Oddly enough, for some reason it never occurred to me that Dexter, by asking Rita to marry him, would eventually have to move in with her and the kids. And you know what? I’m not sure it occurred to Dexter, either. With Rita pregnant and needing him to step up, he surely felt obligated to do what was expected and pop the question (with a little help from a seriously deranged perp with a talent for compartmentalizing). Granted, I don’t think it’s precisely true to continue seeing Rita as a “cover” for Dexter in order to give him the appearance of normalcy; as I’ll get into a bit later, we’ve seen evidence many times that he has real feelings for her. But when you’re moonlighting as a serial killer, I think it’s fair to say that you need a little “alone time.” And the impending domestication of Dexter—about to be a homeowner, a husband, and essentially a father to three children—seriously threatens his extracurricular activities.
“This is how Custer must have felt,” goes the voiceover. “Surrounded on all sides. Doomed.” One of the things I love about where the writers are taking Dexter this season is that his predicament is really just an extreme example of a common problem. If you’re an independent person, accustomed to living alone and responsible for only your own needs, it’s never easy to just take the plunge and commit yourself to a relationship that will take away much of that independence. Obviously, the payoffs are grand—I would use, say, my own absurdly blessed life as an example—but the sacrifice is nonetheless significant, and it’s a little spooky that we’re made to identify with Dexter’s predicament.
As with the last week, Dexter is on the prowl again and the circumstances tie directly into his domestic issues. Courtesy of Miguel Prado—whose special understanding of him I’ll get into later—Dexter learns of Ethan Turner, a gold-digging guy who’s made a habit of getting out of pre-nups with rich women by knocking them off. Catching Ethan involves taking a luxury ferry ride out to Biminy, which takes him away from Rita at a time when she needs him the most. While he’s off exercising his aorta-severing independence, she’s experiencing that old melodramatic canard, the pregnancy scare. He can’t be reached and isn’t where he said he’d be; this absence, on top of his surprisingly stern, I-said-no refusal to look for a house, doesn’t really fill his fiancée with confidence.
But here’s the thing—and the episode does a nice job of confirming it: Dexter picked Rita for a reason. She’s a woman who’s had such terrible relationship issues in the past that her expectations of him are not as high as they should be. So any little kindness that he extends to her—and he’s definitely kinder than the late, erratic father of her children—will be enough to quell her irritation or doubts about him. Any other woman would be enraged by Dexter’s behavior (first with the house-hunting thing, then the absence during a major emergency), but when he finally makes it to the hospital in a huff, Rita doesn’t ask any questions. This could change, of course; the more she feels secure with him and confident with herself, she may feel she’s entitled to better than the occasional gesture from him. For now, though, it makes sense that she doesn’t probe any further into what he’s been doing. (One could speculate that she instinctively knows not to ask too many questions of Dexter, but that’s a discussion for another time.)