Last night, 'Dexter' finally dove into the question its been dancing around all season - How much of ourselves do we lose as we try to fit into a family?

Of course, this series explores that question in a way much different than other series would, as a brief respite from family life finds Dexter targeting a brand new victim - this one with a plight ostensibly similar to his. He goes after a cop who staged her murdering her family to make it appear the work of a drug dealer, and has been living free and clear ever since.

A short-lived freedom, of course, as a few loose ends she left untied drew Dexter's suspicion, leading to her eventual cellophane-wrapped death.

Before Dexter can make his final blade thrust; however, his newest victim explains to him the suffocation she felt at the hands of her family, how their murder was the only way she could forbid her figurative lungs from filling. She goes on to tell Dexter that he eventually he'll have to choose between himself and his family. Dexter denies this, but in a fit of momentary emotional collapse we see that Dexter may have known this all the while, and is actually afraid of that moment.

That's where the episode finds its climax, and also when its theme reaches its most insightful moment. It's not that just that Dexter knows that eventually his lifestyle clash will see his familial façade come to ruin, it's that he won't admit it to himself in this moment. It's this denial that the episode asserts we all live with. That we so divorce ourselves from what we really want in life in order to conform to what we assume society wants us to be, that we eventually blow over with self-loathing rage.

In this episode, however, it's not the journey Dexter takes that is the most memorable thing to take going forward. His sister, having done her own bit of self-admission and returned to Lundy in favor of Anton, finds herself in a pool of blood, a victim of a gunshot to the stomach as her senior lover lays murdered at her side.

Was the killer Trinity - who apparently found his bludgeoning victim in the person of a sleeveless man exiting a bar? Or maybe the Vacation Murders - a plotline that's just kind of existed, and is maybe ready to come to the forefront?

Image © Randy Tepper/Showtime

My money's on the latter, if only because Lundy's shirt-sleeve button down made him look exactly like the kind of small town rube who'd spend his vacation in Miami.

Bookmark our 'Dexter' News page & check back for regular episode recaps & news!


Story by Andrew Payne

Starpulse contributing writer