Dexter 3.02 "Finding Freebo"

There are two things on Dexter's mind this week: finding Freebo and becoming a father. Finding Freebo, the dealer wannagee he intended to kill last week, involves staying one step ahead of the rest of the department using the only lead he's got: the corpse of Freebo's junkie girlfriend Teegan whose identity only he knows. He tracks her down to a sorority house where he gets the address of her off-campus “ho-pad” from some aspiring Girls Gone Wild. Incredibly, in the ho-pad he finds Freebo himself, naked in front of a computer. Not wanting a repeat of last time, Dex heads home to gather his supplies and set up a kill room where he is surprised by Rita, telling him that she wants to keep the baby.

Becoming a father is something Dexter is a little less sure about. He sees children as “bundles of uncertainty and germs” but even a serial killer has to admit that sometimes they can be cute. He still dhas to wonder what kind of father he would be and perhaps more pointedly, what kind of child he would produce. Rita gives him a possible way out in telling him that he can choose how much of a role, if any, he wants to play in the child's life. Judging by his conflicting emotions throughout the episode, it's a safe bet that we're going to see at least a bit of daddy Dexter. Which brings me to my one uncertainty about the future of the show.

In Season One, Dexter made it clear that his normal life was entirely a mask. He was an emotionless psychopath who was compelled to kill, and the only reason he killed “ethically” was due to Harry's Code. All of his personal relationships and normal human interactions were faked. Last season he went through a lot of changes and it seems like Season Three Dexter is a fairly normal guy who just likes to kill a bad guy every now and then. It's like somehow in rejecting the code he developed real emotions. It's too early to make any assumptions about how all of this is going to play out but I really don't want to see a neutered Dexter. One of the strengths of the show is that he's such a likable character that you forget that he is (or at least was) a psycho who only understands the difference between right and wrong on an intellectual level and would be quite capable of slitting your throat without the slightest tinge of remorse. If we only get good guy Dexter without any moments that make us feel guilty for rooting for him then he's really just a vigilante and a much less interesting character.

Speaking of less interesting characters, all the supporting cast did stuff. None of it was very important or noteworthy except for Debra learning Teegan's identity and refusing to take up scrapbooking, whatever that is. The episode ends with a suspiciously coincidental turn of events in which Miguel shows up at the ho-pad just after Dexter has stuck a knife in Freebo's neck. Dexter tells Miguel he killed Freebo in self-defense (by essentially describing how he killed Oscar) and Miguel is so touched he gives Dexter a big bloody hug and declares them BFFs forever. Can Dexter avoid being discovered now that someone knows his dark secret? Isn't this basically the same storyline as last season? Stay tuned to find out.