TV Review: Dexter - "Love American Style"

Dexter Morgan, just like every other human on the planet, spends a lot of his time lying to himself. While most of us focus our self-delusions on our inherent goodness, Dexter ruminates on his self-imposed isolation from the rest of humanity. He likes to think he feels nothing, that he is incapable of feeling what other people feel. A large part of this was instilled by his foster father Harry, who saw Dexter as a tool through which he could, by proxy at least, vent his own frustrations.

In "Love American Style," Dexter is forced to wrestle with the lie that drives him: namely, that he is devoid of the need to connect emotionally. Up to this point, he's been portrayed mostly as a merry prankster of mayhem, his single-minded devotion to his craft deftly played for dark humor. In the subtext of the plot line, however, there's always been a thread devoted to Dexter's understandable sense of isolation. After all, it's not easy to maintain mainstream appearances when your avocation is acting as an avenging angel.

"Love American Style" brings that conflict to the fore, and takes the series into a more three-dimensional direction. Heretofore, the motives for Dexter's killings have been presented matter-of-factly — that one's a pedophile killer, this one's a snuff filmmaker, and so on. But with this episode, the series delves into the events that precipitate Dexter's grisly actions.

More importantly, it scrutinizes one of the vilest, darkest, and most overlooked aspects of illegal immigration — the ugly trade of human trafficking, as practiced by the smugglers known as coyotes. Coyotes smuggle illegals into the States, for a hefty fee. Often, these would-be immigrants are never seen again. "Love American Style" explores this issue with a typically Dexteresque solution.

When Rita asks Dexter to use his police connections to investigate the disappearance of a coworker's fiance, there is no doubt where the episode is headed. He immediately goes into Dexter the Stalker mode, and pieces together the evidence he needs to justify the coyote's untimely demise. Things get more complicated when he discovers at the last minute that the coyote's wife is the brains behind the scam. Together, they've drowned countless Cubans whose families could not pay the surprise transportation fee.

Woven through this main line are the subplots and themes that make Dexter compelling. Tucci, mutilated but recovering, is the one solid lead the cops have on the Ice Truck Killer murders. Doakes and Deb are assigned to interview Tucci as part of the investigation. While Doakes is typically all business, Deb bonds with Tucci on a more human level. Doakes cautions her to put emotions aside, and deal with the questioning on a purely professional level. But Deb has always dealt with everything on an instinctive level, and here, it goes into an empathic level.

Article Author: Ray Ellis

Ray Ellis is a freelance writer who has been dissecting pop culture and its effect on how we view ourselves for over twenty years, ruffling feathers and dragging unsuspecting pedestrians along for the ride whenever possible.

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