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Dexter faces a spotlight on his nocturnal activities when faced with a new Neighborhood Watch forming in his neighborhood.

Some of the best moments in the Dexter series are when Dexter (Michael C. Hall) is trying to fit it or pretend to be human, and the often humorous results of his effort to blend in. This episode opens with Dexter behind the bar at that most quintessential of American institutions, the neighborhood barbeque. His obvious unease at trying to replicate the friendly camaraderie of the event is underlined when he pushes his stepdaughter Aster into the pool after he saw another partygoer do the same to another child, getting a laugh. Not so in Dexter’s case, mortally embarrassing the girl in front of a crush, making it a faux pas. As Dexter say to Aster as he apologizes, “Sometimes, I’m dumb”.

Someone who long ago seems to have lost connection with his human side is Dexter’s nemesis for the season, “The Trinity Killer”, played to icy perfection by John Lithgow. Trinity shows that inhumanity and lack of empathy when he commits his latest murder by forcing the soccer mom he had befriended in the last episode to drive them to an isolated area where he takes her to the second story of a building and giving her the choice of jumping to her death, or him visiting her children after she dies anyway.  she falls, dying, but in such a way as to give the appearance of a suicide when the body is found when the police and Dexter are called in to investigate the crime scene.

One person who doesn’t believe it is a simple suicide is retired Special Agent Frank Lundy (Keith Carradine), the Robert Ressler-like criminal profiler, who believes she’s the second victim of the Trinity Killer’s pattern of crimes. The case which haunts him, is etched in a moving monologue he delivers to Dexter at the crime scene, where he talks about how he and the Trinity Killer aren’t really that far apart in their loss of connections with people in their life. Lundy’s speech underlines the old cliché of “don’t stare at the abyss too long, because after a while, the abyss stares back into you.” Dexter being the listener to this makes an ironic counterpoint.

This episode is all about the connections between people, there forming, dissolving, faking, costs, and rewards.  The other plotline running through this episode involves the vandalizing of the neighborhood that Dexter moved into in order to “blend in”. These incidents cause the neighborhood to form a Neighborhood Watch which serves to complicate Dexter’s nocturnal activities even more. Dexter resolves to find the culprit. He finally gets the chance to deliver some non-lethal justice for a change.

Fine character moments combine to make this solid episode a fine watch. The best shows use the small details to illuminate their characters in unexpected ways. The small things like the way Dexter’s wife Rita (Julie Benz) has gotten addicted to upbeat 80’s pop as her self-esteem has risen, or how C.S.I. Vince Masuka (C.S. Lee)  in an uncharacteristically non-douchebag-like way attempts to comfort Deborah (Jennifer Carpenter) about the love triangle between her, her new boyfriend, and old flame Agent Lundy.  The makers of Dexter are some of the best a character moments like these.  Hopefully with a few more episodes like this Dexter will regain the excellence of the first two seasons. I know I’ll be there to watch the battle of wills between Dexter and Trinity this season if it keeps up like this.

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