Dexter

Cut to: Dexter where we left him last week, in the ocean, having survived Travis’ most recent attempt to kill him in the explosive “Lake of Fire” Biblical “tableau.”

Dex stares into the fog and wonders if the world will be a better place without him. Cuban immigrants discover Dexter, save him, and someone shouts, “God must be looking out for you!”

Then some creep tries to rob a woman and Dexter kills him, and the episode’s other theme — Dexter’s darkness as positive balancing agent — is introduced. So if you’ve ever felt a little queasy about rooting for a serial killer as a hero…

And now we’re with Travis (Colin Hanks), watching TV in the house of an older couple he has murdered. On the wall is this giant painting of an uber-demon with Dexter’s face and several smaller demon heads coming out of his neck. Travis is drawing a picture of what looks like two monoliths from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” with an towering over them.

Deb goes to Dexter’s house. He’s not wearing a shirt. We see he’s been hitting the gym and partaken of the finest in wax or laser chest-hair removal. Overwhelmed, Deb finally just spits out, “I love you!” Dex says he does too. She’s all ga-ga eyed. “You do?” “Of course I do.” The scene is shot in a weird series of cuts meant to evoke nausea.

The Miami police break into the dead couple’s house. Travis is gone.

Deb meets up with Dex; she’s acting uncomfortable. Dex has no clue what’s up with his sister.

Then he goes to that wild place beyond Miracle Clue, to that place where a clue practically grabs you by the nether parts and screams your name. Or, in this instance, Dexter just happens to pass a garbage container, pulls one wad of paper out and you betcha, it’s that drawing of the monoliths and the eclipse. You’re ahead of me, right?

An eclipse is coming to Miami. And with one minute of Googling, Dexter determines where Travis will commit his final crime.

Deb comes to the same conclusion doing some actual deductive reasoning that has a pay-off for us: prime Deb cursing as she commands cops to the top of every skyscraper over a certain height. Or as she says, “big ass, tall-a-shit-skyscrapers.”

Then she corners Dex and asks, “Do we need to talk?” He did almost die, and she is, above all things, his awesome sister, but he’s all, “No, I’m fine.” She tells him to remember to meet up at that decommissioned church for a final forensic sweep. She says this twice.

Now… Captain Laguerta (Lauren Vélez). Let’s just deal with this and get it over with. After a season of non-stop, epic bitchitude, “Dexter’s” writers seriously thought they could pull a one-episode turnaround on this nightmare in pumps. She’s suddenly all soulful and pro-Deb. We’re not buying it.

Travis has Dex’s gear from last week. This allows him to enter Dexter’s house and find the hand Louis sent Dexter last week. (You’ll be waiting until nest season to find out what that was about. Sorry.) Travis avails himself of a little Miracle Clue — the flyer for today’s Noah’s Ark Pageant lets him know that wee Harrison will be at the Catholic day school — today.

Harrison and nanny Jamie (Aimee Garcie), make it to the school, dress the tyke up as a lion and wait for Dexter.

Meanwhile, Deb has cops on every big-ass-tall-a-shit-skyscraper in Miami.

Dex looks for Harrison at school — but a nun says the boy in the lion costume (Harrison) went with the nice man (Travis). Dexter freaks and chases Travis to the building where he plans to kills Harrison as an offering to God to begin the Apocalypse. Instead, he kills one of Deb’s cops.

And then Dexter shows up, one-ups Travis, pumps him full of elephant tranquilizers, and dumps him in his car.

Back at Deb’s therapy session — a breakthrough! While Doctor Ross (Rya Kihlstedt) tries hard to keep her you-are-so-fucked-up face at bay, Deb tells her how totally right she was! That being in love with Dexter explains, like everything, ever!

That when she was with withholding guys, or distant with guys, or with guys she was horrible to, or when she dated a serial killer… well, she hasn’t worked that out yet (oh, Deb). But every other screwed up thing is tied to the fact that she totally wants to be with him — all she has to do is tell him about it!

What makes this idiocy work at all is Carpenter’s total commitment to Deb’s terror. Because me? I don’t buy the incest thing here — it doesn’t jibe with the people we’ve been presented with all these years.

Worse, it suggests a radical rewrite of Deb which renders her pitiful. It steals power from a very powerful woman — and it gives it all to her increasingly despicable brother. Dexter is now a witless, heartless jerk, dispensing his own brand of justice. Deb, smarter, more in charge of herself and her voice, is slowly being demoted to a nervous, weeping wreck begging for a taste of that manliness for no true dramatic reason.

Director John Dahl hard-cuts from Deb’s pitiful epiphany to Dexter ascendant in Travis’ decommissioned church. Dexter has set up his table and Saran Wrapped Travis to it — in front of a statue of Christ.

Since this was the season of theology, Dex tells Travis that if there’s a purpose to his darkness, it’s as a balancing force and all that. The knife goes in and we wonder how well Deb is going to take this line of reasoning because, after all, she’s right there. She did tell him twice. No two ways — they’ve both seen him commit a murder.

There’s apparently two seasons of “Dexter” left. And a good deal of the remaining episodes will address the question: How deep is your love, Deb? Or maybe the question to ask the writers is this: How low will you drag your finest creation?

After a recap in which Debra (Jennifer Carpenter) says that Dex (Michael C. Hall) is her one safe place — oh, great — the Miami police find the body of Travis’ latest murdered girl, along with the corpse of Doomsday_Adam (Kyle Davis), the one-time Travis fanboy, who was actually stabbed by Dexter.

Travis, meanwhile, has hogtied Angel (David Zayas), stolen his ID and given it to Doomsday_Adam’s batty wife Beth (Jordana Spiro). He’s also gifted Beth with a backpack bomb of wormwood poison, with instructions to deliver the package to Deb. She’d once interviewed the object of Travis’ passions, his sister (who he then killed, as these brother-sister love affairs never pan out). And so Deb and the Miami P.D. must die in the name of God. It’s simple, really.

Ready for your Deb/Dex incest subplot? No? Too bad — it starts with Deb spilling her guts to Dex about how Laguerta has been mind-fucking her about The Case of the Dead Call Girl. Dex, who for the last four episodes has been a distant jerk, suddenly becomes the empathic king of all siblings.

Remember last week’s relatively natural narrative style? Well, goodbye to that aberration. This week saw the return of the shameless Miracle Clue school of detective work. Check it out:

Beth the Bomber sits just outside Deb’s office, patiently waiting to blow up.

Dex decides it’s time to computer-search Doomsday_Adam. His office has a nice view of Deb’s.

An officer tells Deb some lady wants to talk about wormwood. Deb’s all, hell, yeah! And so Beth the Bomber steps into Deb’s office at the exact same moment that Dexter is greeted with a screenshot of Beth’s ID pic and BAM!

Dex hauls ass across the office and hurls poor Beth into a room to blow up and die. Dex describes his heroics as dumb luck. Deb super-foreshadows the coming boundary-cross with a swoon of “Fuck luck! I’ll take you!” and then falls into his arms like a bodice-ripper heroine.

Travis, of course, freaks when he learns the wormwood bomb was a big bust. He settles on a new murder project — Lake of Fire!

“My time has come!” he screams, jotting outlines on a wall next to some corpses. “I must pass the test!” It’s a Make it Work moment in Hell’s version of “Project Runway.”

Meanwhile, dinner with Deb and Matthews (Geoff Pierson) has the old mucky-muck guilt-tripping Deb: Yeah, he had carnal knowledge of the call girl, but she was totally on drugs and fell and died. How would destroying his career help her now. And did he mention he held Deb when she was a baby?

Deb relents — but you can see that slippery moral slope looming.

Meanwhile, Dex retrieves Gellar’s severed hand for use in a fiendish plan to get Travis’ attention. Deb has her therapy session with Dr. Ross (Rya Kihlstedt), whose understanding of psychology seems to have stalled at Oedipal transfer theory.

Deb’s super-vulnerable, so Ross decides it’s a great time to float the notion that Deb chooses unavailable men because she wants to do her brother. Deb’s aghast, enraged and outta there.

That is, until a couple of scenes later, when Matthews arrives, furious with Deb for ratting him out about the call girl thing. But it was the Queen Rat herself, Laguerta, who dropped the dime on Matthews so she can steal his job and make Deb’s life miserable in the bargain.

Freaked, Deb seeks solace from a now supernaturally sweet Dexter. They share noodles like they’re squiggly sex toys. “Deb,” he coos, “I’m always right here.” He presses her hand to her bosom, and kisses her on the mouth — as Deb wakes up and screams “Fuck!”

Indeed. Then again, confronting fantasies of ultimate intimacy prefaces ultimate separation. Or, uh, something like that.

Then the scene shifts to Louis the intern (Josh Cooke), who may or may not have his own Dark Passenger. We see him mail Dexter the hand stolen from evidence.

To get Travis on his table, Dexter creates his own “tableau” on a public statue, which he splatters blood, draws “666” and attaches Gellar’s severed hand. Dex also manages to send Travis a taunting videogram in which Dex purposely shows his Slice of Life yacht.

Travis sees it and gets pumped for some serious vengeance, but first must finish this painting of what looks like six evil cherubs sprouting out of Michael C. Hall’s giant demon head. No, really.

And then that incest stuff happens, but let’s cut to the chase — Dex sets up a kill room on a yacht. Travis shows up as expected. The two tussle. Travis sinks Dexter’s tranquilizer needle into his neck. He passes out and wakes up bound in a gasoline-filled dinghy surrounded by a circle of gasoline-covered water.

Travis lights the gas and it blows up real good — a Lake of Fire! (Well, an ocean if you want to be technical.)

Of course, this is “Dexter,” so blowing him up only means blowing him out of harm’s way to ponder, before the credits roll, “How did I get so lost?” Dude, let us count the ways.

What we see is Travis, enraged at his one-time teacher — guilty of nothing more evil than sleeping with hot TAs — for not becoming a serial killing lunatic like himself. Gellar remembers things differently. “You killed me, Travis… then you stuck me in a freezer.” Oh, Edward James, how you can deliver a ripe line.

While Travis and his figment argue, Dexter’s ghost Dad Harry (James Remar) shows up to offer running commentary. It’s pretty droll, funny stuff introducing a major theme: maybe Dexter really was made, not born this bad. Accordingly, Hall’s performance is shaded in ugly shades of understandable wrath.

And that season-long God thing? Dex dispenses with it thusly: “From now on I’m only putting my faith in myself,” just as Lehmann cuts to Dex’s sister Debra (Jennifer Carpenter), the person he should be putting his faith in.

Deb’s own self-growth becomes analogous to separation from her only living family member and maybe her job. No wonder she’ll suffer an epic panic attack. More on that later.

Most of the time, this episode is forward motion with character-revelation pit stops — Dexter searches for Travis, while Travis looks for new acolytes, settling for blog-site fans Doomsday_Adam and his wife Beth (Jordana Spiro), both jobless and crazy.

Meanwhile, the Miami P.D. learns that Travis’ latest atrocity will be about a plague of poison called wormwood. And when Deb has that panic attack I mentioned, it’s Dexter’s presence and not a fistful of Ativan that cools her out. This is an important detail.

Then the despicable Laguerta (Lauren Vélez) shows up to be hateful and inept and to cover up for what turns out to be the carnal involvement of Matthews — the mucky-muck who promoted Deb — in The Dead Callgirl Case.

Meanwhile, Dexter believes that it was his actions that allowed one girl, Holly, to escape Travis’s brand of Bible-based installation-art murder.

Turns out, Holly was a rich jerk’s sex toy — class resentment is all over this episode — which makes saving her a real pain. Also, Dex has to stop Travis from enacting “wormwood,” whatever that is.

And then, a beautifully crafted scene. It’s Dexter walking in frame, pausing, and out of frame as Deb reads a report about Travis (but Dexter doesn’t know it’s about Travis). She says he had “violent tendencies since childhood… a lack of empathy… a master manipulator with delusions of grandeur.” She frowns. “So weird… his sister seemed so convinced he was a good guy.”

Dexter says with no particular emphasis, walking out of frame into a dark room, “Maybe she didn’t know” and “Anything’s possible…”

And then we’re in the darkened room of Deb’s shrink (Rya Kihlstedt). Deb recalls having nightmares, laying on the floor next to her sleeping brother’s bed and finding solace there. The shrink gently tries to get her to see that she’s come to associate absence with comfort. The episode is kicking dramatic ass softly.

Travis, meanwhile, has easily talked Doomsday_Adam and Beth into becoming God-loving murderers. And so at Holly’s boyfriend’s yacht, the terrible trio serves up what is this season’s most terrifying, terrible moment, no question.

In one take, and with the couple helping hold Holly down, Travis just slits her neck and watches her bleed.

Lehmann deftly cuts to a classic black-and-white cartoon as a bumper between the Holly atrocity and the next tame scene. It’s dark humor, to be certain, but it still respects what has just happened, as opposed to the glued together shot-list approach that’s made so much of this season so artless and uninvolving.

Louis and Dex’s nanny Jamie (Aimee Garcia) are readying for a date, which is really about Louis cornering Dexter for approval for the serial killer RPG he’s been creating.

The show rings the bell of choice again — why, Dex wonders, would anyone choose to play at being what he is? In so many words he tells Louis to piss off and am has anyone else gotten the sense that the show is suggesting that Louis might have his own Dark Passenger?

Anyway — Dex gets to the yacht and finds someone in a silver HAZMAT suit carrying aluminum bottles. Dex tears off the mask and it’s Doomsday_Adam, who gasps, “Wormwood can’t be stopped!”

Back at Doomsday_Adam’s house, Angel (David Zayas) interviews Beth who totally promises her husband will give up his pro-murder YouTube apocalypse fixation when Travis knocks him out cold.

Beth freaks — he’s a cop! The law! Travis: “He doesn’t enforce God’s law!” Then he looks at Angel’s Miami police badge and decides that’s where “God wants us to stage wormwood.”

At the yacht, Dexter finds Holly’s dead body hanging on the anchor. Also hanging is that argument with Harry about whether he had a choice to become a serial killer. This isn’t an abstraction; this is the only thing for Dexter.

And then Dex finds the ingredients for poison gas — wormwood — as in poisoning all of Miami. Holy to-be-continued, Batman.

So yes, it’s been meek, mild, incest-crazed Travis all along. And forget the utter physical impossibility of his crimes; this is “Dexter,” dude, where logic and geographic implausibility have disappeared like First Amendment rights at an Occupy Wall Street march.

It’s also a show that’s split into three totally discrete organisms.

There’s the mordant black comedy about an increasingly unlikely/unlikeable yet awesome Dad and spiritual serial killer (Michael C. Hall). And there’s another “Dexter,” a lowbrow comedy which skirts the line of racial and gender stereotyping.

Finally, in another universe entirely, there’s a serious show about a real person, Dex’s non-biological sister, Debra Morgan (Jennifer Carpenter). Increasingly, “Dexter” is really about Deb, her separation from her brother, her childhood, and her own limitations yet tentative-but-determined growth.

As “Get Gellar” opens, Dexter is obsessing over the idea that he can still use Brother Sam’s Bible teachings to save Travis from becoming a full-blown serial killer. (Apparently, with only three kills to date, Travis is still only partially blown.)

As you’ll recall, “Dexter’s” plots have been increasingly powered by a device I’ve dubbed “Miracle Clue.” Miracle Clue is like having a character fall out of a spaceship, say “Wow, it would be outstanding if I had a spacesuit!” and find one right in front of them next to a rock, along with the PIN for the bad guy’s nuke. Except “Dexter’s” have been even less believable.

This week’s use of Miracle Clue was… hilarious.

Dexter and Travis are talking about what they assume will be Gellar’s next murderous installation artwork, the “Bowls of Wrath.” Dexter just happens to notice “2LOT” written in the painting. He rifles through the 50 odd manuscripts, books, and papers and one at random, thumbs through it and accidentally finds a parking stub that says “2LOT.”

Oh, it just gets better.

Dex apparently then does a computer search that brings him to the University of Miami and a web page that has to do with the Second Law of Thermo Dynamics. A couple clicks, and he locates a world famous scientist/atheist who Dexter immediately figures is Gellar’s next victim — because “2LOT,” “Bowls of Wrath” and atheism just go together like… well, they don’t go together at all, but the show insists.

Now for some random observations, because at various junctures, especially when the narrative is building up steam, the writers randomly cut to the following. Why, I have no idea:

Masuka (C.S. Lee), the show’s resident pervert, teaches his intern Louis (Josh Greene) how to win over Jamie (Aimee Garcie), Dex’s nanny. “When it comes to matters of the heart always follow your dick.” And thank you, Masuka.

Quinn (Desmond Harrington) and Angel (David Zayas) go to a hot stripper’s house to find the gun Quinn left in her car after a long night of drinking. Except it’s not with the hottie — it’s with her fat mom! Because fat women are hilarious! Then they man-fight on a lawn regarding the size of their real and metaphorical testicles. There’s more stuff like this but I’m done — it’s too depressing.

And now  —show three. Deb in therapy. Seriously, does Showtime offer insurance for writer whiplash? Anyway, Carpenter hits everything outta the park. When the therapist notes that her problem is that she sees tables and kept trying to make them into chairs, Deb resists, but seeing a usable metaphor, you see the excitement grow at a new way of thinking. When she runs into Dexter she practically glows: “I get it, you’re a chair.”

Deb’s not mean, she’s just working this growth thing out. Process is fascinating to watch. Give this woman a show, already.

As for Dex and Travis — they play cat and mouse trying to find Gellar, who at this point is pretty obviously Not Real.

Meanwhile, the Miami P.D. locates The Doomsday Killer’s latest victim and yes, it is the Bowls of Wrath and yep, the victim is that atheist scientist (is there any other kind?).

He’s laying on a stage, missing a hand, his belly burned with Doomsday’s Alpha-Omega logo and emptied of innards. But it seems that “Gellar” is a big “Carrie” fan; while mucking about his body cavity, guts and blood rain gruesomely down on all assembled.

Wow! Gross, right? Show’s really building some steam, yeah?

Yeah… it is. Deb steam! Back at police headquarters, Captain Laguerta tells Deb not to open The Dead Callgirl Case. I’m not being obnoxious — she calls it that. Remember when Laguerta was a textured, fascinating character? Not anymore. Deb tells her to stuff it.

Dexter, meanwhile, is freaked at being called a chair. He tries to smooth things out with Debra. No can do. “I don’t want a chair,” Deb says, “I want a table.” Dexter finally has the brains to look frightened. He’s losing her.

Unfortunately, season six randomness kicks in, as everything stops on a dime so we can watch Louis show off his cool hipster digs to Jamie. Seriously.

Then, finally, as if the show runners were annoyed they even had to get to it, we get the big reveal.  Travis looks dead. He isn’t. Dex chases “Gellar” around the church. He finds a door in the floor, opens it, and right there — a refrigerator. And inside — Gellar, frozen in his cardigan. Boo.

Only time will tell. As for this episode, well, it’s occasionally quite good, and as anyone who’s visited this space knows, “quite good” and “Dexter” are an equation that usually ends with “Debra Morgan” (Jennifer Carpenter).

The episode was explicitly Deb-centric, with the “Sins of Omission” referenced in the episode’s title committed by her brother Dex.

Even as he apologizes for not coming clean about last week’s jaunt to Nebraska, which Deb assumes was mainly motivated by Dexter’s grief over Brother Sam’s death, Dexter has to lie about actually wanting to kill the Trinity Killer’s son (aborted) and shafting a redneck with a pitchfork (accomplished).

Deb grudgingly quasi-forgives him, moves on to the Doomsday Killer, and the Miami P.D.’s discovery that two people are involved. Which reinforces Dex’s conviction that Travis is still having second thoughts about a serial killer career path. Which suggests Travis may be amenable to Brother Sam’s biblical teachings. Which will prove to Dex that there is light in his soul. Next up: “Homicide Rehab With Dr. Drew.”

Cut to Travis in high spirits, thinking he’s free of Gellar. But the old freak shows up to caw, “God’s will doesn’t stop just because you want to play house with your sister!”

And then down by the sea, something extraordinary happens — Michael C. Hall acting really badly.

You’d think Hall could Dexter in his sleep. But here at Brother Sam’s seaside wake, Hall must, by sheer willpower, portray an entire multi-verse of Dexters: the heartless killer, the God-seeking, terrific dad, the face-slicing body-chopper, the loyal brother and friend. The result looks like Hall’s face is suffering a self-inflicted neurological disorder.

Eventually, Dex meets up with Travis and with the help of some Scripture, talks him into letting him deal with Gellar his own way. But first, Travis says he needs to get his sister up to Pensacola. To get her safe. That Dex accepts this on face value instantaneously dumbs this episode down 30 percent.

Worse is the mood-melting padding that’s edited willy-nilly. We suffer through a drunken Quinn getting shouty at a strip bar, through the entirely irrelevant Case of the Naked Prostitute (that just serves to add corruption to the unpleasant character traits of the once lovely Captain LaGuerta), and a date with intern (Josh Cooke) and Dexter’s nanny (Aimee Garcia) overseen by Angel (David Zayas) as the squinty-eyed, cartoon chaperone.

Anyway, back to Deb. Via the miracle-clue plotting style favored of late, Deb sifts through Miami’s population of 362,470 people and in an hour locates and interviews Travis’ sister.

A moment later, thanks again to Miracle-Clue, Travis bikes by exactly in time to see Deb take off her jacket/reveal her gun.

Gellar knocks Travis out with what looks like a hockey stick.  And after some of that stuffing we mentioned, Dexter and the Miami P.D. discover The Doomsday Killer’s Whore of Babylon ‘tableau’ in a school playground. If you ask me, it’s not his best work — very basic Black Metal Album Cover 101.

A dead naked woman sits on some dead alligators wearing a Satan head with Alpha/Omega signage on her belly and letters written in blood on her belly.  The victim is Travis’ sister. Stuck to her body is Deb’s Miami P.D. card. Behind her are curtains that, thanks to Miracle-Clue, give Dexter directions to the Travis/Gellar church.

This leads to scene where Travis is chained to the church floor and Professor Gellar scolds him, saying that his sister talked to the cops, that she betrayed him, “just like the whore of Babylon!” Like a “SNL” parody of a horror movie, the camera pulls back as Travis screams, “What did you do to my sister?” and when he finds out, “Noooo!”

Abruptly, the show performs a 180 and it’s like we’re “In Treatment” as Deb talks to her therapist and the writers save their best work for the show’s most dynamic character.

Ultimately, Deb is about the other side of familial trauma, about the person who suffers for her sanity, and will inevitably lose the one she loves when she’s no longer sequestered from his monstrosities And so late innings “Dexter” always teeters on the edge of endgame. Which is why everything either feels like a retrenchment — last week’s fine, but retro entry — or a formality.

“I think she knew something was up with him,” Deb says to the doctor and it takes a minute to realize she’s talking about Travis’ dead sister, not Dex. “I think she was trying to protect him…which is what a good sister does.” Pause. “And then he ends up killing her.”

Later, Deb makes Dex a luxe dinner but he bails on her again and she just loses her shit. “I am just trying to have a conversation with you!” she screams. “Is that so fucking hard?”

But for Dex it’s all about looking for Gellar at the church of horror.  Travis, still in chains, says Gellar murdered his sister. “I’ll help you kill him,” Dexter vows, thinking that in doing so, he’ll take away one bit of darkness.

But all he’s really doing is getting one step closer to breaking the heart of the one person who loves him — while chasing shadows with a lunatic in a rotting, decommissioned church.