In the wise words of Hannah Montana, "Everybody makes mistakes, everybody has those days," and that is plenty evident in the most recent episode of Dexter prequel series Original Sin. Though Dexter Morgan managed to get away with being a serial killer for eight seasons, he still made plenty of mistakes during the show's original run, and the younger version of him in this show is even more prone to messing up due to his relative newness to the whole "murder" thing.
But it's not just Dex screwing up, as evidenced by the end of last week's episode when he let Mad Dog slip out of his grasp and almost escape. Harry is equally fallible. In this week's episode, a misjudgement from a previous episode comes back to bite him in spectacular fashion.
Episode 5, aptly titled "F is for F**k-Up," picks up right after an unsuspecting driver hits Mad Dog with his car and calls 911, leaving Dexter just 15 minutes to clean up his kill room before Miami Metro arrives. Things go about as good as they could have. Mad Dog is dead, and no one appears to have seen anything untoward. The medical examiner later tells Harry that the case is unlikely to go to homicide unless there's a connection revealed to the driver.
But Harry is pissed at his son for making such a colossal error in judgment. He benches Dexter, grounding him and demanding he keep his knives to himself for the time being until he goes back to basics training-wise.
The mistrial of Levi Reed
Harry's mistake is much more publicized than Dexter's. Let's rewind for a second to the start of Original Sin when we met the slimy character of Levi Reed, accused of murdering eight people, including children, during multiple home invasions. In the second episode, Levi's girlfriend Brandi Silvera came into the precinct high out of her mind and tried to provide an alibi for Levi, but Harry dismissed her due to her inebriation.
Unfortunately, a very sober Brandi shows up in the courtroom during Levi's trial and reveals what happened, leading Levi's attorney to accuse Harry of suppressing evidence by willfully disregarding a good-faith alibi. The judge agrees and the case is dismissed. Declared a mistrial. Captain Spencer sends Harry home for the day until he figures out what to do with him.
Given their history and the fact Spencer knows Harry isn't typically negligent, he saves his job but informs Harry he will no longer be working the high-profile Jimmy Powell case (the murder of the judge's son). He'll also be doing bottom-of-the-list cases alongside LaGuerta until all of this blows over.
That's all good and well, but Harry can't deal with the fact that his mistake has now allowed a child killer to walk free.
The trial isn't the only f**k-up we see Harry make this week. His flashback sequences depict his continued affair with Dexter's biological mother Laura Moser, who has firmly ingratiated the Colombian circle. There's a sweet scene where Harry tucks little Dexter into bed and Laura realizes this isn't his first time doing so, leading Harry to tell her what happened to his son. Then he returns home to Doris who informs she's pregnant, likely with Deb.
Harry realizes what he's created
While Harry is fumbling a case in court, Dexter is busy figuring out how to earn back his dad's trust. It's in this episode, we learn how Dexter discovered the drug etorphine or M99. A sedative known for being far stronger than morphine. Adult Dexter regularly used M99 to sedate his victims, though he switched to ketamine in the sequel series New Blood.
He learns about the drug from an unlikely source: Tanya. An avid fan of horse race betting, Tanya is dismayed to learn her chosen horse lost the race due to a broken leg, meaning he'll be put down. Dexter asks how the veterinarians handle dealing with an animal of that size, and Tanya tells him about etorphine, leading Dexter to sneak into a horse racing stable and steal a supply.
Dexter gets to put his new sedative to work right away, but not on the person you'd think. He uses it to keep Harry from making yet another reckless mistake. After the trial and his chat with Spencer, Harry continues drinking until he's fully drunk. Then, he tries to go kill Reed himself, going as far as to stalk him to his home, get out of the car, and walk toward Reed with his gun pointed. Dexter sedates his father before he can pull the trigger. Harry comes to in Dexter's kill room (their dining room, repurposed) and gets a taste of what it's like to be in his son's clutches.
Dexter notes that even though his mom, Doris, suspected something might be wrong with him as a child, Harry never tried to change him. Instead, Harry trained him. And now Dexter wants Harry to let him be the monster he created. Wanting Reed dead, Harry gives Dexter permission to take him out, even offering another suggestion to make his ritual complete. Smelling salts. So Dexter doesn't have to wait so long for his victim to wake up.
Deb gets serious with Gio
I think we all know that whatever is going on with Deb and her much-older new boyfriend Gio is likely going to end badly, but for now Gio is portrayed as the perfect boyfriend. He drives her to school, makes her look cool in front of her friends, is there for her when no one else is, and even takes her to her mom's grave on the anniversary of her death when both her brother and father bail.
I'm assuming at some point we're going to find out some bad stuff about Gio, maybe he'll even become one of Dexter's victims, but for now, he's all Deb's really got. I had to laugh at one point when Gio takes Deb out for a romantic night and mentions his dad's fancy yacht, surely a nod to Deb and Brian Moser's yacht date gone wrong in the OG series.