8.5 This Little Piggy The opening scene in which Vogel helped Debra and Dex come to terms with their love/hate relationship was heavy on metaphor. Vogel’s increasingly maternal role in their lives played out like a family spat with her playing arbiter to a sibling rivalry. Last week I proposed the notion that Vogel is Dexter’s mother, garnering much derision. But while that might not be literally true, it’s becoming their relationship, and in this story that concept was further expanded to include Debra. The family theme was also worked through the two subplots. One in which Vince quite rightly feels the need to find out more about his unexpected daughter, and the other where a rich kid killed daddy’s home help. The first story was lovely, because we get far too little Masuka, and C.S. Lee is a very fine actor, who can move smoothly from the pervert version of his character to a more nuanced one I enjoyed here. The highlights of this story were undoubtedly those involving Charlotte Rampling, who was quite breathtaking as Dr. Evelyn Vogel. Her fear and disorientation when her abduction hood came off was palpable, and the terror of ‘little piggy’ sequence genuinely made my skin crawl. Perhaps I have sensitive feet, or I’ve stubbed my toes too many times, but my empathy with Vogel was total. Then, just when you think she’s going to be mutilated, Vogel plays a masterstroke of becoming the mother that drove Yates crazy. Exciting stuff, and brilliantly executed by Rampling. The only problem with this whole sequence was the general assumption at the end that Yates was the Brain Surgeon, which he’s most certainly not. His MO was entirely different, and while he bore the scars of that type of surgery, there are only limited ways to access the deeper parts of the brain. I’m sure Vogel knows that the Brain Surgeon isn’t dead, and she’s manipulating Dex and Debs for all she’s worth, mimicking how she manages to still have fully connected toes. For those who aren’t keen on this season, I can see that the swing from Debra trying to kill Dexter to where their relationship is at the end is quite a stretch. It probably is completely unrealistic, though I’m also confident that Debra’s issues with Dexter are likely to surface again before we’re done. Over the many seasons of Dexter, where I like the show most is when it’s poised to go in a direction that I’m not anticipating, and thankfully, I think this story brought us to that place. Read Billy’s review of the previous episode, Scar Tissue, here. Please, if you can, buy our charity horror stories ebook, Den Of Eek!, raising money for Geeks Vs Cancer. Details here.
