Dexter: Original Sin Recap: Meet the Parents
If you were worried this Dexter flashback series wouldn’t have flashbacks within flashbacks, “Kid in a Candy Store” is here to set your mind at ease. Yes, even though Original Sin is supposedly told from present-day Dexter’s near-death-experience perspective, we’re already getting other characters’ trips down memory lane, complete with the bad wigs we know and love. After the table-setting of the series premiere, it makes sense that the show would want to expand its world a bit — here’s hoping it’s careful not to collapse under its own weight so early in the run. (It took OG Dexter several seasons before that happened.)
We pick up where we left off at Miami Metro, with Dexter simply delighted to be part of the team. (The fact that he recently popped his murder cherry is surely not part of that.) Tanya gives him a pager (it’s the ’90s!) and says she owns him now, to which Dexter’s voice-over responds, “I never liked being kept on a leash.” This makes me increasingly concerned for Sarah Michelle Gellar’s longevity on this show. Harry is feeling way too optimistic about the new and improved Dexter, positing that putting killers away may be enough to keep Dex’s Dark Passenger at bay. As a reminder, Dexter is not addicted to justice; he’s addicted to serial killing, but sure, Dex’s analogy of methadone for a heroin addict is apt enough.
Dexter’s first-ever crime scene is in Little Havana — cue “Conga,” and shout-out to Original Sin’s music budget — where a man is dead in a parking lot with a bullet wound to the head. Dex describes the moment as “like Christmas morning” (timely!), and we actually see the corpse with a big red bow wrapped around him. I’m here for this level of whimsy. After making him get coffee and pastries, Tanya shows Dexter how to photograph a crime scene. Of course, he can’t help getting ahead of himself, explaining that the victim must have been shot at close range given the void in the blood spatter that reveals where the killer was standing. Tanya calls everyone over to point and laugh at Dexter, with Bobby noting that the gunpowder burn on his forehead tells them the same thing. (It still feels like Dex’s perspective is useful, and given Miami Metro’s abysmal 18-percent clearance rate for murders, maybe they shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss him!) Harry explains that everyone is giving Dexter a hard time because he’s new, and he should try to fit in by giving it back to them, something that certainly won’t backfire immediately!
When Batista, Masuka, Bobby, and Dexter head to lunch at a Cuban restaurant owned by Angel’s cousin Alvaro, Dex continues to get lightly bullied. The cops make sure his Cubano is served with a void of meat — like the void of blood spatter, get it? — and to get them back, Dexter tells Bobby that he looks like he’s one bite away from a myocardial infarction. Oh, Dex. Meals at home aren’t much less awkward: Dexter notes that Harry is still smoking, and they compare notes on urges, which Harry doesn’t love. But he also still seems to be in complete denial about how relentless and dangerous his son’s addiction is. After Dexter describes the murder of Nurse Mary as “euphoric and almost indescribable,” Harry suggests that maybe Dex can finally put all this killing stuff behind him. Let’s use our common sense, my man. Meanwhile, Debra continues to feel left out, especially when Harry refuses to eat her tofu kebabs, leading to a lot of cursing and storming out. Original Sin still has no idea what to do with this character, and I’m sorry that Molly Brown is saddled with dialogue like, “Morgan residence, underappreciated daughter speaking.”
Back at Miami Metro, Dexter tries to endear himself to his colleagues by bringing … crudités. (Harry taught him the Code, but not that you don’t win friends with salad?) But while Camilla in Records fully throws Dex’s veggie plate in the trash, she gives him something more interesting: access to the case files that Tanya has asked him to pull from. This lets Dexter see the seemingly endless array of unsolved killings in Miami, which makes him think about all the murderers walking free. And he’s about to learn about an especially nasty one. On a night out with Batista — at Harry’s urging, because Dexter and Angel are around the same age, apparently? — Dex learns about Rene, a former busboy at Alvaro’s restaurant. Rene owed a lot of money to a dangerous man named “Handsome” Tony Ferrer, so Ferrer confronted him at home and fired a warning shot. That bullet ended up striking and killing Rene’s mother, and a week later, Rene shot himself on his mother’s grave. Upsetting stuff, and Ferrer remains a free man — good news or bad news for Dexter, depending on how you look at it.
Other possible bad news for Dexter: Debra is accidentally getting closer to his secret. When she and Sofia go shopping at Sunglass Hut, Deb’s impressed by her friend’s wad of cash. Sofia explains that she pawned her grandma’s coat and suggests that Debra do the same. Even after a tough conversation with Harry in which he suggests it’s time to move on from her mother’s death, Debra can’t bring herself to sell any of Doris’s jewelry, so she tries Dexter’s room. There, hidden in one of his VHS tapes, are Nurse Mary’s earrings, a trophy from his first murder. Ultimately, the pawnbroker won’t take them, so Debra is forced to part with her mom’s pearl necklace after all, but she gives the earrings to Sofia. Presumably, this means trouble for Dex — although, given that this is a prequel and we know he’s not getting caught, it’s more likely an issue for Sofia. Could she end up on Dexter’s kill table this season? Her sudden crush on him does not bode well for her.
The other concurrent story line in “Kid in a Candy Store” is Harry flashing back to the Estrada drug case, for which he collared low-level dealers Joe Driscoll and Laura Moser, turning Laura into an informant for Miami Metro. If you don’t know your Dexter lore, these are our title psychopath’s parents, and that’s made clear later in the episode when Laura introduces Harry to young Dex and her other son, Brian (the future Ice Truck Killer). We know where this is going — Dexter and Brian are baptized in their mother’s blood, which turns them into serial killers because of science — so it’s a lot of dramatic irony, i.e., Harry insisting that he can keep Laura safe. In some ways, it makes sense for the show to be focusing on Harry’s guilt and major past transgressions. The chain of events that begins when he coerces Laura into becoming an informant (and perhaps also the death of Harry Jr.) is Harry’s original sin. And, hey, that’s the title of the series!
Throughout the episode, we also get brief scenes of a kidnapped child, who we learn is Judge Powell’s son, Jimmy. Captain Spencer thinks it’s the cartel, but all we know is that the kidnapper has a full face covering — prepare for that dramatic reveal — and that he has no qualms about mutilating a child. At the end of the episode, Jimmy’s severed finger arrives at Miami Metro. Dexter is very triggered by this, but he also recognizes that he’s got a lot of competition when it comes to finding and killing the perp. Instead, he’s going to focus his energy on a much easier task: Tony Ferrer. “The truth is, there was no Nicorette for someone like me, no methadone,” his voice-over says. “The Dark Passenger was rising up, and there was only one thing I could do about it.”
Blood Spatter Analysis
• In addition to Gloria Estefan, we get New Kids on the Block’s “Step by Step” at Sunglass Hut and Alice in Chains’ “Man in the Box” for a very effective overhead tracking shot of the troubled Morgan household. The period-appropriate music is really working for me.
• Speaking of period details, the scene where Dexter tries to give vegetables to his new co-workers is made much funnier by the fact that they’re literally all smoking.
• Unfortunately, smoking has consequences, and fans of the original series might remember what happens to Camilla in Records, played there by Margo Martindale.
• Patrick Dempsey’s line read of the episode: “Miami is overflowing with cocaine — if we don’t get a handle on this, we’re gonna be in a world of powdered shit!”
• I’m not sure what’s going on with Levi Reed, the suspected home-invasion serial killer from the first episode who’s now on trial. I’m guessing that case is going to intersect with the kidnapping somehow? Levi’s girlfriend says he was with her all night, but Harry dismisses her with, “Too bad it’s not Crackhead Alibiing Her Murderer Boyfriend Day.”
• Tanya warns Dexter, “I’m tiny but mighty, and don’t you forget it,” which is absolutely a Buffy line. I wish I didn’t feel like SMG’s days on this show were numbered!