Five-Legged Iguana

DEXTER
Season 2 Episode 3
‘An Inconvenient Lie’
Written by Melissa Rosenberg
Directed by Tony Goldwyn

Dexter’s at his first NA meeting and while others are sharing about their need for another pill and another hit, he’s going down his own shopping list of needs: duct tape, rope, etc. Anything to damp out the same repetitive, whiny story from junkie loser after junkie loser. All the while, he’s being eyed with interest by one particular female junkie (Jaime Murray, from TV’s Hustle and the upcoming The Deaths of Ian Stone), until he sneaks out a mere ten minutes after the meeting’s started.
But Rita rips him a new one when he gets to her place without his Newcomer Chip. So he promises to get one the following night.

Meanwhile, the Bay Harbor Butcher investigation goes into full swing, as Masuka is named LFI (Lead Forensics Investigator), and Deb and Angel are pulled into Lundy’s Task Force.
The department is then subsequently flooded by relatives and loved ones of missing persons, anxious to know if their husband/wife/son/daughter/lover/father/mother is one of the still unidentified victims.
Deb is assigned to interview the concerned relatives and staring this sort of desperate loss straight in the face initially proves too much for her, and she talks to Lundy to get her off the Task Force, claiming a backlog on her other cases. Lundy agrees to find her a replacement.
But when a day has passed and Lundy still hasn’t taken her off the Task Force (and she’s faced with a grieving mother looking for her little girl), Deb again confronts Lundy, saying she’s the last person who should be on the Task Force, as she was engaged to a serial killer and didn’t even know it.
Lundy says that’s exactly why he chose her for the Task Force, because she’s “seen into the heart and mind of a killer.” And because she got through it, and continues to get through it.
As a compromise, Lundy tells Deb to finish the interviews for the day, and if she still wants out, then he’ll find her a replacement.
Before the day is out though, Deb stumbles on what could be a pattern: two of the missing have criminal records. And when Deb puts the idea in front of Lundy, that maybe the Bay Harbor Butcher’s victims were “bad guys,” he tells her to check the remains against the criminal database.

When Dex returns to NA, he gets a Newcomer Chip, and shares, introducing himself as “Bob” and claims to be a heroin addict. The “one particular female junkie” who was eyeing him the previous night approaches him at the end of the meeting and takes him out for coffee.
Her name’s Lila and she calls him out on the bullsh!t he spewed at the meeting. As their conversation goes on, Dex realizes that when Lila talks about what it feels like to be an addict, she’s talking about things he can identify with. Things he knows.
Unnerved, Dex hurriedly leaves the diner. And when he tells Rita that NA won’t help and he’d rather face this alone, she takes him at his word and kicks him out, later on making it clear that she won’t take him back unless he does NA.

Confused, Dex starts scoping out his new victim, Roger Hicks, a used car salesman who’s murdered two women thus far. What starts out as a recon mission to get some of Hicks‘ DNA though, ends with Dex buying a mini-van (apparently due to Hicks‘ spiel about the roomy back, which can actually accommodate a deer carcass).
On a second recon trip, Dex sees Hicks‘ next potential victim, and feels he must act before this woman becomes Hicks‘ third, but can’t because of the on-going Bay Harbor Butcher investigation and Doakes’ continued interest in his affairs.

Back at work, Masuka gets Dex onto his team, and shows Dex the Field Morgue, where the recovered bodies are being stored. It’s an eerie sight, seeing Dex enter this huge, refrigerated space, where the body parts of his victims are laid out, incomplete and in disarray.
Later on, dropping off some dental records for Masuka, Dex runs into Lundy, who is sitting amongst the dead, waiting for them to answer the question: Why were they chosen?
During their conversation, Dex says that, of course, killing someone can never be justified. Lundy says, actually, there is one justification: if it would mean saving the life of an innocent.
Dex realizes that Lundy and his father would have agreed on that.
So he finally goes after Hicks, and it’s during their conversation that Hicks makes Dex realize that he does, after all, truly care for Rita, the subconscious reason for his purchase of the mini-van (what LaGuerta called a “Mommy Mobile”). Of course, Hicks pisses Dex off when he says, rather unwisely, “You’re better off without that c*nt.” Dex ices him for that.

Upon that realization—that Rita and the kids really do mean a lot to him—Dex returns to NA, and shares, revealing his real name, and talking about the “Dark Passenger” that rides with him.
Doakes arrives at the meeting, and it suddenly all makes sense to him, that wrongness he felt about Dex. And in a great reversal, Doakes sympathizes with Dex’s apparent plight, and says, Ok, just don’t get in my way at work, and we’re cool.
Triumphant—now that Doakes is off his back—and on a catharsis high, Dex visits Rita and shares his elation. Rita’s happy (and she loves the mini-van), but that all comes to a screeching halt when she sees who Dex’s sponsor is: Lila.

So the season is unfolding quite nicely, with the Bay Harbor Butcher investigation and Dex is an addict subplots developing in interesting ways. And though I did suspect they were going to make Lila Dex’s sponsor, and that this would set Rita off, that final shot of her at the wheel of the mini-van, as she sees Lila, and Dex totally oblivious to Rita’s reaction, was priceless.
There’s also something about Lila I can’t quite pin down at the moment, though I wouldn’t at all be surprised if she’s got some deep, dark secret aside from being an addict.

(Image courtesy of sho.com.)