[Fire Me Boy!]

Hrm.... not sure how I feel about the way this is going. This reviewer precisely summed up my thoughts:

For the second time in his life, Dexter Morgan lost a mother. A "Goodbye, Miami" to you, too, Evelyn Vogel, the Doctor Franken-Shrinker who created the internal operating system for the unfeeling terminator that our "heroic" serial killer has been for most of his life. She was slain by her biological son, Oliver (formerly Daniel), Dexter’s latest, last doppelganger and the measure of the monster he could have been: A child of tragedy, warped by neglect, who never benefited from rehabilitating love or a structuring moral “code,” who can now be nothing more than the small, sinister thing that he is, a furious sociopath with a gleeful love for slaughter. Dexter wanted to put this rabid runt down, and Vogel had (reluctantly) come to see and agree with the wisdom of this revolting mercy: Watching the video Oliver had made of braining Dexter-wannabe Zach, Vogel realized her very bad boy was beyond correction. But Oliver was immediately suspicious of the tea party trap they had set for him. (Was it the creepy-odd Natural Born Killers mood-lighting of Evelyn’s sitting room? So strange.) “The Brain Surgeon” murdered Vogel right in front of Dexter in a staged moment that cast Dexter in the role of voyeur at the lewdest of peep shows -- as well as his younger self. Once again, Dexter was forced again to watch a madman destroy his mother with a showy, gory, psychically violating violence. Arriving at Vogel’s house on the canal, Dexter was stopped in his tracks in the yard by a phone call from Oliver, who threw open the curtain of the living room window with a flourish. Dexter saw Vogel standing behind the glass, looking defeated, hopeless, alone. Then commenced the horror. “Mother chose the wrong son,” said Oliver, a reference to Vogel’s treachery, and also, for us, an allusion to Dexter’s biological bro, who was also at ground zero of The Shipping Yard Massacre, and who, like Oliver, grew up Harry-less, codeless, and Ice Cream Truck deviant. With Dexter ogling, Oliver dragged a knife across Evelyn’s throat. It was deep cut. You could practically hear the rrrrrrrrrip. Dexter screamed and kicked down the door and held Vogel in his arms as she gurgled, choked, and booted. Oliver? Escaped; gone; in the wind.

And so, unintentionally, Dr. Vogel fulfills her redemptive function in Dexter's last story: Facilitating some healing regression therapy. Her death allows the adult Dexter to experience anew an analogous version of the childhood event that has defined his entire life. Dex can now respond in two ways: He can choose to be the Dexter he has always been; or he can choose to be something different, maybe something better. Either way, Adult Dexter can choose who he wants to be, rather than having a persona imprinted upon him by the adults in his life. Surely all of this will be settled once Dexter gets Oliver tethered to his kill table. If Dexter puts him through the ritual, Dexter is reinforcing Dirty Harry-Vogel Dexter. If Dexter spares him, Dexter is cleaning his slate, choosing to become a new creation of his own design. We shall see. And soon. Only two episodes left.