Dexter 2.05. The Dark Protector

[selenak]

While watching, I strongly suspected likeadeuce would squee about this one.



Because when watching the first season, she pointed out the parallels between Dexter's story and your avarage superhero origin tale, and The Dark Protector made the comicverse comparisons textual. More and more it looks like this season will focus on the question of vigilantism. Last season gave us two serial killers (well, more than that, obviously, but two who get more than one episode of characterisation), Dexter himself and the Ice Truck Killer, Brian/Rudy, and it was possible to differentiate between the bad serial killer, whose victims were carefully humanised and people we cared about - Tony Tucci, Angel, Deb herself - and the "good" serial killer, Dexter, who channelled his urges by going after other killers. After his backstory revealed, one could pity the boy RuBrian had been, but one still didn't wish him to go on slaughtering women (and the occasional man who got in his way). Dexter's killings, otoh - well, that's the question. Does the narrative endorse them or just present them? Not possible to say in the first season, but the way the second shapes up, it's going to be a central question in it. Miami is ready to regard the Bay Harbor Butcher as a folk hero, a comic hero, the Punisher, basically. Dexter is half starting to believe in his press (always a dangerous thing). On the other hand, you have Deb stating that taking a life is taking a life, and murder is always murder. You also have the NA program actually working with Dexter when he stops himself at the last second from killing by calling his sponsor (more about Lila in a moment). A good thing, too, since that particular killing would have been traced back to him in no time flat. Which brings up the question Lila, still not aware of the nature of Dexter's "addiction", asked last time - does he have the self image of as a monster so he can justify what he does as inevitable, because if he's not a monster, if he has the free will to stop, he has to both accept full responsibility and change his entire belief system?

There is also the question whether or not Dexter wants to stop killing in general. Whether he'll want to stop the next time, when the victim isn't someone he has personal reason to hate but his usual prey, the killers he encounters through work. In his closing words, he sees Lila either as a hero's sidekick or a villain's Trusted Lieutenant; both images, however, still depend on himself as the hero/villain going out being a vigilante, not staying at home as a recovered human being. All the praise for the Bay Harbor Butcher isn't going to help with the quitting, either.

Lila is acting both like a good sponsor and like a questionable agent here, keeping Dexter talking and genuinenly helping him to stop "using again" - even though she doesn't know what he means with that - but on the other hand encouraging him to leave Rita, getting undressed in front of him and trying to create intimacy any way she can. So far, he hasn't responded sexually - the way he broke down and cradled in her lap was distinctly childlike - but then again, she's the one that brought up the Oedipus complex. (Which the show did subtextually last season, with the similarities between Laura Moser and Rita. Lila as a rival mother imago?)

Speaking of Laura Moser, the new bit of backstory - her having been Harry's snitch among the cocaine dealers, with this as the reason for her death - is intriguing and makes sense of Harry destroying the files even more than the existence of a brother did. It would also give Harry another reason for the adoption, the guilt of not having been able to protect her as promised, though again in this case, why not adopt both boys? Considering the killer's claim she had sex with Harry, I wondered for a moment whether the show is going to make Harry Dexter's biological father as well as adopted one, and then remembered that last season already gave us the bio dad via DNA evidence, and it wasn't Harry. So, no. However, as we saw Mrs. Morgan talk in the last flashback, we saw Laura Moser talk now here (beyond Dexter's fragment of a memory of her murder, I mean); dare I hope this is the season where we get the mothers fleshed out? Not that the father stops being interesting. The other side of the Oedipus complex is the wish to kill the father. There is a lot of anger in Dexter for Harry right now (piling up ever since the discovery of Harry lying about things), but not only is Harry out of reach by being dead, but he also still loves him. However, there is a Harry avatar around in the form of Special Agent Lundy, with the parallels ever more pronounced as we find out his wife died the same way Harry's did. Deb continues to bond with him, and so far Lundy comes across as very likeable and concerned for her. Harry's dark side was what made him able to deal with the problem of his beloved adopted son showing distinct signs of severe emotional disturbance by first teaching him to hide them and then later coming to the conclusion that making Dexter a vigilante who kills killers was the ideal solution both for Dexter and for his own frustrations at injustices as a cop. So, the question is, what's Lundy's dark side? Something similar? He did make the "saving of an innocent life" exception as the one excuse for killing someone, but that still doesn't mean he'd be on board with Harry's solution. After all, there is a difference between saving someone in a direct threat to the victim situation (which is when every cop is allowed to kill someone) and the type of carefully prepared murder Dexter usually carries out.

(One last comicverse note: the manipulative mentor is an archetype as well. So, Harry as Charles Xavier makes Lundy...?)

This week's subplot with LaGuerta and Doakes mollified me somewhat about last week's, because it brought back one of my favourite aspects of their relationship from last season, the fact they're able to call each other on each other's bullshit the way no one else can - and that they do so to help each other. (Last season's examples would be LaGuerta figuring about about Doakes' affair with the dead cop's wife and later about his Haiti background, and Doakes talking to her re: Tony Tucci etc., for example.) This time, we got LaGuerta being understandably concerned about Doakes' reaction (or lack of same) to his most recent killing, and Doakes bringing up to her how she dealt with Pascal. Still not sure whether they couldn't have had LaGuerta use another (dirty) method than this one, but if it gives me more La Guerta and Doakes as brutally honest partners looking out for each other scenes, it wasn't completely worthless. I do love them both.

Off to Munich, full of medicine...

Comments

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this episode alleviated some of my irritation; LaGuerta and Doakes, but also Rita and Lila's performances were that compelling.

Another indicator that this might finally be the season where Mothers come to the forefront is, of course, Gail's decision to abandon her house in, what was it, Wisconsin, to come live with Rita. Clever move, I thought -- this way, she can keep up the appearance of acceptance of Dexter while effectively monitor their relationship. That said, while she comes across as shrew-ish, which I find sad if not quite as reprehensible as the Pascal storyline, this isn't a half-bad characterisation arc: Once she realised she had effectively abandoned her daughter and left her without protection or help against an abusive husband, it does make sense that Never Again! would not mean watching and perhaps nagging from afar but actively stepping in to lend support (and influence, but well, well, what can we say).

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I agree that Gail's decision makes character sense and is even good parenting; we don't want Rita and Dexter to break up because we like Dexter, but seriously, even substituting "narc addict" for "serial killer", how can a mother not be highly suspicious at the very least? And as you say, she did draw consequences from what Rita said about her behaviour earlier.

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

seriously, even substituting "narc addict" for "serial killer", how can a mother not be highly suspicious at the very least?

*g* Very, very true.

What do you think will happen regarding the video surveillance? Personally, I think the show will do a partial cop-out (heh!) and let the camera have caught Dexter but not what he did on the boat; it's too early for that.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

That's what I think as well. Otoh, the fact that he was on the boat, directly after Deb told him the area was under surveillance might make her alert, not directly in the sense of suspecting him but later, if/when he does something else, putting clues together. (Since Deb and Lundy are in charge of this particular area of surveillance, she's bound to see the video.) I suspect Deb is going to be in the position Dex was in at the end of this season - having to choose between him and either a person or an idea, her beliefs as a cop. (Which could or could not be embodied by Lundy, which I suspect all the bonding and Harry parallels might be leading towards.) And I definitely think she'll figure out the truth before the season is over, but as you say, not this early on.