My Review of Dexter's 5x05: "First Blood"

Written by Tim Schlattmann
Directed by Romeo Tirone

Lumen: “You really want to get rid of me, don’t you?”
Dexter: “I want you to get on with your life.”

That may be noble and all of Dexter, but how is Lumen supposed to do that exactly? She can’t talk to her family, therapists or even the police about her attacks and Dexter won’t let her seek out her attackers and destroy. Plus he won’t properly deal with her as well. If anything, Dexter has made Lumen’s dilemma worse than it should be.

Underneath his own need for self preservation, he’s doing a lot of damage to the girl as well. Lumen needs to deal with her ordeal and Dexter needs to help her. Whether he likes it or not, he is the only person who actually can help Lumen and thanks to the end of this episode, he no longer will have a choice in denying her. That could be an odd blessing or an unmitigated disaster for the rest of the season.

I really don’t know what Lumen has been through mentally but like any viewer watching, I do have tremendous sympathy for her. She wants to kill the men who raped her and kept her against her will – can anyone actually blame her for that? Like Dexter however, Lumen came incredibly close to killing the wrong man this week – Boyd’s old cell mate. Here’s hoping any future mistakes are few and far between if she continues this path.

Dexter might have tried to prevent Lumen from opening up a dark passenger in her but she was pretty exhibiting signs of darkening with this episode though. The scanning at the airport, the extensive research she was trying to do. Lumen is definitely determined to get back on those who’ve hurt her.

Julia Stiles continued to do a fantastic job this week. I enjoyed all of her interactions with Dexter, even if they both were on the opposite side of the spectrum as well. It’s too late for Dexter in trying to stop Lumen, it’s now time for him to step up and help her. This should definitely be one hell of a partnership, right?

On a less exciting partnership front, Quinn is now resorting to bent cops to try and nail Dexter? I can’t determine if he’s just desperate or blindly reckless but either way, I really hope to god that this is another spectacular fail for Quinn because he’s doing very little to actually make me want him to catch Dexter out.

At least Doakes was slightly cleverer than Quinn and less of a bore as well. It’s interesting that this week both Dexter and Quinn made no effort to hide their mutual hostility towards each other in front of Deb. I also don’t imagine that Deb will be especially too happy when she realises that her new fuck buddy has an unhealthy interest in her brother.

The bigger question though, is whether or nor Quinn and his bent cop friend will actually succeed on getting anything incriminating on Dexter. Quinn was savvy enough to point out Dexter’s use for gloves and with Lumen around, it could also pique Quinn’s interest if he starts to do some snooping on the girl.

Speaking of snooping, Angel proved a painful point this week – don’t assume your wife is doing the dirt without proper proof first. Vague texts only led to Angel blundering into a sting operation in a seedy motel rather than a seedy affair. Even though he had a point about Maria’s secrecy, I actually don’t blame her for being mad at him.

In terms of the Santa Muerte stuff, the bodies pile up from the Fuentes brothers but we’re still no closer to finding them and apart from Deb figuring out that a symbol of an eye stood for a nightclub, little else progressed this week with the storyline unfortunately. Still, I did like the subplot with Masuka’s tattoo hobby and the tattooist, Michael Angelo is definitely a character I wouldn’t object to seeing again.

Also in “First Blood”

Lumen seemed to have a habit of spilling sugar all over the cafe table when she was nervous during her first scene with Dexter.

Lumen: “Every time you see me you look disappointed. Like you were hoping for an empty table.”
Dexter: “I still think you need to consider my advice.”

Was Dexter paying for Lumen’s hotel bills as well as the ticket to Minneapolis as well this week?

Deb (to Dexter, re Masuka): “Well good luck getting the midget porn off your hard drive. He might have shown it to me.”

Masuka: “This was a crisis of the soul, Morgan.”
Deb: “Don’t you have to have a soul for it to be in crisis?”

The tattooist, Michael Angelo was played by Katherine Moennig from The L Word and Deb had more chemistry with her in one scene than she has done with Quinn at all.

Harry (re Lumen): “She’s found a target.”
Dexter: “You don’t know what she’s planning.”
Harry: “If she keeps going this way, she’s gonna get herself killed. That or jail.”

Masuka: “Tramp stamp, I think I’m in love.”
Deb: “She’s into needles. Why don’t you show her your dick?”

Harrison’s been scratching other kids and Dexter this week. Contrary to what Dexter thinks, I’m not sure if he should be worried about Harrison turning into him just yet. Even Sonya didn’t seem worried about it.

Dexter: “See where this leads? It’s not too late. There’s still no blood on your hands.”
Lumen: “I just want to feel better. I want this to all go away.”
Dexter: “It will.”
Lumen: “I don’t see how it can.”

Dexter: “I’m sorry for ever thinking the worst, Harrison. You’ll always be my son. Whatever we have to face, we’ll face together, okay?”

Chronology: Not much time seems to have passed since “Beauty And The Beast” and this was also the third episode to tell us that Harrison was 10 months old.

“First Blood” wasn’t a bad episode but it’s one of the weaker ones we’ve had as well. Nothing really progressed all that much but at the same time, it didn’t feel like a wasted episode either, so that’s good, right?

Rating: 7 out of 10.