‘Dexter’ Season 6, Episode 7 Recap: Road Trip to ‘Nebraska’

Dexter and Brian went on reunion road-trip to in this episode, but ‘Nebraska’ was less about brotherly bonding and more about Dexter on the brink. With the ghost of his brother Brian, otherwise known as the Ice Truck Killer, acting as the devil on his shoulder, urging him to embrace his darkest instincts, we saw just how easily our dutiful serial killer of serial killers can devolve into an unhinged vigilante on a killing spree.

It was jarring how unstable Dexter seemed in this episode. Hearing voices in his head, he abruptly left his son, job and relatively stable life to drive across state-lines to avenge the double-murder of the wife and daughter of a man he himself killed, the Trinity Killer. Oh what a tangled web we weave when the Ice Truck, Trinity, and Doomsday Killers play crucial roles in the same ‘Dexter’ episode.

There were a few action-packed, suspenseful scenes in ‘Nebraska‘ that felt like some of the best stuff we’ve seen so far in this season of ‘Dexter.’ His showdowns with Jonah, and the weed-growing owner of the Shady Lodge motel both crackled with intensity and were pregnant with moral ambiguity.

Let’s start with Jonah, the son of the Trinity Killer. After his sister and mother turn up dead, Deb and the authorities speculate that Trinity somehow found them in witness protection in Nebraska, but Dexter knows the Trinity Killer isn’t alive … because he killed him. Jonah becomes Dexter’s lead suspect, and he’s compelled to seek justice for the women, perhaps the sister was found dead in a bathtub in the same way Rita was.

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So Dexter, hearing the voice of his brother Brian, set out to Nebraska to pay Jonah a visit. But it feels more like a manic crime spree than a quest for justice. They’re on a thrill-seeking road trip, and spiraling out of control. Dexter bangs a waitress at a rest-stop, steals the store’s revolver and shoots up street signs while driving. He talks to his brother about leaving his life behind and going on a killing spree that would end in Portland. And it looked like it might come to that, when Dexter killed the weed-growing motel owner with a pitch-fork. But the guy did have a gun to his head, and as Brian said, this kill could conveniently be chalked up to self-defense.

Dexter’s next run-in wouldn’t be so black and white. He seeks out Jonah, Trinity’s son, and they put their cards on the table with each other. Jonah tells Dexter he knows he’s not Kyle Butler and suspects he killed his father. And Dexter tells him he’s come to find out if Jonah killed his sister and mother. In their last showdown, with a garden tool to this throat, Jonah tells Dexter what really happened. His sister committed suicide, but he admits bludgeoning his mother to death because she defended their father endlessly and blamed the kids for his disappearance. Jonah begs Dexter to kill him.

The murky details of the killings, and the guilt and remorse Dexter can sense from Jonah, are enough to give him pause. In the moment of truth, he reconnects with his twisted, but moral code, and we find out Dexter hasn’t come unhinged after all. He puts the breaks on Brian’s blood-lust, lets Jonah free, tells him to “forgive himself,” runs over the ghost of his brother and heads back home to his job and family.

There were more developments in ‘Nebraska,’ most of which fell under the category of Gossip from the Miami Metro Homicide Unit. Deb and La Guerta battled each other at a Com Stat meeting, as everyone’s feeling the pressure to close cases and improve the unit’s solve rate. Deb and Quinn finally have a heart-to-heart, and even Quinn, in his infinite dullness, realizes it’s really over between them.
In the Doomsday Killer investigation, the woman Travis freed comes to the police to tell the cops what happened to her. Masuka’s assistant, who’s making a video game based on the Homicide Unit and dating Batista’s sister, comes up with an algorithm to get a lead on Travis’ identity. Speaking of Travis, he’s committed to trying to break away from Professar Gellar; he’s staying at his sister’s place and tells Gellar he wants his freedom, which Gellar creepily, for now anyway, grants him.