If there's one thing that I've agreed with all these years about Dexter, it's that the supporting characters of the show have slowly become overshadowed by Michael C. Hall, who makes this show stand out from any other dramas, comedies, horror shows or anything else on TV. He plays the role perfectly, and five seasons in, we're compelled to see how his story will turn out. And while I've never been all that interested in the supporting characters (Deb and Doakes as an exception), I'm slowly becoming more intrigued by all of these story lines. Tonight's episode pushed forward everybody's story a little bit, some more than others, but enough for me to be interested in where this season is going.
The most interesting stuff happening here is.. you guessed it: Dexter and Lumen. Dexter tries to get Lumen to move on and go back home to her family, but Lumen claims she wants to find the men who did this to her. It becomes clear that she was raped by multiple men, one of them possibly being Boyd Fowler. Dexter understands her need to kill, but he knows first-hand that killing out of revenge does nothing good for you. He learns that she's planning on visiting a man who she believes was involved. He was cellmates with Boyd and may have had a hand in it. The best parts of the episode come in the very sketchy place underneath the bridge. Dexter visiting pretending to be a convicted rapist was eerie, especially when we see the kind of people that stay there, and Lumen's later visit and her near kill of Boyd's friend were intense and could've easily gone bad. In the end, Lumen pretends to leave Miami and instead stays, likely to try and kill her captors.
The Santa Muerta case gets a lot more creepy and the stakes get higher after they find the Fuentes brother's first kill. The sight of their bodies infested with maggots and flies was disgusting, and that's saying something coming from somebody who's watched this show since the beginning. As for any actual revelations, there was nothing... but there were some good scenes between characters here, particularly Masuka.
What I'm really interested in is Quinn. People keep saying over and over and over again "Quinn is the new Doakes!" And sure, there are similarities between the two, but it's clear there's a difference. Quinn finds a disgraced cop, an old friend of his apparently, and hires him to look into Dexter. The cop is played by Peter Weller, most known as Robo-Cop, so it should be interesting to see how his role plays out.
And Batista and LaGuerta continue to have pointless and uninteresting roles, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little interested in where Batista's jealousy leads him. I like seeing him show some actual emotion and his character becomes more likable the further he goes towards the edge.. I guess that's what Dexter Morgan does to you. I just hope this plot goes in an interesting and worthwhile place. There's also a minor plot involving Dexter worried about how his son will be affected by Rita's death, and it leads to some funny lines here and there, but there's not much attention paid to it.
Season 5 has a lot of balls juggling in the air right now, and while some shows have trouble focusing on their plotlines (Big Love mainly.. I'm looking at you), Dexter finds a way to focus as much time on each one as possible. And yes, some are more interesting than others, but at least we're going somewhere now after Rita's death. I'm very excited to see how Dexter and Lumen's relationship grows from here.





