I watched it again, and Dexter must have been in the trunk of Arthur’s car. The bang heard when the car started smoking might have been backfiring. Also, the oil cap being gone may not mean much – it’s just what Arthur happened to notice before Dexter conked him. Dexter might have done any number of things to the car, and had the materials available to fix it in the trunk with him.
Dexter saw Quinn stealing, but AFAIK he’s not inder suspicion by anybody but the IA chick, and he seems to have gotten that investigation stopped, if indeed it was ever official. But I would bet Quinn will be all over Dexter about Rita’s murder.
I’m taking bets that Batista and LaGuerta’s marriage doesn’t make it through more than a couple episodes next season. If they divorce in short order, that would put them back in the sights of the deputy chief. So, if the show gets another year beyond next season, I’m thinking they’ll get canned and they will bring in new cast to replace them.
That’s what I was thinking the first time I saw it. But the second time, it seems like the car is suddenly bathed from behind by a very bright light such as you would have if a car pulled up behind it. And Arthur has been shown before to be stupidly oblivious to being followed.
I go back and forth, mainly because it would be really stupid to hide in the trunk. If you’re hitting the road on the run, the odds are pretty decent you’ll put something in the trunk. Or a mechanic might open the trunk. It would just leave him too vulnerable.
OTOH, the light was there from the time the camera POV was from ahead of the car as Arthur opened the hood. I thought it was either some overhead traffic lamp, or even the moon. It certainly didn’t seem to be moving like an approaching car.
I’ll look at it again with On Demand, and rewatch that scene a couple of times, and see if I’ve missed something.
Well, first off, I don’t think Dex will need any big alibi. The Morgans were already known to be on Trinity’s “list”. And the id of Trinity is known. They’ll be looking for Arthur. And Dex has both the phone call from Rita -and- someone will remember that Arthur was in the Miami Metro station, talking to Dex. They really don’t have motive for Dex doing it either.
I don’t see why Dex, even as the spouse of a Trinity victim, would need to discuss squat with Trinity’s family. Why would the FBI or Miami Metro bring them together? Nothing to gain there. Why run fingerprints from Arthur’s van? They have him positively id’d. The kidnapped kid that Dex saved can id Arthur. The DNA id’s Arthur. Arthur slashes women in the tub, it’s what he does.
Now OTOH, let’s say you are the Deputy Chief of Miami Metro. You know, and have known for years, that your forensic blood splatter expert was found in a storage bin bathed in his mothers blood. And you also know that his older brother turned out to be the Ice Truck killer, who kidnapped one of your detectives, who just happened to be the adopted sister of the Ice Truck killer’s brother.
And that the Bay Harbor butcher has killed “bad guys” that got away from your dept. Also, the Bay Harbor butcher was traced back to your own dept.
How long before you start connecting those dots yourself?
And every time people start getting too close to connecting the Dexter dots…the Deputy Chief goes and messes with LaGuerta and/or Battista.
I think the Deputy Chief knows and not only that, I suspect that maybe Harry did not meet his end as Dex believes, as he was told by that same deputy Chief. :dubious:
can you re-word that so to make more sense? I read and re-read it and it doesn’t make much sense to me. Are you saying Captain/ Deputy Chief Tom Matthews is in on the whole Dexter persona? Or the real force behind Dexter’s Code? Please re-write that last line to make more sense.
I agree that Dexter doesn’t need a great alibi. Christine shot Lundy and Deb because they were getting too close to Arthur, then killed herself. It’s not a huge stretch that Arthur would get revenge on the Morgans by killing Rita.
Not everyone knows about Dexter’s past. So there’s nothing for the department to connect unless Deb spills the beans.
As far as putting Arthur’s family together with Dexter, if this were real life, Dexter’s face would soon be all over the news. There’d be no way that Arthur’s family would not see, and recognize, him. Whether the writers try to explain it away remains to be seen.
The police chief (who was a long-time friend of Harry’s) knows. And as meanoldman speculates, it would not be entirely unfathomable that he actually knows or suspects who Dexter really is. I’d like to see that issue explored further.
As for next season, we have already seen the seeds planted for Quinn to be an antagonist to Dexter, and I highly suspect he will be Dexter’s chief antagonist in season 5. And he’ll get intimate with Deb I’m sure as well. Whatever else will happen is hard to say, but I just hope they drop this whole thing with the god damn romance between LaGuerta and Batista. I hated it from the beginning and I groan every time I see them together. Hopefully LaGuerta gets killed off in season 5.
That’s how I’m reading it, and it’s very clever. The Deputy Chief has known all about Dexter’s background long before Dexter did, including while Dex was sweating what would happen when Deb put it all together. As soon as the Ice Truck Killer was ID’d he knew it was Dex’s real brother.
It’s not too long a stretch to imagine that Dexter is a creation and Harry and Tom, a deliberately created avenging angel. Or that Tom at least suspects, but approves of what Dex is doing.
The one big problem with this scenario is the Doakes killing. If Tom knows all about Dex, he would almost have to believe that Dex killed Doaks, and I don’t think he would have just stood quietly by for that.
As Deputy Chief, how does he not at least have thoughts that maybe the kid his good friend found bathed in blood all those years ago, the same kid whose brother was the Ice Truck Killer, isn’t messed up too? Recall it was this now Deputy Chief that told Dex what “really” happened to Harry. We only have his word for it.
As far as Doaks, being framed (and killed), that is troubling. I’ll need to re-watch season 2 to see if Deputy Chief and Doaks had any run ins etc.
I would not be too surprised to learn that ol deputy chief and Harry saw an opportunity to create a civilian avenger, and between the two of them they molded a Dex. Was it -only- because of Harry that Dex got his job and keeps his job?
I think we’re trying to read into something that can be a possibility. But to say Captain/ Dep. Chief Tom Matthews (well played by the actor Geoff Pierson) is in on the whole dark avenger persona of Dexter’s is a stretch. He’s not dumb in terms of policing but i think his aspirations are political like an older, whiter, manlier version of Laguerta. He doesn’t really care about Dexter as much as we’d like to believe.
I’m pretty sure Captain/Dep. Chief Tom Matthews believes that Brian Moser was the evil one even though Dexter experienced the same thing. Brian was older and more “screwed” up by the whole bloody murder of his mother than say Dexter was. I dont think there’s any reason to believe that Harry would spill the beans of training a serial killer to a friend and superior. They can do some great stuff with this idea but I think it’s too far a stretch to get Matthews involved as a major character now.
The chief probably reasons that Brian was older when their mother was killed, he didn’t get adopted by a loving family, and wasn’t fixable. He must assume that it was Harry’s steady influence on Dexter that made him the calm, rational man he is today.
Trinity might have plausible reasons that don’t incriminate Dexter for going after Rita, but Dexter does have a motive: Rita kissed the neighbor.
Now, only a couple people know that and Dexter DIDN’T do it, but he could still be under a microscope.
He has no reason to interact with Trinity’s family, but if some tabloid snaps a picture of him and the kids at the funeral or something, they might be looking through the paper and be like “Dad/Arthur killed Kyle’s wife? But his name’s not Kyle here…”
I really doubt we’ll see anything from Trinity’s family next season. The weren’t much as characters and if they planned on including them in future shows they would have made some effort to develop them. The only one of those characters they’d conceivably bring back is the son and if they did that I doubt he be to bring Dexter under police scrutiny. He might thank him for offing Trinity.
Good news for Dexter fans - the final episode this season was an all time high ratings blockbuster for Showtime!
"The fourth-season finale of Showtime’s “Dexter” was seen by 2.6 million viewers – blowing away all modern records for the network.
The brutal “Dexter” closer was the most-watched original series episode ever on the network, and the most watched telecast since a Mike Tyson fight in 1999. “Dexter” was 54% higher than last year’s finale."
Riding on that, I can only imagine the pressure is on to make next season even better, and my guess is with John Lithgow’s Golden Globe nomination, they won’t have to beg “name stars” to come on board for a season.
Yeah, Lithgow definitely lent the show some credibility for other potential guest stars to hang their hat on. Jimmy Smits and Keith Carradine did as well, but Lithgow took it to another level.
Those ratings numbers are amazing. I know Showtime is only in half the homes compared to HBO, but that’s still pretty darn low. For comparison, that all-time high for Showtime is equivalent to the average ratings of Deadwood. (The Sopranos usually drew around 9 million each week.)
Showtime has terrible movies, it’s like they get the scraps left over from HBO. I wonder how Showtime stays in business with so many bad movies. I only watch Showtime for Dexter and then I cancel it.