Sometimes "Dexter" needs to take a brief break from the constant barrage of horror and inject some humor into the maniacal parade.

Last night, that long-needed humor came in the form of Dexter's newly perfect neighborhood, and with a new enemy - a potentially teenage vandal wreaking havoc on everyone's lawn and ornamental fixtures, and pretty much anything else one can vandalize.

Normally, this wouldn't even draw Dexter's attention, he prefers monsters of a more bloodthirsty variety, but with post-concussion syndrome rendering him unable to drive, he takes something of a 'Rear Window' fascination with the local vandal, feeding his dark passenger if only for a moment.

Of course, there's still a much more heinous monster at large as The Trinity Killer has claimed his second of three victims by forcing a woman to jump to her death by threatening the rest of her family, asserting supreme control over his victim. After the plunge we see him crying 'Momma' and spreading a touch of her ashes next to the scene. Later on, he's seen sitting alone next to an urn and pouring a drink for whomever those ashes used to belong.

This left a lot of crucial evidence about Trinity - he always kills in threes and this tortured maternal scene points to tragedy earlier in his life. Lundy told us that the three killings are always the same: a young woman slit in a bathtub, a middle-aged woman plunging to her death, and (not yet) a man bludgeoned to death. Prediction: Trinity's entire family (sister, mother, father?) died in these same ways early in his life and he's spent his whole murderous career reenacting those three deaths as a form of catharsis.

Image © CBS/Showtime

But that's for later, there's still the matter of Dexter to focus on. And how he's so overwhelmed by his Dark Passenger that he cannot take ten days off to rebuild what's starting to become a tenuous mask that he shows the world. As soon as the vandal pops up, Dexter goes into a comic sort of ninja mode as he dons a mask and head flashlight (of the coalminer variety) and takes off to prowl the neighborhood to stop this suburban terrorist before the neighborhood watch can.

It all seems a bit silly at first, but as soon as he confronts the criminal (a jilted dad who just lost his job) we see why Dexter was so intent on acting afool in his quest for an end to graffiti. He morphs into something of a cross between Freddy Krueger and Christian Bale's Batman circa 'The Dark Knight' during the confrontation, letting that bloodlust seethe, if only through a dominant fistfight and cryptic warnings of taking the man's head away in a bag.

Yes, no matter how hard Dexter tries to appear the doting househusband in an idyllic suburban setting, he cannot run away from his dark passenger, and when forced into a bit of a stasis, he'll do whatever he can to satiate his sinister thirst.

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Story by Andrew Payne

Starpulse contributing writer