F Is For F*ck-Up – Episode 5 begins with Dexter Morgan (Patrick Gibson) scrambling in the wake of Mad Dog’s (Joe Pantoliano) death. With the exception of one close call, he manages to make it back to the house and clean up before the police arrive and leave unscathed. The same cannot be said when Dexter arrives home to find a very concerned Sergeant Harry Morgan (Christian Slater) waiting for his arrival. An argument ensues and abruptly ends with Dexter being ordered not to leave the house, even to go to work.
Elsewhere, Debra Morgan (Molly Brown) gets all kinds of looks from her teammates as Gio (Isaac Gonzalez Rossi) drops her off at school in his convertible. While Dexter stews at home and eats Deb’s brownies, Harry visits the morgue to find that there are no suspicions of homicide in the Mad Dog case. Later that day, DA Elaine Zhu runs Harry and the team through a mock trial for the Shapiro Case.
After the brief mock trial, Harry has a flashback to the night that he tried to tell Laura Moser (Brittany Allen) they couldn’t hook up again. Things did not go as he expected and they hook up again. In the present, Debra arrives home to find Dexter all spaced out on her pot brownies. She tries to leave for an outing with the team, but he won’t let her. After Deb eats a brownie of her own, they end up watching black and white and TV and eating loads of junk food. At one point, Deb becomes depressed and wants to talk about their mother. Dexter indulges her until she asks if he thinks their mother, Doris Morgan (Jasper Lewis) would have been proud of them. He says he doesn’t know and tells her that he did something bad and doesn’t think he’ll ever come back from it. He is on the verge of telling her what he did but doesn’t.
The following morning, Harry awkwardly says a few words about the anniversary of Doris’s s death. Debra schedules for them to meet back at the house at five so they can visit her grave together. Harry also tells Dexter that he’s going back to work. At work, Harry makes Dexter fingerprint, Evan (Tyler Lofton), the guy that hit Mad Dog just to make sure that he doesn’t recognize him. Dexter does this while he is being interrogated by Detective Maria LaGuerta (Christian Millian). Not only does Evan not recognize Dexter but he thinks he’s being charged for Mad Dog’s murder. When Maria tells Evan that your mistakes don’t have to define you, Dexter takes it to heart. He realizes that if he wants to kill again, he will need to learn from his mistakes.
Dexter returns to the forensics lab to find Tanya Martin (Sarah Michelle Gellar) down in the dumps because her favorite horse is being put down after breaking its hind leg during a race. This eventually leads to Dexter deciding to use the same horse sedative they used on Tanya’s horse to paralyze his victims.
In court, Alan Barnes (Jeffrey Stubblefield) accuses Harry of profiling Levi Reed (Jeff Daniel Phillips) before handing the questioning off to Carol Shears. Carol asks Harry if all the evidence puts Reed at the Shapiro house. When he says yes, she introduces Reed’s girlfriend who previously tried to alibi, but Harry wouldn’t accept it because she was high. The case is dismissed on suppression of evidence. Captain Aaron Spencer (Patrick Dempsey) doesn’t take this well and gives Harry the rest of the afternoon off.
Dexter visits the local horse park and stages a runaway horse so he can sneak into the vet’s office and get the horse tranquilizer needed to paralyze his victims. Deb is the only one to make it to the 5 o’clock anniversary meeting for Doris. Instead, she calls Gio to take her to the graveyard. He even shows up with flowers that Deb puts on the gravesite after pouring out her heart.
By the time Harry shows up at the cemetery, there is nothing left but the flowers. This causes Harry to remember a restless night at Laura’s. When he gets up to stretch his legs, he finds Young Dexter (Eli Sherman) drawing a family picture, including Harry and puts him to bed. Laura happens to see this and gets him to admit that he had a son around Dexter’s age who died. Even later that night, Harry returns home to find that Doris is pregnant.
Harry is at his favorite bar drinking when he’s joined by Spencer who tells him that the mayor wants someone to take the fall for what happened today in court. Although that someone is Harry, Spencer and Harry’s otherwise impeccable record saved his job. Harry will; however, have to go back to working the bottle of the barrel homicide cases with Maria.
Harry ends up spending too much time at the bar and overdoing it with the drink. Later that night, he ends up at Reed’s and is just about to shoot him when Dexter intervenes with the horse tranquilizer. Much to Harry’s surprise, he wakes naked and strapped down to Dexter’s table. Dexter spends the next few minutes telling him everything that he’s learned from his mistake with Mad Dog.
When Dexter frees Harry, he tells him to use smelling salts when he gets Reed, so he doesn’t have to wait so long for him to wake up. The episode ends with Dexter visiting his mother’s grave while Deb sleeps with Gio.
Dexter: Original Sin Review
I’ve seen this show get a lot of flak online but I have to say, I am enjoying it. It is the little things like the smelling salts and horse tranquilizers that I find so intriguing. Anyone who watched the old-school Dexter knows what a staple those two tools are for the Dexter persona. Learning how he adopted those two tools into his routine was incredibly nostalgic for me. For that alone, I’d have to give the episode a 6.1 out of 10.
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