The plot thickens in this second episode of the season. I thought that Dr. Vogel was just a curious doctor that had reasonable suspicions about Dexter but in this episode, we find out that her connections to Dexter go way deeper than that.
The episode begins with a home video of Dexter’s father Harry talking to Dr. Vogel who is asking questions behind the camera. In this therapy session, Harry tells her about the first time he brought Dexter to a crime scene and how he was fascinated with “the painting” of blood. When the video ends, Dr. Vogel says “I know almost everything about you Dexter. Not just because I heard it from your father but because I helped create you.” In their conversation that follows, Dr. Vogel reveals that she helped create “the code” with Harry and that it was her idea to focus Dexter’s urges rather than try to suppress them. She then claims herself as Dexters “spiritual mother.” Dexter says “you experimented on me. Is that what mothers do?” And in my favorite line from this episode Dr. Vogel fires back with “I created a framework for your survival. That’s what mothers do.” But even after all of that, the real reason Dr. Vogel has Dexter in such intimate surroundings is to ask him to kill one of her former patients who they dub in this episode as “The Brain Surgeon.” Dexter is hesitant at first saying “I don’t take requests” but Dr. Vogel makes her case that he owes her because of her phantom influence on his life. It doesn’t take Dexter long to agree.
In another story, Deb is still continuing her private investigation stint and gets into some hot water when she crosses paths with El Sapo in a storage container. They fight and El Sapo decides not to kill her. Well, Deb is not as forgiving and executes him before he can drive away. Dexter finds this out by finding her blood at the crime scene and then confronts her about it. Deb admits it but then casually asks that Dexter replace a pistol in the evidence room that may have her finger prints. Dexter is reluctant but does it because Deb can easily blackmail him. “Do you really want to play the ‘what if’ game?” she asks Dexter.
With Deb asking Dexter to get her out of trouble and Dr. Vogel asking Dexter to ‘take care’ of the brain surgeon, Dexter is putting himself into danger. In any season where Dexter tried to “help someone out” he had to take o their troubles with his. Now he’s helping two people out, one is his ‘mother’ who loves him and the other is his sister who hates him. This is an interesting dichotomy because both people know who Dexter really is but they have differing views. Dr. Vogel fully accepts Dexter because she helped create him but Deb hates him because she’s a victim of his work.
This episode was great because I didn’t see any of it coming. Dexter met his “mother” and Deb exercised a bit of ruthless vigilante justice. El Sapo seemed to be well connected so look for people to come looking for his killer. Going forward it’ll be interesting to see how Dexter deals with Deb’s mess. He has always helped her and rescued her before but when she starts to abuse Dexter’s love, we’ll see the limits of Dexter’s generosity. In this episode, Dr. Vogel also reveals that some of her methods for treating psychopaths were unorthodox and possibly illegal which may have led to the formation of this Brain Surgeon killer. She’ll be an interesting character to explore especially because she now has her claws in Dexter.
It’s still a bit weird that this is the final season. It’s only episode two but the show is moving so fast. There is so much more to explore this season and the anticipation of the grand finale is almost two much for me. Only 6 long days until episode 3.