Emotional, morally complex conversations between Deb and Dex. A guy wearing a bull mask, wielding an axe, chasing Dex through a Saw maze. What more could you want from an episode of Dexter?
Ray Speltzer, the bull-headed woman-killer from last week, is on the run after a botched vendetta investigation by Debra and a botched kill by Dexter. They both want to find him now, for their own ends, on either side of the law.
Near the beginning of “Run,” Deb has an incredibly disturbing nightmare in which blood fills her bathtub and runs over the sides as Dexter stands in the doorway with a machete, asking, “Will you be mine?” It’s very reminiscent of Rita’s gruesome murder, which has clearly been weighing on Deb lately.
Deb brings Rita’s death up with Dexter in the claustrophobic alleyway from last week, using it as an example of why Dexter is a risk to the people around him. Dex tells her he killed Trinity, and she asks if Dexter is capable of love when he loves to kill. “It’s how I’ve lived my whole life,” Dexter says in the first of many similar conversations in the episode.
Such themes of moral ambiguity and Dexter’s capacity for love trouble Deb and the viewers in this season’s increasingly problematic ethical dilemmas.
The police bring last week’s murderer in and suddenly we see Isaak investigating Dexter’s files, brought to him by his goons. One says Dexter works in blood splatter, to which Isaak takes off his glasses and responds, “It’s spatter — blood spatter.” I like Isaak as this season’s villain. He’s intense.
Back in the station, Deb puts the moves on Speltzer and gets a confession. As Dexter narrates: “There are many ways to break a body down.” Oh, indeed.
Outside, Dex and Deb talk about protecting Harrison from Dexter. “It is not fair of you to expose a child to your life … choices,” Deb tells him. He has to choose.
“You’re like a f—ing magnet,” she says, “Bad s— is gonna find you.” She tells him he just barely saved her life in Speltzer’s maze last week.
Dexter tells her he should have killed Trinity earlier and that he’ll never make that mistake again. “It is not in your control,” she says.
“Everything is my control,” Dexter snaps, “I am not giving up my son.” Can he ever reconcile his needs with his wants, though?
Elsewhere, Isaak talks one of the strip club’s bartenders into taking the fall for Mike’s murder, then killing himself. It’s a weighty scene that ends with Isaak calmly correcting the bartender’s positioning of the gun on his head to ensure a fatal shot.
Later, we see him holding a picture of Viktor and crying, swearing vengeance. Lovers?
Turns out there were Miranda problems arresting Speltzer and he walks. Deb is incensed, and Dexter sees a way to get back in his sister’s good graces and restore the natural order by killing the killer.
So he lies in wait in Speltzer’s RV (and finds out he’s juicing) — but Speltzer shows up! And knocks Dexter out!
He awakens in an underground maze far larger than the house maze we saw before. There’s a note next to him, continuing the Saw-inspired game theme: “RUN.”
Dexter scoffs, “I don’t run. I make people run.” Then he turns a corner and sees Speltzer in full bull gear, axe in hand, and qualifies his bravado: “However, I do run if there’s a bull coming after me with an axe.” Such narration is what makes Dexter great.
Dexter stalks and gets stalked throughout the maze and manages to escape after three grueling minutes of terror.
He decides to send Harrison to visit with Cody and Astor so he can kill Speltzer. And he does! In such a satisfying way.
Once Speltzer is on the table in a crematorium, everything feels right again. Dexter jumps around, mocking Speltzer’s screams and generally seeming like a freed animal. It’s invigorating and slightly scary to watch. We want to love Dexter, but we’re starting to see how, hey, maybe a serial killer actually is a monster after all.
“I’m gonna kill you,” Speltzer says as Dexter prepares to send him into the flames.
“That would be a twist,” Dexter quips and stakes him through the heart.
He pulls out his blood slides, touches them one last time and puts them on Speltzer’s chest. As the table enters the inferno, a nostalgic Dexter says, “Goodbye, friends.”
Yet again, a gut-punch of an ending comes through a powerful Dexter-Debra conversation. She’s waiting outside the crematorium, apparently having been invited by Dexter.
He sits with her in her car and they look at the rising smoke. In an elegiac and pointed conversation, Dexter tells her he didn’t kill Speltzer for her and she breaths a sigh of relief.
“How do you feel?” Dexter asks the starstruck Deb.
“Glad,” she whispers, “What does that make me?”
They lock eyes. “Human.”
They both look back at the smoke and toward their future. It’s the latest of many beautiful, impactful scenes with Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Carpenter.
This season continues to impress, each episode building up Deb’s moral ambiguity carefully and respectfully. What’s she going to do next?
One element that feels forced is Hannah McKay’s brief presence earlier in the episode. She’s going to be in the show more, starting next week, helping Miami Metro find bodies from her old-school killing days. But when she visits the station and chats with Dexter during this hour, it doesn’t really add much.
That weak point doesn’t detract from an altogether exciting and satisfying episode. That Dexter can manage to make us cheer and wince at a murder is skillful writing and acting. I’m not sure where Dexter and Deb’s journey is leading them, but I’m excited to find out.
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