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Love American Style is the fifth of twelve episodes in Season One of the Showtime series DEXTER, and the fifth overall episode of the series. It first aired 29 October 2006.

The Homicide Division is buzzing after The Ice Truck Killer's latest victim is found mutilated, while Dexter stalks a murderous human trafficker.

Summary[]

Dexter is called to a crime scene at the abandoned hospital where, the night before, the Ice Truck Killer left security guard Tony Tucci strapped to a table for Dexter to kill. Instead, Dexter had reported the crime scene and Tucci had been hospitalized because the Killer had amputated his hand and leg. As Dexter and Vince Masuka remove Tucci's bedding, Masuka hears what he thinks are rats and freezes. He says they all will get Histoplasmosis from the their shit and dust, which causes coughing up blood, skin lesions, and mouth sores. Dexter ignores him and keeps working. When Masuka asks if he’s heard of Rat-Bite Fever, James Doakes yells at him to stop with the rat talk.

Meanwhile, as Rita leaves work at the Z Hotel, she notices Yelina, a housekeeper, crying. She tells Rita that her fiance, a Cuban named Ernesto Rodriguez, who was attempting to illegally enter the U.S., has gone missing. The human smuggler had demanded more money that she didn't have. Later, Rita asks Dexter to help find out what happened to him.

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Rita tells Dexter about Yelina's problems

Shanda, a prostitute, visits Debra at the Miami Metro Police Department, hoping to score a favor in dealing with her landlord. Debra, somewhat annoyed, brushes it off. James Doakes storms in, angry that one of Debra's cigarette butts was found at the hospital crime scene.

Dexter meets up with Officer Gerard to research the issue of human smuggling. He paints a bleak picture but gives Dexter a few names and Dexter finds some names in the police database and decides on which one is most likely to be the smuggler.

Dexter goes to Jorge Castillo's auto salvage yard and introduces himself as "Dave Cutler.” He pretends to be looking for a particular car part, but Jorge says he can’t help him and lets it slip that he runs the place alone. When Dexter tests him to see if he’s Cuban, Jorge says that he’s American and doesn’t speak Spanish.

At the hospital, Debra promises an unconscious Tony Tucci that she will find the "cocksucker."

Rita joins a forlorn Yelina as she sits on the beach, staring at the ocean.

Later, Dexter returns to the auto yard after dark. He enters a storage building and finds old mattresses, spoiled food, and other signs that people have been held there in squalid conditions.

Ernesto's corpse washes up on shore and, accompanied by Rita a heartbroken Yelina identifies her fiance's body at the morgue.

In a flashback, a teenage Dexter is mowing the lawn. When a young Mindy Taylor hints that she would like him to invite her to a school dance, Dexter ignores her. Harry tells an oblivious Dexter that he needs to learn the signals of girls. Dexter replies that he likes being alone. Harry says that most people don't and it's important that he appear normal.

Debra and Sgt. James Doakes question Tucci when he wakes up in the hospital. They meet Rudy Cooper, who is fitting Tucci with a prosthetic leg. Doakes is unimpressed with Debra's ways of trying to extract information from Tucci. He severely reprimands her for suggesting to blindfold Tucci in order to help him remember his encounter with the Killer.

From his boat, Dexter secretly  photographs Jorge's attractive wife, high-priced home, and expensive sports car. At this point, Dexter believes that Jorge’s wife is unaware of her husband’s activities.

At the police station, Doakes and Debra question Neil Perry who may have witnessed the killer at the hospital.

Angel and Dexter are having drinks at a nightclub. Dexter wants to leave, but Angel encourages him to have a good time. When a woman asks Dexter to dance, he remembers when Harry gave him advice on his first date with Mindy. Young Dexter had insisted that he knows how to fake emotions, but Harry was skeptical.

Dexter drives an intoxicated Angel home, not realizing that he and his wife have separated. Angel's wife, Nina, informs Dexter that he doesn't live there anymore so Dexter takes him to his apartment to sleep it off. The next morning, Angel is hungover and, as he looks around, he mentions how neat the place is. When Angel begins fiddling with the air conditioner, Dexter immediately distracts him so he won't find his blood slide boxes. .

At the station, Masuka finds rat hair on items from the hospital. Debra confronts Doakes about his negative attitude towards her which shocks Masuka.

Dexter spends the evening at Rita's house watching a sad movie. When she begins to cry, Dexter remembers Angel's advice on how to pacify a woman. He lifts her skirt to perform oral sex but she tells him that he is sweet but she is not in the mood.

In a flashback, teen Dexter returns home from the school dance and tells Harry that he pretended to have fun. He asks if he will ever feel it "for real" and Harry says that he hopes so.

A couple of nights later, Dexter sneaks aboard Jorge’s boat, and finds evidence of human smuggling, including old cell phones. When he opens the boat's fish hold, he discovers dead bodies submerged in water. They had been drowned because they couldn’t pay the fee and were going to be tossed overboard. The police would assume they drowned while trying to get into the country illegally and not investigate further. As Dexter is taking photos of the victims, Jorge suddenly appears at the dock and unties his boat, but Dexter escapes unseen.

Doakes agrees to blindfold Tucci, who subsequently remembers that the Killer used to chew throat lozenges. They return to the crime scene and find a lozenge wrapper in a rat's nest, on which forensics expert Vince Masuka finds a partial fingerprint.

Later, Jorge returns to the salvage yard, holding at gunpoint a new group of kidnapped Cubans, and locks them inside the garage. Then he notices a line of lit candles leading to an old Airstream trailer. Jorge follows them inside, and is surprised to see photos of his victims fastened to the walls. From behind, Dexter injects Jorge with M99 and says, “God bless America.” Jorge immediately passes out.

Dexter suddenly hears a car outside. It is Jorge's wife, Valerie, looking for her husband. From a hiding spot, Dexter watches her as she opens the door to the storage building. When a woman tries to escape, Valerie pushes her back inside, calling her a “Cuban piece of shit,” adding that they are all “fucking animals.” It is now obvious that she is just as guilty as her husband, and Dexter calls it a true partnership. He decides to kill both of them.

Just before Dexter moves to kill the Castillos, Jorge and Valerie profess their love for one another, and he hesitates. When Dexter asks them how they make their relationship work, each says they have the "same dream." Dexter then stuffs cotton into their mouths and kills them. Because he is short on time, Dexter simply slices Valerie's carotid arteries and doesn't dismember her. After killing them, he frees their Cuban prisoners, not noticing the person watching him from the trunk of a car in the yard. He dumps the Castillos' bodies at sea.

Debra decides to do something nice for Tony Tucci. She brings Shanda to the hospital to have sex with Tony (which he thoroughly enjoys). As Debra stands guard outside the door, Rudy Cooper passes by and smiles at Debra.

At Rita's house, she and Dexter talk about what they want and agree that they want a normal life.

Quotes[]

  • Stop grinning like a fucking psycho and get back to work." - Doakes to Dexter
  • "Freedom's just another word for one more way to get fucked." -Officer Gerard to Dexter
  • "I don't know what kind of idiot thinks an inner tube is gonna get him over 90 miles of open ocean." -Morgue Attendant to Dexter
  • "Don't go down that emotional road. Just go down on her." - Angel to Dexter
  • The problem with acting normal is normal people get into stupid situations like this. -Dexter, narrating
  • Somehow it's reassuring to know I'm not the only one pretending to be normal. -Dexter, narrating

Trivia[]

  • The line Dexter says to Jorge Castillo in Spanish translates to "Perhaps the fish find you." He says this in response to Castillo claiming that he only owns a rowboat with a hole in it.

Related Pages[]

Reception[]

"Love American Style" attracted 6.7 million viewers when broadcast on CBS in March 2008, 18 months after its original broadcast on Showtime.

IGN's Eric Goldman felt that the episode's juggling of multiple storylines was "satisfying," and that the scene in which Dexter prepares to kill Castillo was "terrific." Though he praised Debra and Doakes' storyline with Tucci, he wrote that "it was a bit disappointing to then see Deb be a bit too quickly vindicated at the end."

Paula Paige, writing for TV Guide, said that the episode: "will go down in cable history as Dexter's finest [episode] to date." She was pleased with Debra's character development and the "downright stylish" cinematography, but thought that Jorge and Valerie's final, passionate words to each other were "too much for me."

Ray Ellis of Blogcritics believed that the episode "takes the series into a more three-dimensional direction." He described the episode's subplots and themes as what "make Dexter compelling," and wrote that Debra's character reached a more "empathic level" in the episode.

TV Squad critic Keith McDuffee praised the increasing complexity of Dexter's relationship with his father through flashbacks, and thought that Dexter's voiceovers were "the best thing about this show."

Jeff Lindsay, author of Darkly Dreaming Dexter, upon which the show is based, was initially upset with the episode's plot. In an interview, he said that: I was about to be really unhappy with [the episode]. But the twist at the end," referring to the person watching Dexter from the car trunk, "That was wonderful."

Gallery[]

The Episodes of Dexter
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