Dexter 5.03 “Practically Perfect” Recap

Photo by Showtime — © Showtime 2010

Deb and the officer she met on last week’s episode take a trip to talk to a local storeowner. She makes a comment that Deb didn’t believe what she said at the crime scene, but Deb says that they can’t rule anything out at this point. They speak with the man in the store but Deb is unhappy with his answers, but she decides to give him the night and then send the officer back tomorrow alone to speak with him again.

Dexter returns home to find the crib empty. No Harrison. No nanny. He immediately panics and calls her, but it goes right to her voicemail. He begins to blame himself for leaving Harrison with a stranger (‘Rita would have never allowed it’) but just then she returns home. She had taken him outside to get fresh air to make him drowsy, and didn’t answer her phone because her hands were full. She had even left a note on the fridge, but he didn’t think to look for it.

On their way out of work, LaGuerta turns to Batista and says “I want to know exactly what happened at the bar.” He tells her it’s settled and walks away, but she stops him and asks again. He then tells her that Sergeant Lopez was talking smack about her, as well as calling her his “sugarmomma” and complimenting her oral sex skills. “Then I hit him. He’s lucky that’s all I did,” he says.

Dexter and Deb share a beer on their porch. She talks about the case she’s working; he talks about how great the new nanny is. Cody called Dexter earlier and he sounded happier, but Astor wouldn’t come to the phone. She makes a comment about getting back into his routine to return to normalcy, and you can see it in his eyes that he’s looking forward to his kill the next day.

The next day comes, and he calls in a dead gator in the vicinity of his kill room, that way he and Fowler will get the call. Fowler picks him up, and the two of them head off for the day. Fowler tells Dexter he’s “a safety guy” and makes sure Dexter wears his seatbelt. He notices that Dexter’s wedding ring is off and mentions a divorce; Dexter says “it just didn’t work out.” Fowler tells him to listen to Jordan Chase’s “Take it Now” CD’s if he needs help getting through it.

At the station, Masuka sees Quinn looking at the sketches. He laughs and says “Justin Bieber. Not that I know who that is.” He walks away. Deb’s officer friend comes in to tell her that she went back and got a description of the two men who purchased the cult icons. Deb suggests that the man they found dead may have gone to the ATM to get cash because someone had his wife.

Fowler scraps a dead animal off the ground while Dexter wonders why it’s been two hours and they still haven’t received the call about the gator he called in. A minute later, the call comes.

Deb and the officer go back to the store again, and this time they’re in for a surprise. The storeowner has been killed and beheaded in the same style as the first murder victim they’d found: cult icons all around, tongue and eyes cut out.

Dexter and Fowler arrive at the scene where the gator is supposed to be, but we know there’s no gator and we know what Dexter is going to do. He puts the needle in Fowler’s neck, but before his victim goes down, he turns around and shoots Dexter with his tranquilizer gun. They both go down and wake up in the back of an ambulance heading to a hospital. They are taken into the emergency room, and Fowler sees Dexter as he’s taken in to speak with the doctor. As soon as the doctor leaves, he rips everything off, grabs a sharp instrument and leaves, intending to get Dexter. However, he’s already gone. Fowler sneaks out right behind the doctor, who says this is his fifth accident this year. That’s a lot for a guy who calls himself “a safety guy.”

Masuka and the team are working the case with the severed head when Quinn receives a call. Quinn thinks he has a lead on Kyle Butler, even though he’s not supposed to be working that case. He asks if he can speak to the Mitchell family, but the man on the other end of the call says they’re in a safe house. Quinn says he wants to show them a photo, presumably of Dexter. His friend says he’ll see what he can do.

That night, Fowler returns home, where Dexter is lying in wait to finish what he tried to start earlier that day. This time, he injects Fowler in the neck without getting shot at. However, he decides to call home first to say he’ll be late and check on Harrison. The nanny says that everything is fine, and that Prince Harry took his first steps. She emails him a photo, which he checks after they hang up. He’s disappointed that he wasn’t there to see it. Now it’s time for his kill.

A member of internal affairs shows up at the station to speak with LaGuerta. He says that they’re about to launch an investigation into Batista over the fight at the bar. He says that Lopez had been hospitalized with internal bleeding and had chosen to file charges, and that two witnesses claim they saw Batista kick Lopez while down on the ground, which is assault with a deadly weapon. Batista could face losing his job and jail time.

Fowler wakes up in his house, but in Dexter’s makeshift kill room. Dexter is waiting for him in the ‘natural born griller’ apron he took from him. “I wish you could see the room I set up for you,” he tells him. Fowler claims he put the women he killed out of their misery because they were all suffering. “You’re the start of my healing process,” Dexter says. “You don’t know what you’re getting into!” exclaims Fowler. Dexter finally puts the knife into Fowler’s chest. ‘Nothing feels different. If anything, I’m emptier,’ he thinks. Just then, he hears a sound in the other room. He unlocks the door, and there’s a woman there. She’s sobbing, dirty and bruised.

‘She saw everything. She saw me.’