Dexter recap: Season 3, episode 7

“Easy as Pie”

The episode opens with Dexter (darkly) dreaming. He imagines Miguel walking in on him dismembering a body and wakes with a start. Friendship, he thinks, could become dangerous.

Meanwhile, Rita wants to make plans for the wedding, which they have to do quickly or her baby bulge will show. Dex is a bit befuddled at the idea of having a guest list, but he promises to comply.

At the station, Miguel brokers a deal with Maria about Ramon — instead of a big public mess with charges filed against the sheriff’s officer by Miami Metro, Ramon will quietly take early retirement. Ramon doesn’t look so keen on going quietly, but Miguel convinces him it’s the best option after Ramon’s extracurricular activities.

Dexter goes to see Camilla, the family friend who is dying of lung cancer. She’s moving into hospice care. Dex still hasn’t found her the perfect key lime pie, but he’s still looking. She gives him an old shoebox full of snapshots of Dex and his family when he was younger. Later, in a weak moment, she pleads with him to euthanize her because she’s in so much pain. She can’t do it herself, she says, because she’s Catholic. Dexter hesitates, because this killing definitely wouldn’t live up to the code. Camilla says she knows his secret. She knows his brother was the Ice Truck Killer. But if Dex kills her it would be different, she says, because it would be merciful.

In other killing news, Miami Metro’s latest case is the slaying of a college valedictorian during a break in. They use blood-spatter analysis of the killer’s sock-footed tracks and DNA testing to discover Albert Chung, who quickly becomes Matsuka’s nemesis. Chung apparently killed an old lady in a similar robbery incident earlier in the year. He’s making Asians look bad, Matsuka complains.

As Dex and Miguel become closer friends, Miguel has found a new target for their vigilante partnership. He wants Dex to kill Ellen Wolf, the defense lawyer he says gets all kinds of people off and therefore should be exterminated. Look at Chickie Hinds, he says. Look at Albert Chung. If Ellen hadn’t gotten him to walk on that last murder, he never would’ve killed his latest victim. Dexter, unsure that Ellen would fit his code, tells Miguel he’ll think about it.

Later, after observing Ellen and Miguel sparring over the terms of Chung’s surrender into custody, Dex determines that while Ellen may represent some very bad guys, she’s just doing her  job. He points out that while she gets some guilty men acquitted, she also has taken the cases of men who’ve been wrongly convicted of heinous crimes. She doesn’t fit the code. Miguel, who Ellen has accused of all kinds of unethical behavior including tampering with evidence, blows up at Dexter. Dex gathers up Rita and the kids, who’ve been hanging out with Sil in the other room, and spirits them home. He thinks his friendship with Miguel is over.

With few leads on the Skinner case (meaning none), the cops decide that the killer stalks his victims and since they’ve all had a connection to Freebo, the detectives decide to put the word out that Anton knows where Freebo is. Then they’ll put surveillance on Anton and use him as bait. Deb hates this plan. She soon rushes to find her informant and tells Anton he should get out of town.

Deb, it turns out, really needs a break in the investigation. She and Quinn think they have one when Wendell’s mother calls the station to talk. But when they go to her house, all she does is show them Deb’s card, which Wendell had in his pocket when he was killed. She acuses Deb of leading the killer to her baby boy. Quinn holds her back, but she looks like she’d beat Deb senseless if given the chance to vent her grief.
Angel is still trying to create a romance with Barbara, the vice cop. Their meal together went really well, but she keeps pushing his advances back into the friend zone. Angel tells her he’d really like more, but if being friends means he gets to spend time with her, he’ll take it.

Throughout the scenes at the station, Dex is trying to fill out his guest list for the wedding. Deb. Angel. Vince. Maria. The donut guy — he can’t remember his name. Quinn? Maybe. But he’s so tan.

Maria, frustrated with the way things went down between Miguel and Ellen, goes to visit Ellen to hear the unvarnished truth about ADA Prado. Ellen says Miguel is not nearly as virtuous as he appears and explains that she’s seen him manipulate investigations to get the results he wants. She also comes up with a way for Maria to catch Chung — simply by inviting him to a meeting at her office and letting Miami Metro keep a lookout posted.

Meanwhile, Rita has started work as Syl’s assistant. As they visit a home for sale, Syl reveals that Miguel has been really difficult to deal with lately. She asks Rita for advice and Rita says you never know what’s going on with men. Trying to comfort Syl, she talks about the rough time she and Dex went through the year before, but then she goes too far and accidentally tells Syl how Dex was using drugs (leaving out that he was also doing Lila last season).

Deb goes to Anton’s to lecture him about not leaving town. Anton thanks her for taking the risk she did in tipping him off that he was going to be Skinner bait. They get all emotional with each other, then start macking out. About time they gave in to the sexual tension that’s been building all season. But now Deb really needs another angle on the case, ’cause Anton says he ain’t goin’ nowhere.

Angel, distracted by a Barbara sighting, tells Deb it’s fine for her to do overtime on the case. He asks Barbara to be his guest at Dex’s wedding, being careful not to say she’s his date, but rather his “plus 1″. Barbara, totally blurring the boundaries of her “just friends” declaration, says yes and gives him a kiss.

Given free reign and a “metric ton” of coffee, Deb ends up finding a surprising new lead in the investigation. Going back over the crime-scene photos, she notices that the trees by each of the victim’s houses had recently been trimmed. Angel gives her props and asks for a list of all the city and private crews working on those addresses. Quinn looks pained, perhaps because Deb’s kicking ass (or perhaps because he’s the perp? Knowing the writers of this series, the Skinner isn’t gonna be some new character we meet at the end of the investigation. It’ll be someone we’ve been getting to know all season long.)

Deb doesn’t get to bask long in her success, though. Yuki Amado finds her and chews her out about trusting Quinn’s story that he and Yuki were involved and she’s out for revenge. Yuki says she’s been happily married for seven years — they’re working on their second kid — and that now Quinn’s gotten the investigation shut down. Quinn’s a bad dude, she says again (not giving any details, natch), glaring at Deb and then stalking off to IA.

Dexter takes Rita to the hospice to meet Camilla, who’s taking a turn for the worse. As Rita ministers to Camilla, Dex again considers why he’s unwilling to help his good friend end her life. He seems edging closer to a decision, but he’s not there yet.

Things have finally cooled down between Dex and Miguel, though. Dexter meets him for a beer, Miguel apologizes, and Dexter, overcome with that rare gift — feelings — asks Miguel to be his best man.

That settled, Dex starts thinking about what it means to be a good friend. Saying “no” to Miguel was hard, but it was also the right thing to do, and Miguel recognized that in the long run. Friends “do the hard thing” for each other, Dex realizes. It’s not easy for him to consider orchestrating Camilla’s death, but she’s done hard things for him. Resolved, he buys a final key lime pie and laces one piece with a lethal dose of poison. Before he feeds her the mercy pie, Dex confides in her that he killed his brother. She nods, then tells him goodbye the best way she can:  “You finally brought me the perfect pie.”