Dexter Season 4 Episode 4 Dex Takes a Holiday is a casebook study of how Dexter, the ethical serial killer, chooses, investigates, stalks, and finally kills his victims. If he were not a sociopath, Dexter would make a great detective.
Spoilers surely follow.
Dexter’s family if off for a three day jaunt to a relative’s wedding, leaving Dexter unimpeded by the responsibilities of fatherhood and husbandhood. He tells Rita that he has to work, which in a sense is true. But it is Dexter’s special work that keeps him at home.
The little voice in Dexter’s head, the one who shows up as Harry, is wondering whether Dexter really needs a permanent vacation from his family. Between his job and being a good husband and father, Dexter hard has time any more for his special work. But the fact is that everyone on occasion needs a vacation from one’s loved ones. The feeling of relief that Dexter feels when Rita and the children are gone is normal, not that Dexter knows normal.
In the mean time Officer Zoe Kruger, a handsome, kick-ass policewoman who might have been a candidate for Charlie’s Angels she is so good with a firearm were it not for the fact that she resolved her family issues by eliminating her family and making it look like a local drug dealer had done it. The drug dealer had subsequently died in a “gang related shooting.” How convenient.
Like many a murderer, Officer Kruger has made mistakes. The blood splatter pattern did not fit the narrative entirely. Zoe had worn gloves when she had done the shooting. The gloves, with the powder burns, were in the garbage disposal. Once having confirmed that she had taken out her husband and little girl, Dexter goes to work.
But Zoe proves to be a real challenge for Dexter, which makes her satisfying prey indeed. There is no question of finding her in a dark, isolated location and giving her the needle. In fact, she begins to stalk him and for Dexter that is better than sex. Zoe confronts Dexter in the men’s room of a convenient store and proposes to shoot him, claiming that he had stalked her to rape her. Dexter calmly explains, while the business end of a pistol is centimeters from various tender body parts, how that would look forensically. Dexter, perhaps because he is emotionally stunted, does not fear death as much as ordinary people do. In fact he seems to fear disclosure and what that would do to his loved ones more than his own death. A little ghost of empathy? Perhaps.
It turns out that Dexter must lure Zoe to him, to make her think that she is the hunter and he is the prey. This has never happened before in the series. Zoe is good at the killing business, but Dexter is better, and Zoe winds up on the table covered in duct tape and saran wrap. “So you’re going to rape me then kill me?” she opines, proving that she really has issues. “What is this about you and rape?” Dexter replies before penetrating her with a sharp, metal implement.
Dexter returns home just in time to clean things up before Rita and the kids come home. Dexter, as opposed to previous episodes, seems calm, sated. He has had time to enjoy the kill. Dexter even has the satisfaction of knowing that justice has been meted out in his special way. Dex has had a more wonderful holiday indeed.
Was Dexter really telling the truth when he said, “I missed you too?” Or is that just part of the role he is playing, to be the typical family man, hiding the monster within? That is the fun thing about Dexter; one sometimes does not know what he is really thinking.
And speaking of monsters, Trinity seems to have made the biggest mistake of his life. What Trinity appears to do at the end is a game changer for the Dexter story. If there is one person on Earth, besides his wife and children, that Dexter feels the shadow of affection for, it is his sister Debbie. Trinity is going to suffer. Oh yes. Thirty years of mayhem are about to be paid for. Trinity may be the most successful serial killer in history. But Dexter is younger, stronger, and has now a personal motive besides the urgings of his dark passenger.
Source Dexter, Dex Takes a Holiday, TV.Com
