Dexter Review: “Hop a Freighter”

Alright, today’s review of Dexter is going to be relatively short and sweet as it’s currently 1 AM at the time I’m writing this as I’ve been fighting a constant battle with Comcast all day to get my internet out of retard-mode.

Fortunately, as opposed to the past few episodes, not quite as much happened this week, though yeah, there were some pretty significant developments in the closing few minutes.

More or less we saw Deb and Quinn along with the rest of the department piece together the dots for the duration of the episode, finally connecting all four missing rape posse members to Jordan Chase. They even found out his name is Eugene Greer.

And rather than be one step ahead of the game as he usually is, Dexter is scrambling to play catch up when he sudden finds out he’s being bugged as his video baby monitor which we’ve conveniently never seen before start’s picking up Robocop’s signal.

I imagine that’d be pretty heart-stopping for any serial killer.

He tracks down the bug, which he finds to be from Miami Metro, not Jordan Chase like he anticipated. That leads him to Quinn whose signature Robocop forged to get the equipment. Dexter now focuses his wrath on Quinn, and something really bad seems like it’s about to imminently go down.

But it doesn’t.

This episode is full of bad decision making. I understand that maybe Robocop doesn’t understand the full extent of Dexter’s murder history, but kidnapping a guy and attempting to make him confess to a murder you didn’t actually catch him committing within minutes is a bit of a longshot.

Quinn shows up just as Dexter proves he can kill someone despite his hands and feet being bound, and only manages to catch a drop of blood on his shoe. Where this leaves this plotline is unclear. Dexter knows that Quinn was halfassing an investigation into him, but does he think Quinn knows enough to be a problem presently, or one later in the future? Is that worth offing him? And conversely, what does Quinn think when Robocop disappears from the face of the earth after harassing him for days to come arrest Dexter for a bust that will “put him back on the map.” Yeah, it kind of solves his problems as he was essentially being blackmailed, but still, pretty suspicious.

And will that blood on his shoe actually mean something?

Bad decision number two rears its head when Lumen decides she can’t wait a few hours for Dexter to come back  before she runs off to do…what exactly with Jordan’s first victim. What was the thought process here. First, I would think something might be up if Dexter wasn’t answering his phone, ie. Jordan already got him and secondly, even IF the girl wasn’t on Jordan’s team, he could show up and he could be murdering her and then what she supposed to do? What exactly was the plan there? I thought Dexter had trained her to be smarter than this. It seemed like something to move the plot forward rather than a development that actually made sense.

Now Jordan has either kidnapped Lumen or is chasing her down. Dexter must catch up AND manage to attend his son’s birthday party in the process. The drama!

I think the whole Robocop plotline wrapped itself up a little too neatly. It went from “how the hell will he not get caught?” to a final solution in under thirty minutes. Hopefully we see more from it, as it would be an awful waste of time to spend an entire season building on that to just let it slip away.

See you next week for the grand finale. And yep, the show just got picked up for season six. What a surprise, right?

“You better do what I say unless you want to be living in a VAN, DOWN BY THE RIVER!”