The Psychology of Dexter - Bella DePaulo [41]
Batista and LaGuerta’s intimate relationship spilled over into conflict with Matthews. LaGuerta followed departmental policy and submitted notice of their relationship, only to learn that one or the other of them would be re-assigned to prevent the relationship from affecting their work. A failed attempt at re-assignment (and two signed affidavits) later, they found their careers in jeopardy and quietly married in LaGuerta’s office to prevent administrative consequences for perjuring themselves. While the philosophy of, “If it’s going to spill over, let it spill over all the way!” may be interesting dramatically, I have little doubt that this series of decisions, culminating in their marriage, is only going to create more work-family conflict for these two in the future.
Central to the season, though, was the Trinity killer—Arthur Mitchell—and what Dexter hoped to learn from him.
Trinity was the most successful serial killer in history, having murdered people using the same pattern in different cities across the country for at least thirty years. Because two of the methods he used looked very much like suicide, a third looked like something that could happen at any bar, and the last was not even noticed because of how he disposed of the bodies, no one but Frank Lundy had picked up on what Trinity was doing.
Trinity was much more interesting than a simple murderer, though. At least, he was to Dexter. Struggling with his new life as a family man, a blood tech, and a serial killer, and trying to balance these roles, Dexter became particularly interested in Trinity when he tracked the man behind the thirty-year spree back to where he lived. Rather than the loner he and Lundy expected, Dexter found a man with a wife and two children, a house in the suburbs, a vibrant work life, and a deep involvement in the community. At a glance, it appeared that Arthur Mitchell had achieved what Dexter was striving for: he juggled not only work and family, but also being a successful serial killer. Clearly, there was much to be learned from Arthur Mitchell.
The assumption at this point was that Arthur had accomplished segmentation; he was able to kill on a regular basis, with no ill effects on his family life. His family certainly looked happy enough, on the surface. Digging a little deeper, though, revealed a truth that Dexter didn’t want to hear.
Arthur’s family feared him. With them, he was not the kindly man he appeared to be when serving as the deacon at his church or helping to build houses with the “Four Walls” charity. While he fooled the people who only knew him in those contexts, much like Dexter fools almost everyone at Miami Metro, the people around Arthur the most saw through his façade. He hit them. He locked his daughter in her room. When his son displeased him, Arthur broke the boy’s little finger. There was no segmentation of serial killer from family man; at home, in the house he provided for them, the truth of Arthur’s pathology, his evil, came through. This was what Harry had warned Dexter about, and what Dexter had feared to be true all along.
In its totality, season four seemed to reaffirm the message that spillover is always going to happen. The various roles we play will affect one another—sometimes for the better, often for the worse. Attempts to keep disparate parts of our lives from touching one another are doomed to failure; for the Morgan family, those failures tend toward the bloody.
Dexter struggles with the same things all of us do. We have conflicting roles and demands. We try to balance them. We may find ways that work compensates for things that are lacking in other areas of our lives, or that family and friends provide us with satisfaction our work cannot. We may try to keep different aspects of our lives separate, with varying degrees of success. In the end, though, we find