Dexter 3.06 "Si se puede!"

Tonight on Angel- the sergeant continues his attempt to woo the sexy vice cop, but finds out that she has a few “tricks” of her own.

No?

How about this:

Tonight on Maria- will the Lieutenant have to burn an old flame when she finds out he might be abusing his power?

Let's try again.

Tonight on Rita- unwittingly dating a serial killer can be murder but could a new job in real estate be right up Rita's alley?

What's that? Oh, the show's called Dexter? Nobody cares about these supporting characters and their tangential subplots that (so far at least) don't tie in to the story arc of the season? Well, tough titty. Even 12 episode seasons require a certain amount of wheel spinning and after a Dexter-heavy episode like last week's it was pretty much inevitable that we'd have to dutifully tag along as each of the peripheral characters' yawn-inducing stories inch ever closer to, well, wherever they're going. We saw a good bit of the lieutenant in this episode which once again proves my theory that the quality of an episode of Dexter is inversely proportional to the amount of screen time Maria gets.

Picking up from last week's bombshell revelation that Miguel knows the truth about Dexter and approves wholeheartedly, Dex spent most of the episode trying to come up with a situation so distasteful that Miguel would be dissuaded from his budding career as an accessory to murder. Miguel continually called his bluff and by the end of the show has pulled enough strings that Dexter finds himself with full access to an incarcerated claw hammer killer. Dexter still isn't sure what to make of all of this, but he's tentatively letting himself enjoy having a friend who shares in his hobbies and fills in Harry's old role as a Charles Bronson-esque Jiminy Cricket, assuring him that what he's doing is actually for the greater good of society and not just him getting indulging his sick and demented urges.

On the Skinner front, the kid Debra interrogated last week was found sans a large part of his epidermis. She begins to suspect (as our astute commenters did a few weeks back) that Miguel's brother Hector might be involved. According to TV rules, there's a high probability that she's correct because, let's face it, one way or another we all know she's coming out of this season with a badge. She also has another run-in with the Internal Affairs cop, who apparently does nothing all day but follow Debra around and try to get her help by being really obnoxious. Deb's finally had enough and tells the equally obnoxious Quinn that IA's asking questions about him, which he claims is a personal vendetta.

All in all, a fairly ho-hum episode, although I imagine it'll play a lot better on DVD sandwiched between last week and next week's show. So far, this season has set up a pattern of alternating great episodes and 'meh' episodes. If the pattern holds, next week we're due for a good one. That means no Maria. Or even better, a skinless Maria. We can dream, right? Si se puede!