Dexter season 3 episode 5 review

“Turning Biminese” is the fifth episode in this excellent Dexter season, and it marks a subtle change in the relationship between our sociopath pal, Dexter, and his DA buddy, Miguel Prado. They’re rapidly turning into a killing team, or that’s how it’s developing. Miguel mentions he’s got a killer that’s escaped justice, and provided the target, Dexter goes after him.

But that’s something of a sideshow to the perpetual domestication of Dexter by Rita, who, encouraged by Miguel’s wife, has started to hunt for a bigger home. Dexter doesn’t really want to relinquish his apartment, from where he pursues his hobby, but the emotional screws are beginning to turn. They don’t actually work, but Dexter is sensitive to Rita’s annoyance even if he’s not reacting as she wants him to.

Things starts to unravel when Dexter tells Rita he’s going fishing instead of playing husband and father to be. He’s actually planning to go to Bimini, a tropical island in the Bahamas, to intercept the man who likes to marry rich women and then kill them shortly after. In a typical sense of irony, he arranges to get to him on a cruise ship and have him reported missing at sea, just like one of his victims. He turns the cabin into one of his plastic work rooms and dispatches the guy, posting parts of him out of the porthole. As Dexter puts it, his last cruise will be on the Gulf Stream.

But unbeknownst to him, back in Florida poor Rita is rushed to hospital bleeding and everyone wants to find Dexter in case there is a problem with the baby. There isn’t, but by the time Dexter turns up he realises that his lifestyle needs to change, even if he can’t emotionally embrace fatherhood.

It all ends when Michael C Hall and Jimmy Smits have one of those electric conversations that have been the hallmark of this year’s Dexter. Miguel works out what Dexter is and tells him he’s fine with it. Dexter doesn’t admit a thing, but he and Miguel are increasingly becoming joined at the hip and certainly on the same wavelength. Will it ever get to the point where Dexter gives Miguel the ‘bigger picture’? Maybe.

The other highlight of this story is the resurgence of Vince Masuka. I’ve been slightly confused by C. S. Lee’s decision to relinquish his superb Chuck character, Harry Tang, and exclusively be Vince Masuka in Dexter this year. But in a small piece of dialogue he gets in this episode, this compunction is entirely revealed. In brushing off the sloppy science of the sheriff’s department to Ramon Prado he delivers the immortal line, “That’s not opinion, that’s science’, and [Science] ‘is one cold hearted bitch with a 14 inch strap-on’. Go Vince!

Dexter this year has been a high-water mark for great acting, and may it go on involving these performers in its own special dance of death for a while to come.

Next week Dexter gets the challenge from Miguel to kill someone who’s already in custody, and you know how much he likes a challenge.

Read our review of the previous episode here.