What does it mean to be a friend? Or, more specifically, what does it mean to be a friend of a serial killer? Well, for one thing, you simply don’t ask him to snuff out your legal rivals. That’s just rude.
But that doesn’t stop Miguel from asking Dexter to off Ellen Wolf, the leftie-hippie lawyer who defended Chickie Hines. Miguel uses the classic “She gets murderers off so they can kill again†argument, which Dexter rightly rejects. Miguel, being a Prado, promptly blows his top — but the two make up by the episode’s end. They even come perilously close to what Dexter describes as a “man-hug.â€
But this episode — titled “Easy As Pie†and one of the best in the series history, we’d reckon — is smartly about friendship, loyalty, bonding, and reconciliation. LaGuerta snuggles up to Wolf. Angel accepts the fact that Gianna only wants to be friends, and in doing so, prompts her to start making out with him. (You go, “Fatistaâ€!) Deb sticks her neck out for Anton, the CI, who she’s come perilously close to making out with all season until, finally, they start making out. Clearly, the message is this: Good friends get a lot of action.
Most moving, though, is the end, literally, of the Dexter and Camilla story line. Dexter dispatches Camilla at her request, and not with a blade but with a slice of the world’s best Key-lime pie. Thus we bid adieu to the great Margo Martindale, who deserves an Emmy for this performance for, at the very least, Most Disturbing Death-Rattle Hacking Cough.
The only blemish this week is the reemergence of Amado, who pops up like the Lucky Charms Elf to tell Deb that, because of Quinn, a cop is dead. Here’s an idea, Amado: Stop being so damned (a) insulting and (b) cryptic, and maybe you’ll have better luck getting people to share their Lucky Charms with you.
As for the identity of the friendly neighborhood Skinner? The latest guess comes courtesy of our estimable colleague Emily Nussbaum: It’s Ciel Prado, Miguel’s wife. Think about it: She’s ruthless (a real-estate agent), hotheaded (she’s a Prado), and prone to saying things such as this, about Dexter’s supposed bad influence on her husband: “He’d be a problem I could actually fix.†Sure, it would be a bit absurd if she and Dexter wound up in a knife fight, but after an episode this good, the show’s earned itself a little leeway.