relax while listening to the Mama Cass Elliot song “Make Your Own Kind of Music” (while not every song featured in a show is thematic to the story being told, it seems that there’s more to this particular tune being used at this time). It’s then that the Brain Surgeon aka AJ Yates smashes through Vogel’s window and kidnaps her while seeking out information on her friend (Dexter) that was stalking his place just an episode ago.

It’s Vogel’s kidnapping that actually gives Dexter and Deb the common ground they need to come back together as siblings so they can hunt down the serial killer who took their favorite family shrink. Without batting an eye, the Morgans fall right back into old patterns to track down Yates and find Vogel before she’s his latest victim.

Luckily for the two of them, Vogel is smart enough to remember the fragile psyche that Yates carries from several years of neglect with his mother. She turns things around on him and takes this as an opportunity to call Dexter from Yates phone, where he listens in while trying to track down the location where she’s calling from.

Deb calls in a favor from her boss Elway to help with the trace, and off they go to rescue Vogel.

On a sidenote, I said at the beginning of this season how great of an addition it was to see Sean Patrick Flanery join the cast of Dexter this season, but thus far he’s been used sparingly at best with a rather vanilla story and background to his character. It seemed this avenue would have been perfect for the showrunners at Dexter to revive and reinvent Flanery’s career the way that The Walking Dead has been able to do for Norman Reedus (they will always be the brothers McManus from The Boondock Saints to me). Sadly, Flanery has been wasted mostly as background noise for this entire season. Maybe that changes soon…

Back to Dexter and Deb—they track down Yates to a house vacated for the summer where they find Vogel tied up in a closet, in an otherwise empty house. While the siblings tend to Dr. Vogel, Yates is quietly hiding under the bed with a knife either waiting to strike or hoping everyone leaves so he can make his escape. He gets to do neither after Dexter jumps up on the bed and slams a curtain rod (creative) through the bed, stabbing Yates to death. The trio decides to clean up the mess together before going on a therapeutic ride in Dexter’s boat to dispose of the body.

Normally whenever Dexter is on the Slice of Life, it’s quiet time reserved just for him and the body he’s about to drop in the Miami harbor, but he’s invited Vogel and Deb to ride along this time. Why? Because Dexter wants his family around. It feels like this entire scenario is going to come back to bite him in a big way before this show comes to an end.

A New Killer in Town

Last week’s episode saw the team at Miami homicide open an investigation into a woman who had her head bashed in just hours after engaging in sex with somebody. Her boyfriend was ruled out right away because he was already in jail on assault charges, and that left her rich, well to do employer, who she served dutifully as a maid in his huge sprawling mansion of a house. Quinn, who is still awaiting word on whether or not he’ll land the job of sergeant, is leading the investigation, but quickly receives warning from Deputy Chief Matthews that his suspects (wealthy friends to Miami Metro, the Hamilton family) are to be treated with kid gloves.

At the Hamilton house, before the trio of Miami Metro’s finest (I still use that term loosely because these folks solve about one case per decade after Dexter is finished with his hit list) can swab Daddy Hamilton for his DNA to see if it’s a match to the semen found in the victim, he cops to an affair with her that just ended recently. His wife discovered that he was diddling the maid, so she had to go. Upon a visit to the house to pick up some of her belongings, Hamilton decided to have one more romp with her while his wife was gone and that was the semen they found (although he promises he didn’t kill her).

Creepily lurking in the shadows was Hamilton’s son Zack, who later confronts Dexter and confesses that there’s no way his father could have committed the crime. It’s a little heavy handed that we meet Zack in this situation, almost forcibly put into the show as an obvious young version of Dexter just waiting to travel down one of two paths—either that of serial killer psycho or serial killer savior.

When the police do some more investigating around the area where the maid was found dead, they discover that a fruit vendor did see the younger Hamilton nearby just before she had her head caved in. Quinn has a clue to who really killed the young woman, but will his intuition squash his ambition when Matthews hears word of this latest development?

Masuka Might Have a Gold Digger on his Hands, Dexter’s Set Up

Last week we learned that through sperm donation in college, Masuka actually has a daughter who has now tracked him down in Miami and wants to get to know him better. He’s warned, however, that this sudden shift in parental bliss might all come crashing down around him because maybe his new found daughter is there because she wants something from him. A trip to the food truck outside the station raises Masuka’s suspicions when his new daughter “forgot her bag” and he has to pay for the entire order, to which she replies by adding some extra cheese on her burrito. Psychologically, ordering extra cheese is the universal sign for gold digger in case you didn’t know.

To hopefully qualm his fears about his daughter, Masuka hires Deb to do some digging into her background to find out if she’s legitimately there to form a bond with him or just after some fast cash from a new daddy.

Returning home from a long day (this is all happening while the hunt is on for Vogel) Dexter finds Jamie, Quinn and his new neighbor Cassie awaiting him at home with dinner about to be served. Jamie insists that Dexter stay after she went to all the trouble to set him up with the new woman, and if he bolts now she’s going to leave for the night and stick him with Harrison (oh no Dexter would have to be a parent!).

Dexter begrudgingly agrees to stick around, but only long enough to tell Cassie he has to leave, but promises they will do this again. During this time, Jamie invokes the past by saying that Dexter hasn’t been involved with anyone since Hannah—again a not so subtle slap to the face by the producers that the petal pushing poison lady is coming back this season.

Dexter successfully ducks out of dinner, but it’s setting up something to happen with this new neighbor presumably in the next couple of episodes.

Overall for what should have been a very pivotal episode of the final season for Dexter, this one was a little dull actually. The Brain Surgeon storyline was brought to a conclusion, although as pointed out earlier just like his reveal, what started with such potential came crashing to a halt without much drama or intrigue. It’s also a little much to expect 30 minutes after Deb literally tried to drown and kill Dexter, that they are all better and ready to be family once again.

Not quite halfway into the final season and there doesn’t appear to be a certain direction for how Dexter will come to an end outside of the addition of Dr. Vogel and her closet filled with psychological oddities and past connection to our favorite serial killer. Deb’s downward spiral appears over, so maybe now she will play a bigger role in Dexter’s final kill room (the one where he’s on the table) or his ultimate downfall. Either way, episode five moved the story along in a rapid fashion, but not necessarily in a way that provides any real closure yet.

What did you think of this latest episode of Dexter? Leave your thoughts below and come back next week for another recap as Dexter gets to know Zack Hamilton a little bit better and we find out more about Dr. Vogel’s mysterious methods.