Remember Syl, the oh-so-wronged wife of Jimmy Smits’ D.A. Miguel Prado on last season’s Dexter? The lovely actress who played her, Valerie Cruz, is movin’ on to HBO. She’s been cast in the network’s vampires-lead-real-lives-too drama True Blood.

Her character, Isabel, is “an elegant Hispanic Vampire,” The Hollywood Reporter says. The recurring role ups the ante for Cruz, whose past roles include guest appearances on network fare such as Las Vegas, Grey’s Anatomy and Crossing Jordan.

She’ll also co-star with Cuba Gooding Jr. in the horror flick The Devil’s Tomb, a straight-to-DVD release from Sony. Cruz plays a CIA operative who bring Gooding Jr.’s character and his team of mercenaries to the aid of a scientist who makes a mysterious discovery under the dessert sands in the Middle East.

Image: Bauer-Griffin

Dexter Season 3, episode 10: “Go Your Own Way”

Air date: November 30, 2008 on Showtime

Miguel and Dexter’s relationship unravels even more on tonight’s episode, with Miguel blaming Dex for his troubles with Syl.

• Miguel, nervous and calculating, surprises Dex at a donut shop and tells him that the DA’s office is starting an ethics probe into Deb’s relationship with informant Anton. Miguel says he’ll keep an eye on it, as long as Dex keeps him posted on the Ellen Wolf investigation. (How blackmail attempt would really hold water, I don’t know. Remember how Quinn never filed the paperwork to make Anton a true CI? If that’s the case, what charges could the state file against Deb? Technically, Anton’s just a civilian.)
• In a surprise cameo, Jeff Lindsay , author of the Darkly Dreaming Dexter novels (pictured above with David Zayas’ Sgt. Batista), will appear half-way through the episode, playing a vice detective who guards a hospital room.
• Syl will stop by Maria’s, suspecting an affair between her husband and LaGuerta, since they were close back in the day.
• Deb will babysit Astor for Dex and Rita, who’ll unexpectedly meet Anton for the first time when they arrive to pick Astor up. Dex wants to know if Anton will be Deb’s guest for the wedding. Deb’s mortified because she has no idea where their relationship is heading.

Jimmy Smits really brings out the evil in Miguel Prado with abandon on tonight’s episode. Man, I wish we had more than one season with him!

Photo: Peter Iovino/Showtime

“About last night”

Scheduled air date: November 23, 2008

On the next Dexter:

• Ellen Wolf goes missing.
• Plans continue for Rita and Dexter’s wedding.
• With one kill together behind them, Miguel and Dexter must decide whether their “extracurricular activities” will continue.
• The Miami Metro squad discovers another Skinner victim.
• Dexter suspects Miguel of lying to him about how Miguel spent the night after they killed Fleeter.
• Maria reacts emotionally to some bad news.
• Miguel comes up with more ideas for “projects” with Dexter.
• Dexter visits a cemetery twice — once on the clock and once on his own.

Part of what makes Dexter such a terrific show is its mix of over-the-top action and its subtlety. In this video, series creator Clyde Phillips explains how that mix comes to be in Season 3, including why Jimmy Smits was the only actor he considered to play Miguel Prado and how Michael C. Hall was behind the season-opening scene in the dentist’s office. Check it out:

Hey y’all! It’s time for that excellent contest-palooza known as the Bloggy Giveaways Carnival. In honor of the event, we’ll be running a few contests at Showtime Fan this week, to pass along some of the cool stuff that gets delivered to our HQ.

First up: This awesome Dexter poster, created by artist Shepard Fairey to promote Season 3:

Entering’s easy — just add a comment on this post. The winner will be chosen at random after the contest ends on Friday.

Sorry, jet-setters: Because of shipping costs, this one’s open to U.S. residents only.

Want to up your chances of winning cool stuff? Check out even more giveaways at the Bloggy Giveaways Quarterly Carnival!

Image: Courtesy of Showtime

Hey Y’all. Showtime Fan reader Cynthia dropped me a note with this little tidbit I thought the rest of you might want to know:

The cast of Dexter will be on TV Guide Channel’s InFANity show tonight, at 8 p.m. Eastern. The episode synopsis says we can expect to see interviews with stars Michael C. Hall, David Zayas, C.S. Lee and Jimmy Smits. Also on tap: a look at how they make all that blood and gore look so real, courtesy of the props master and the special-effects coordinator.

Total must-see TV (with apologies to NBC). I don’t know about you, but I’ve already set my DVR!

Photo: Peter Iovino/Showtime

Ms. Jennifer Carpenter, a.k.a. the fearless and foulmouthed Debra Morgan on Dexter, has been chatting with the press as her horror film, Quarantine, kills at the box office (The reviews, not so much. But no worries, right? It took in nearly $16 million opening weekend — several mill more than it cost to make.)

Anywho, Jennifer mostly talked about the movie and it’s pseudo-documentary scares. But she also dished about Dexter and explained why she thinks fans like us should thank the show’s writers for bringing the Jeff Lindsay novels to such vivid life.

• The writers never get the credit they deserve, she told her hometown paper, The Louisville (Kentucky) Courier-Journal. Dexter has the best of the best creative minds, she said. “We hardly ever see them because they’re always locked up in some room, working.”

• They take risks. When she read the Dexter script, she thought it was one of the best she’d seen, Jennifer said. “I think I might have been the only one in Miami when we were shooting to the pilot that admitted to myself that it may not get picked up,” she told MovieHole. As she recalled, the show was innovative and challenging. “I really commend Showtime for giving audiences credit, to know that they — just because they see the show, they’re not gonna go do terrible things to their neighbor.”

• The writers are “secret superheroes,” toiling in the writers room for the good of the cast and the audience. At the end of each season, she told MovieHole, all of the cast members what to know what’s coming next. “This season is the best one so far. So whatever it is that people love about it, for all their many reasons, I think they’ll all be pleased.”

“The Lion Sleeps Tonight”

The episode opens with Dexter at the store with Rita and the kids shopping for groceries. As they run errands, Dex keeps thinking over his mixed feelings about fatherhood.

Dexter comes out of his reverie when he sees Astor talking to a stranger. The guy was looking for the Cheerios aisle, Astor tells Dex. But something doesn’t sit right with Dexter. One predator can always spot another, he thinks. Later, when they’re loading groceries into the car, Dexter takes down the guy’s license plate.

At Miami Metro, the detectives are stalled in their search for Freebo and their attempts to identify his deceased girlfriend, Teegan. Prado, trying to avoid any hint that Freebo’s dead by Dexter’s hand, tries to persuade Maria to slow down the investigation into his brother’s murder.

Read more

Dexter’s Julie Benz (Rita) and C.S. Lee (Matsuka) partied with their fans this weekend in Las Vegas. The stars hosted a shindig at Tao nightclub in the Venetian Hotel and Casino to celebrate the premiere of Season 3.

David Zayas (Batista) was supposed to attend, but red carpet pics of him were scarce. Still, Benz pulled off some major cleavage and Lee is in full shiny-shirt effect:

Wow! So, the season premiere sets up where we’re headed in the third year of our fascination with all things Dexter Morgan: sex, death (natch), birth (yikes!), and the breaking of Harry’s code. Oh, and more donuts.

After the unmistakable opening credits, we get close up of what appears to be one of Dexter’s super-sanitary kill labs. Turns out it’s actually the dentist’s office, where Dex is getting a cleaning. He and the dentist talk about the “killer summer” he had, and we see flashbacks to the Bay Harbor Butcher case, then leave the sterility of the dental office for a hot bedroom scene with Rita, who seems to have gotten over that whole Lila debacle.

As Dex later makes pancakes for Astor and Cody, Cody asks if Dex will go to Daddy Day at his school. Dex agrees, seeming pleased and a little surprised that Cody’s rebounding so well from his dad’s death.

Read more