‘Dexter’: Dex to say ‘I do’?

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One of the first thing any writer learns in school is, ‘Show, don’t tell.’ So I don’t know why the writers of ‘Dexter’ keep moving along this Chickie Hines story. I’ve said before that I’m already prejudiced against the Miguel Prado (Jimmy Smits) and Maria LaGuerta (Lauren Velez) scenes in that they’re simply dull compared with anything involving Dexter (Michael C. Hall), but when they’re involved in blah-blah dialogue about some character whom we’ve never seen who has some backstory that we can’t get into, I become almost angrily bored. Show us who Chickie Hines is at the very least and don’t just tell us that it’s LaGuerta’s way of trying to rectify what happened to Sgt. Doakes (Erik King). At the very least, the directors ought to light the LaGuerta scenes in tones other than artificial-looking purples, blues and pinks.

Of course there is bigger news in the world of ‘Dexter’: Our favorite serial killer has decided he’s the marrying kind. It’s unclear whether Dexter really, truly wants to be a family man, but he was right when he told Rita (Julie Benz) and the kids, ‘You make me real’ (not unlike Pinocchio or the Velveteen Rabbit). I found it interesting that Dexter spoke in his normal tone of voice when proposing to all three of them, although I did get more pleasure out of Dex’s fumbling earlier in the episode when he awkwardly raised the topic and promised Cody, ‘You can have a puppy and a baby!’ The girl part of me is curious to see how Dexter handles a wedding (I imagine with awkward aplomb), but the show-loving part of me wonders how Dexter will be able to hide his secrets when he no longer has his own lair.

In the meantime, it was interesting to see Dexter and his sister Deb (Jennifer Carpenter) do some actual detecting this episode, which we don’t see too often in between LaGuerta eating bonbons, Angel Batista (David Zayas) looking for ‘professional help’ and Masuka (C.S. Lee) struggling with the meager story he’s been given this season. I don’t know where you purchase bloody-head-smash dummies, but I bet they’d be fun at parties. Dexter looked terrified at the end of the episode when Rita announced, ‘Yes, we will marry you,’ as he realized he was taking on the ‘role of a lifetime,’ but if the kids ever get bored, all he’d have to do is take them to his splatter room to entertain them.

-- Claire Zulkey