'Dexter' Season 4, Episode 12: 'The Getaway'

'Dexter' Season 4 Episode 12 'The Getaway' depicted the climatic cat-and-mouse game between Dexter and the Arthur Mitchell, aka the Trinity killer. It was the last 'Dexter' episode of the season and ended with a gut wrenching, heart breaking development.

Spoilers surely follow.

With Arthur Mitchell now knowing who Dexter really is and with his sister Debra closing in on Trinity, Dexter has run out of time. So has Trinity, in point of fact, for he means to go on the run, leaving his abused family abandoned and destitute.

Dexter, very much aware of what Trinity is capable of and fearing for his own family, gives chase. But Dexter also has abandoned the Code of Harry, which calls for meticulous planning. Dexter is making it up as he goes along, catching Trinity, rendering him unconscious, and separating him from his getaway money.

But Dexter makes mistakes and winds up in the county lockup, having committed a hit and run and an assault. Fortunately this does not result in a lengthy incarceration and trial. He is let off with a warning and something else that he dreads more than anything-the look of disappointment on Rita's face as she picks him up from jail.

And there we have a final revelation about Dexter's development as a human being. He can kill without remorse, but to see that look on Rita's face tears him inside. Has Dexter now, in fact, learned to not only feign empathy, but to actually feel it? It seems so.

But first to end Trinity. Dexter guesses rightly that Arthur Mitchell would go back to his own home and strip his family of every last cent of cash and piece of pawnable jewelry they have. But the serial killer's pursuit finally merges with the police's pursuit. Dexter is able to pretend that he had found out about the raid to show up practically ahead of time. This causes raised eyebrows, but little more.

And Debra has found out something else. She now knows about Dexter's bloody origin in the shipping container in the gore of his dismembered mother and that he was the brother of the Ice Truck Killer, who had kidnapped Debra and almost killed her. And yet Debra still loves her insane, damaged brother. In a lifetime of disappointment, Dexter, psychotic serial killer, has been her cause for confidence.

Dexter begins to understand that he has been good for all of his family, even as he has followed the urge to kill over and over again. Could he, in fact, take the next step? To go all the way into the light and leave behind killing altogether? As Arthur Mitchell's family is taken away in a squad car, he imagines his own family suffering the same fate. Yes, perhaps for them, he can free himself of the Dark Passenger.

But first, Trinity. Having packed away his two step children for a trip to Disney World and Rita and his infant son to the Keys for a weekend getaway, Dexter is now free to at last deal with Arthur Mitchell.

Arthur Mitchell, thinking that he has made a getaway, finds out how wrong his is as his sabotaged car coughs and dies on the side of a dark, country road. Dexter leaps from the shadows with the needle. Trinity wakes up bound to the table, Dexter looming over him.

Dexter now knows that he is not like Trinity. Trinity destroyed everything he touched, not only his innocent victims, but those he was supposed to love and protect. Trinity believes that he fate is in the hands of God. When Dexter brings down the framing hammer with which Trinity had ended so many lives, it is a mercy for more than one person.

Happier perhaps that he has ever been, Dexter returns home to pack for the keys and the arms of his beloved Rita. But then he discovers one last victim of the Trinity killer, a cosmic joke from fate or God on all those who think they can make plans.

There, on the blood soaked bathroom floor, is Dexter's infant son, crying as Dexter had so many years before in the shipping container. And there, in the tub, is the bloodless, lifeless body of Dexter's beloved Rita, for the love of whom Dexter almost turned from a monster into a man.

Season five is going to be fascinating. One can only imagine that there can never be enough killing to fill the hole that Rita's death has left. Once again, Dexter is born in blood.

Source: Dexter, The Getaway, TV.Com