The Kill Room Where It Happens
Season 10
Episode 8
Editor’s Rating
4 stars
****
Batista tries to get into a cat-and-mouse game with the Bay Harbor Butcher, only to get severely outclassed by Dexter.
Photo: Zach Dilgard/Paramount+ with SHO
In my last recap, I wondered if Dexter Morgan had a favorite Taylor Swift song. This week, I’m questioning whether or not he’s seen Hamilton. I’m leaning toward no, but he does have enough cultural awareness to at least misquote it when he remarks, via voice-over, “I’m not gonna ruin my shot.” It’s a cute in-joke in an episode that’s at least partially indebted to Lin-Manuel Miranda — just look at the title, “The Kill Room Where It Happens.” While Dexter himself might not appreciate the reference I’m about to make, Batista is emerging as an Aaron Burr–like figure to the Bay Harbor Butcher’s Alexander Hamilton, a deeply devoted hater who doesn’t believe the world is wide enough for both men to exist.
As the episode opens, Batista is actively tracking Dexter thanks to his AirPod ruse, and he is in luck because Dex is preparing to strike. His next target is Al, the only other surviving member of Prater’s serial-killer club and an obvious fit for the Code after the real-life found-footage horror film he screened last week. Dexter will have to act quickly, though, because Al is leaving New York tonight. “It’s a little earlier than I planned, but to be honest, these little gatherings have lost their luster, what with all the deaths,” he confides. They agree to a good-bye dinner after Al sees Hamilton, but if all goes as planned, Al will end up with a knife in his heart instead of at a Times Square restaurant. (Personally, I can’t decide which sounds worse.) Dexter finds a temporarily closed wig shop that he’ll use to remind Al of his crimes — I guess there are enough ponytails to do the trick — and preps his kill room. When Batista observes Dex stepping outside of his usual routine, he follows the blinking dot to midtown. By the time he gets there, however, Dexter is already on the move again.
If he wants to be able to hoist Al onto his kill table, Dex realizes he needs to deal with his spiking shoulder pain, so he enlists Joy for some more acupuncture. She doesn’t seem very good at it — it’s not supposed to hurt when the needles go in — but she’s also distracted by the fight she had with Blessing about moving across the country with her boyfriend. Dexter points out that Blessing is in an especially tender state after losing his mother, particularly because she was the person who rescued him from being a child soldier. This is the kind of information I might hesitate to share, but not our Dexter. He’s surprised to discover that Joy had no idea about her father’s past in the Revolutionary United Front, and she ends up leaving in tears. Blessing made it clear he wanted to keep the darkness separate from his family, something that Dexter should have been more sympathetic to, since it’s been his own struggle for as long as this show has been on the air. While he contemplates his massive faux pas, Harrison calls to meet up. Dexter will be cutting it close if he still wants to kill Al, but he can’t say no to his son. “Keeping my killing life separate from my personal life is difficult when my personal life keeps calling asking for help,” he reflects.
Over a meal at the Times Square Applebee’s (literal hell on earth), Harrison expresses his own regrets about speaking out of turn. Confronting Vinny, the landlord, when he was babysitting Dante, didn’t do anything to fix the black mold situation. In fact, Vinny has turned the heat off in retaliation, and Elsa has nowhere else to stay because Prater’s upcoming police gala has the hotel booked solid. Dexter offers to try talking to Vinny, reasoning that his law-enforcement background might persuade the landlord to change his act. But although Dex swears that he has no intention of murdering Vinny, it’s pretty clear he’s looking for any excuse to do so. After dinner, he does some research on the landlord’s bad behavior, looking at reviews from his tenants. “While Al learns about Hamilton the statesman, I can learn about Vinny the landlord,” he reasons. And there’s plenty of bad out there — including a news story about a faulty railing giving way and causing a woman’s death. Killing him would still be a stretch, but it’s a delight watching Dexter try to talk himself into it. How many tenants has Vinny thrown out on the street in potentially deadly cold, he wonders. When Harry points out that he’s reaching, Dex responds with a very funny “eh.” I also laughed at his explanation that while, yes, he’s trying to separate his family life from his murder life, “Vinny fitting the Code would really streamline things.”
And Dexter is going to have to find someone to kill, because the Al plans fall through. Turns out Al didn’t realize Hamilton was a rap musical — this is the most unbelievable thing that’s happened all season, incidentally — so he bailed at intermission and is already driving back to Wisconsin. He turns down a desperate Dexter’s suggestion to meet on the road (perhaps in Weehawken?), and politely declines to share anything more about his real life before throwing his Prater-supplied phone out the window. Rapunzel will walk free, and Dexter now has no way to track him down. Plus, Dex is murder horny! Is it any wonder he decides to kidnap Vinny and take him to the wig-shop kill room he’d already prepared for Al? For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t call this a well-thought-out plan. Earlier in the day, Dexter did try to talk to Vinny sans violence, but being seen barging into the landlord’s office a few hours before his disappearance is only going to reflect poorly on Dex in the event of a police investigation. Let’s not forget that he also assured Harrison he would not be serial killing his way out of the Elsa apartment problem. Ah, well, nobody’s perfect.
Vinny wakes up on the kill table and immediately begins pleading for his life, but Dexter is going off script. “I’m here for your tenants,” he growls, his face obscured by a stocking. “This is the end of you ignoring their pleas.” It does seem like Dex really just wants to torture Vinny into being a better person instead of killing him, which I guess counts as progress? He holds a knife to the landlord’s neck and repeatedly suffocates him (just a little!) to mimic the feeling of not being able to breathe from a black-mold-induced asthma attack. “If you don’t start doing right by your tenants, I’ll be disappointed,” Dexter warns just as Batista begins to break in. Yes, Ángel has followed his AirPods back to midtown and finally clocked the wig shop as the perfect place for the Bay Harbor Butcher to assemble a kill room. Once inside, however, he’s knocked over by a fleeing Vinny, who shoves him with an “Out of my way, you cocksucker!” Sounds like a changed man to me. Dexter, meanwhile, is nowhere to be seen. After nearly being caught, he smartly searches his car and finds the AirPods, angrily crushing them to the tune of Danzig’s “Long Way Back From Hell.” In short, Batista has accomplished nothing, and he’s lost his only way of keeping tabs on Dexter.
But wait, there’s a kill room in the wig shop! This is exactly the proof Batista has been looking for to show that the Bay Harbor Butcher is still active, as he excitedly shares on a call to Wallace. When she and Oliva arrive on the scene, though, they’re not quite so convinced by the plastic-wrapped table and display cases. There’s no body and no Dexter. Besides, the Bay Harbor Butcher didn’t make a habit of letting his victims go free. Batista — who has already fessed up to tracking Dexter without a warrant — makes the added mistake of asking if the detectives think he put up all the plastic himself. “Strange that you should say that, is it not, Captain Batista?” Wallace replies. Perhaps Dex’s heavy implication that his former colleague was too unstable to be taken seriously actually worked. It certainly doesn’t help matters that Wallace’s investigation into the Bay Harbor Butcher leads her to Joey Quinn, who shares some startling information: Batista abruptly retired as captain, which means he’s no longer active law enforcement at all. Last week, I chastised Dexter for underestimating the Batista threat, but the ex-cop is now at a distinct disadvantage.
Of course, there’s another significant threat to worry about. Early in the episode, we see that the tension between Prater and Charley has not abated — he trusts “Red” completely, while Charley smells a rat. “It’s not just that everything went sideways when Red joined,” she explains. “I don’t have a good feeling.” Her employer snaps back, “I don’t fucking care about your feelings, Charley.” What could her theory possibly be, Prater demands? That Red somehow infiltrated the group he was invited to, murdered Lowell, got Mia arrested, and orchestrated a fight with Gareth? Well, yes, exactly, but Charley admits the real problem is she doesn’t know enough about Red and might have missed something. Her job is to keep Prater safe, and he coldly suggests that she do so. I’d almost forgotten about those two as the episode wrapped up with something close to a happy ending. Dexter and Harrison enjoy a steakhouse meal (a step up from Applebee’s), and Harrison reveals that Vinny had a change of heart and is making all the needed repairs to Elsa’s apartment. Dexter’s scared-straight program is more effective than I’d imagined! Just then, Prater approaches the table. “Red, I didn’t know you have a son,” he says to Dexter, who is stunned into silence. Outside, Charley looks pleased with herself. She’s very good at her job.
• It’s almost hard to express just how careless Dexter has been. I don’t even mean the Vinny situation, though I still think that was misguided. I’m talking about pretending to be Red while also living a public life and working in New York under his real name, as if a billionaire and his terrifying right-hand woman wouldn’t be able to put the pieces together easily.
• If we’re calling out carelessness, I’m also going to shake my finger at Blessing for sharing his deepest, darkest secret with someone he’s known for all of two weeks. “You betrayed me,” he tells Dexter, but I have to believe he’s mad at himself, too.
• Harrison and Gigi go on their first date and have sex, which would be cute if I could bring myself to trust a character who showed up in the seventh episode with a mysterious arm injury. I’m not sure what to make of Gigi yet, but I like this commenter theory.
• When Wallace is researching the Bay Harbor Butcher, she comes across news of Captain Aaron Spencer’s disappearance. Once again, I’m asking Dexter: Resurrection to stop referencing Original Sin so much, especially this particular plot point, which drove me crazy at the time.
• More great needle drops in this episode. Aside from Danzig, we hear “Personality Crisis” by the New York Dolls, and “Paper Trails” by Darkside. Nothing from Hamilton, sadly.
• I kind of love it, so please don’t read this as a complaint, but Harry has become such a bitch in his ghost old age. “Way to go, Dex,” he says after Dexter reveals Blessing’s secret. Later, he tells his son, “You’ve been irritable ever since Al got away. Is this your version of hangry?” Drag him, Harry!
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