overnights

Dexter: Hunter Becomes the Hunted Becomes the Hunter (and So On)

Dexter

Dex Takes a Holiday
Season 4 Episode 4

This week, in a startling development, Dexter finds himself identifying with a killer. Stifle that yawn. Just when Dexter’s family-free staycation looks to be treading familiar territory, it takes a turn. And, more importantly, the Trinity Killer case gets intense, culminating in a highly suspenseful final scene.

With the wife and kids out of town, Dexter has time for his solitary pursuits. This time, he’s after a bad cop. A hot bad cop. A fellow blood guy suspects that Zoey Kruger killed her husband and daughter and made it look like her gangbanger enemy did it. Unfortunately, we fail to discover why the independent super-cop was murderously freaked out by the familial walls closing in around her, but, hey, it’s enough to convince the imaginary ghost of Det. Harry Morgan that Zoey and Dexter have a lot in common. So much, in fact, that it scares the crap out of Dexter when she catches on to his game and starts stalking him.

Dexter almost decides to back off. But in the end, of course, the hunter becomes the hunted, Dexter gets his prey, and he realizes that they’re not that similar after all: He’d rather risk his family finding out the truth about him than risk losing them. He’s not going to kill his family! Aww! We figure by next week, he’ll remember that if they find out, he certainly will lose them.

Meanwhile, Quinn is mad at his reporter lady friend for doing all that reporting, Batista and LaGuerta are trying to figure out what they mean to each other and who they’re going to tell besides poor Dexter, and, yes, Debra and Lundy are back in each other’s arms.

Better yet: Lundy sort of ends up in Trinity’s arms when the killer deliberately bumps into him. Lundy shows some impressive intuition when he sees the darkness in Trinity’s eyes (has he not looked in Dexter’s?) and tails him. He doesn’t know that this blue-eyed stranger is the killer he and Debra expect to bludgeon someone in a bar fight that night — but Trinity has him all figured out. He read Quinn’s story on Lundy, and knows that Lundy tracked him to the (razed) site of his first barroom brawl. Presumably, it’s Trinity who shoots Debra and Lundy in the final scene: Does their assailant walk off with the tape recorder on which Lundy reports his observations, or just his wallet and watch?

Debra will no doubt survive that abdominal wound, but Lundy, hit twice, doesn’t look good. Maybe we’ve been wrong in assuming that Lundy’s run would end when he catches on to Dexter. Then again, we’d hoped that Debra’s comment about Anton’s jealous streak was a hint that he might snap, which wouldn’t be nearly as interesting if his rival were dead.

Dexter: Hunter Becomes the Hunted Becomes the Hunter (and So On)