Finally, things are getting good, nail-biting, edge of your seat good, on Dexter! With only three episodes left, things are getting intense.

This week, Dexter decided to check out one of Jordan Chase’s seminar, where Chase delivers one central message, “We are born primal, conceived with the impulse to fight for what we desire. It’s written in our genes; it’s ingrained in our souls. But we’ve traded the wilderness for pavement, tress for skyscrapers, we’ve lost touch with our instincts. It’s time to tap into your primal selves and seize the power of instinct.” This actually resonates with Dex, who is only there to scope out Cole, his next victim. “Instincts are all I’ve ever had,” Dexter thinks to himself.

Chase asks Dexter to come up to his suite where he interrogates him about Rita’s death. “I have to say, Trinity fascinated me on a deep level,” he admits. “What else did Jordan and I have in common?” Dexter wonders.

In the meantime, Lumen gets a call from her ex, Owen, who wants her to meet him for coffee, she agrees to meet him for coffee, the next day (after she picks up supplies for the Cole kill). That night, Dexter and Lumen prepare the hotel room together for Cole’s kill. He helps him lay out plastic and he thinks to himself that it is “easier with two people” as he watches her roll out sheets of plastic.

Dexter’s first attempt at the kill was ruined by Cole’s latest sexual conquest. But the next day Dexter had one more chance, and planned to kill him while everyone else was preoccupied by the seminar. But, before Dexter is able to sneak out, Chase calls him on stage and asks him to describe finding Rita to the crowd and explain how it felt. “There was so much blood,” he mumbles. “What did you feel in that moment,” Chase asks, and when Dexter can’t come up with the right word Chase says, “shattered.” “When the primal self is shattered it reaches out in search of what will make it whole again,” Chase explains. “Do you feel that, Dexter, that hunger inside for what will make you whole again?” Dexter nods.

As Lumen is leaving the hotel and leaving Dexter to his kill, she sees his confession playing on a large screen in the lobby. She is compelled to watch, and is spotted by Cole. He follows her to the hotel room Dexter had rented, sneaks in through the adjoining door to his room and tries to choke her. Of course Dexter comes in just in time and is able to fulfill his purpose for being there- killing Cole- with Lumen watching.

The ease with which Dexter had set up the kill room tells her he had killed before and he does confide in her, explaining everything, about his mother, about his other kills, about Rita. “You said I’d done this before, that’s true, this is who I am,” he says, “When I was a child my mother was murdered in front of me and it shattered me. I’ve done this ever since, because for the longest time it was the only way I could feel unbroken. And then Rita was killed and none of this made sense anymore. Until now. Miguel couldn’t, my father couldn’t. Can anyone live with the truth of what I am?” Dexter thinks as he hands Lumen the slide of Cole’s blood, the ultimate intimate act. “Is Lumen what will make me whole?”

On his way out of the hotel, Dexter sees Chase who reminds him not to forget what happened there this weekend. Adding, “Act on what you’ve learned, that’s what I tell my clients, ‘tick tick tick, that’s the sound of your life running out.’” And Dexter realizes this was “watch guy” one of Lumen’s other attackers, and his next victim.

The episode ends with Lumen and Dexter on Dexter’s boat, dumping Cole’s body. Dexter let’s Lumen do the honors of dropping the victim’s head into the ocean. But, little do they know Liddy is photographing them from shore, which means more trouble for Dexter. Will he tell Quinn? Will Quinn tell Deb? Will he be abel to get to Liddy before anyone else knows?

There was one other intriguing storyline in last night’s episode. In an attempt to cover herself after the botched take down of the Fuentes brothers which left an informant dead, LaGuerta starts looking for a scapegoat. Initially, she wants to give them Ciara, but Deb objected, suggesting that since she was the supervising officer, LaGuerta should use Deb as the scapegoat, but also insists the best thing to do is stand together as a team. But, instead, LaGuerta takes Deb’s advice and throws her under the bus.

Deb is at Quinn’s place when she sees LaGuerta’s press conference “Not even La Guerta can deny that you’re a great detective,” he tells her. “At the end of the day, you’ll be the one left standing.” Her rage only intensifies when she finds out Ciara backed LaGuerta. “I came here hoping to learn from you,” Ciara tells Deb. “What you did, you would never learn from me. Good luck, you’re going to need it,” Deb responds and storms out. Batista stops her in the parking lot and tells her he’s behind her. “I’m going to do whatever it takes to set the record straight,” he says. “I was stuck between a rock and my wife, but I decided I’m backing you. You’re like my kid sister, but better because I actually like you.”

Will this mean the end of Batista and LaGuerta?

In last night’s episode of Dexter, Lumen (Julia Stiles) continued her pursuit of the men who beat and raped her. She tries to remember the rest of the group of men who held her captive and remembers the ticking in her ears of “Watch Guy,” and “Suit and Tie,” who would carefully fold his jacket before attacking her.

“Suit and Tie” decides to remove the evidence and is shown removing barrels full of the other girl’s bodies from the swamp and adding them to a pickup truck. As he drives back, the truck is hit by a drunk driver and the Miami Police are called to the scene. He was gone but he did leave behind his neatly folded jacket.

The truck was registered to Jordan Chase, the “Take It” guy Boyd Fowler was obsessed with listening to. After examining the bodies, two of the women were identified as visitors to Miami, not unlike Lumen. Chase is brought in with Cole Harmon, his head of security, and Cole becomes their number one suspect.

After some analysis, Cole’s hair and fingerprints are found on the jacket and the truck. Lumen identifies him as “Suit and Tie,” to Dexter, who tries to convince her that the law will take care of it but she insists she wants to “take care of it herself”.

Dexter helps Lumen throw the police off of Cole’s trail by leading them to Fowler. When the police ask Cole about Fowler he claims Fowler was one of Chase’s stalkers.

Lumen and Dexter go to Harmon’s house to get some more info and when Dexter is caught in the house, Lumen comes in and knocks the guy out. The two of them find a photo of Dan the Dentist, Cole Harmon, and Boyd Fowler together when they were teenagers. Lumen knows all she has to do now is find the other two men in the photo and Dexter agrees they will work together until all of the men are caught.

In the meantime, Quinn’s still obsessed with finding out more about Dexter. His informant tells him that Dexter took his house off the market and has a pretty blond girl staying there. He agrees to pay the guy more to find out who she is.

Sunday night’s episode focused on the two new people in Dexter’s life, Harrison and Lumen, who are both vulnerable innocents, but for how long? Dexter, for the first time, is in the a position where he could groom an apprentice, either in his young or Lumen, who is eager to get revenge on her attackers, or in his own son.

As the episode opens, Dexter takes Harrison to a Mommy and Me class where he plays a parachute game with the other mothers, until the fun is interrupted by tears. One child scratched another on the face and Dexter assumes it was Harrison, finding it hard to believe he wasn’t effected by watching his mother die, the way Dexter was.

He examines Harrison’s fingernail for evidence but found nothing and asks the nanny if he is aggressive but she says no.  Even though he fears Harrison will be like him, you can’t help but wonder if that’s what he secretly wants. While searching through the station’s databases for Lumen’s other attackers, he plops Harrison on his lap and tells him his plan to kill them before Lumen can, it seems he’s looking for a confidant.

In addition to looking for Lumen’s attackers, Dexter’s also back to work full time and begins helping with Santa Muerte case like everyone else.  And while they are all busy, Quinn gets drunk with a disgruntled cop who he convinces to investigate Dexter. (Here’s a spoiler about what happens to that guy.)

We also find out that LaGuerta is working a sting with IA but Batista gets the wrong idea when he sees her going into a hotel room. He, of course, breaks into the  catches her alone with McCoy, but, there is also a slew of police in the next room with the man they just busted.

Meanwhile,  Lumen convinces Dexter that Boyd’s old cell mate was one of her attackers and he goes in for the kill but after finding a police anklet on the man, he realizes it couldn’t have been him, the police would have known exactly where he was. He is also able to stop Lumen from killing him just in time and convinces her to go back to Minnesota.

When Lumen is searched at the airport, she isn’t able to get on the plane and heads right back to Miami and based on next week’s preview, she takes matters into her own hands.

This week we finally learned the name of that scared girl who watched Dexter kill Boyd with a kitchen knife:  Lumen Anne Pierce. We also got a piece of her backstory, which includes a mother who understands why she would have to leave her home in Minnesota, and, more importantly, the fact that there were others (besides Blyd) who tortured her.

Though Dexter has dealt with unwanted witnesses before, he’s never dealt with anything like this before. He should kill Lumen, and it would be easy since no one is looking for her, but he can’t.

Dexter realizes that he has to convince her that she is safe with him or she is going to keep trying to run and may eventually find someone to tell what he has done. At first, he tries to restrain her, but she she fights back , smearing blood all over him and forcing him to sedate her. Just then, Deb calls him to a crime scene, where she has been all night, meaning no one came home to relieve the nanny.

By the time Dexter gets back to the apartment, the nanny is pissed and quits.

Dexter stops by the station, pawning Harrison off on his co-workers to steal some antibiotics from Masuka for Lumen, and check out her fingerprints. Harry scolds him for his brazenness. “Is this your idea of quality time, using your son for cover?” he asks. “It’s for a good cause,” Dexter replies.

He takes  Harrison to Lumen’s motel, where he uses him as a cover again and assures the receptionist he was just there to pay the bill and pick up “mom’s” things.

Meanwhile,  Quinn corners Jonah Mitchell in a gas-station convenience store, flashes Dexter’s photo in front of him, but before he can confirm Dexter is Kyle Butler, Quinn is in taken away in handcuffs. LaGuerta reams Quinn out for not dropping and suspends him indefinitely which may just give him more time to go after Dexter.

Before going back to Lumen, Dexter goes to Sonja and begs her to come back as Harrison’s nanny, explaining, “A girl was badly hurt and I spent the night trying to help her and then was called to a crime scene by my sister. That’s where I was and I’m here now because we interviewed 30 people and you’re the one that didn’t scare me. Basically, you’re the only one I could trust Harrison to.”

“It’s a leap of faith on both our parts,” she replied, agreeing to give him one more try.

Dexter brings Lumen back to where Fowler had stored his other victims.  “I saved your life,” he tells her.  “How do I know that you didn’t’ kill these girls?” she asks. “You don’t,” he says. “It’s a leap of faith for both of us.”

Dexter gives Lumen the knife and she cuts him, but quickly realizes he’s serious when he says she can trust him. In the end, she dresses his wounds and tells him about the other men, so will Dexter help her get revenge?

If the first two episodes of Dexter season 5 were meant to ease us (and Dexter) back into a routine, last night’s episode was definitely the jolt we all needed to get back in the serial-killing game.

The most heart-pounding storyline of the episode was the chase between Dexter and Boyd, the dead-animal remover who also happened to kill young women. Dexter agrees to do a ride-along with Boyd, to see if he might be interested in his line of work (Dexter lies and tells him he’s out of work). He sets up a kill room and as he’s about to make his move on him, Boyd turns around and shoots him with a tranquilizer gun. Both men are taken to the hospital, which they quickly escape. Dexter is finally able to sedate Boyd back at his house and has to set up a make-shift kill room, but that’s where things really get interesting.

Little does Dexter know, but Boyd actually has a hostage in the house (played by Julia Stiles) who sees him kill Boyd, who was most likely going to kill her. In the preview for next week’s show we see Dexter take her with him but he can’t let her go now that she knows the truth. This is definitely going to be one of the juiciest story lines of the season.

In the meantime, Quinn’s hunch that Dexter is Kyle Butler is growing, despite the fact that he’s crushing hard on Deb (who has a great storyline of her own for once as she tries to hunt down a ritualistic killer). Even though he is right, Dexter is Kyle Butler, it’s hard to know what his intentions are and if he’d even do with anything with the information.

The title of the episode was a reference to Mary Poppins and applied to Sonya, Harrison’s too-good-to-be-true Irish nanny, and Dexter’s plan to kill Boyd. Time will only tell if Dexter’s nanny turns out the be that good, but based on Dexter’s Boyd kill and his history with personal relationships, its probably safe to say she won’t be.

Last night, Dexter started to get back on track, even though he is still very much mourning Rita’s death and struggling with single fatherhood.

Dex once again finds a target, Boyd Fowler (Shawn Hatosy), a road kill pick up guy who he  becomes suspicious of after he find blood in a moving van Fowler had recently rented. Dexter follows Fowler to a swamp where he dumped off a barrel and, sure enough, when Dexter goes back to see what’s inside, its the body of a dead woman. As the episode ends, Dexter looks around and finds several more barrels, which are most likely also filled with the remains of Fowler’s victims.

Fowler gives Dexter something to concentrate on (and a victim for next week’s episode) but he still has plenty to deal with at home. He, along with Astor, Cody and Harrison, move into his old apartment with Deb. Deb in the meantime goes to stay with Quinn, but, as their relationship develops, so does his suspicion of Dexter.

Astor repeatedly asks Dexter to bring her to their house to get her things, but he refuses. So, Astor takes matters into her own hands. She and Cody leave school in the middle of the day and walk to the house, when Dexter finds them they are just staring at the tub where their mother died.

Astor tells Dexter that its too hard to live with him because she believed that things would be better when he came into their lives, but instead things got worse. She tells him that she wants to live with her grandparents in Orlando and he obliges.

As Astor and Cody pull away with their grandparents, we see true remorse and pain in Dexter’s eyes, just one more reason to mourn, and one more reason to seek atonement for Rita’s death.

Last night, Dexter returned with an emotional episode that picked up right where last season ended.

As the episode opens, the police and FBI are arriving at Dexter’s house while he hands Harrison over to Deb saying,“Rita’s inside … It was me.”

His response response raises suspicion among the FBI and Quinn, who has already suspicious of Dex and his shady behavior. Quinn begins questioning Dexter’s story (that he came home and found Rita dead) especially after seeing their neighbor Elliot sobbing while Dexter stood outside the house stone-faced.

Things become even more complicated when Deb, who is trying to deal with the stress of Rita’s death and Dexter’s stranger-than-usual behavior, sleeps with Quinn in an attempt to find a little comfort.

The most awkward scene came when Dex had to tell Rita’s kids (and her parents) about her death as they stood in front of him in their Mickey Mouse ears, and he says, “I’m sorry for your lose.” Ouch.

In her grief, Astor tells him, “We all would have been better off if she’d never met you,” and he believes her. Instead of attending his FBI interview and helping with last minute funeral details, Dex takes off in his boat with only the “tools of his trade” but after a visit from Harry, he realizes he has to go back.

“She died a brutal death, and I can’t fix it,” Dexter said in his eulogy of Rita,“But I know I have to try, here in Miami with the people who knew her … who cared about her … who loved her.”

For Dexter fans, Rita’s death on in the season finale was a shock, and one that left many looking for closure. Now, it looks like they just might be getting what they’re looking for.

Showtime has confirmed that yes, Julie Benz, who played Rita, Dexter’s wife on the series, will make a return appearance to the show after her character was brutally murdered by the Trinity Killer. Julie has been names as a guest star in the show’s fifth-season premiere this fall. As for how this happens (be it flashback, ghost or dream) Showtime isn’t saying.

“As Dexter grapples with the reality of the death of his wife and the realization that he is now a single father, the presence of Rita Bennett will help him deal with his new found feelings of loss and grief — emotions that Dexter Morgan has never really felt before,” Showtime says in a statement.

The show’s executive producers said that Rita’s “presence” won’t be the same as Dexter’s dad (James Remar), who is dead but still appears to Dexter to remind him to stick to his code.

However Rita does appear to Dexter, Benz’s return to the show will be for only one episode. She will star in ABC’s new drama “No Ordinary Family” in the fall.

Dexter star Julie Benz has been tapped to star opposite Michael Chiklis in ABC’s new pilot No Ordinary Family.

The drama revolves around Jim (Michael Chiklis), a once aspiring artist-turned-police artist, and his typical American family who suddenly finds themselves with new “abilities.” Julie will play Jim’s wife, a gifted scientist who develops a power for superspeed.

Currently, Benz is starring on Desperate Housewives as a lap dancer who has just taken up residence on Wisteria Lane. In the season four finale of Dexter, Julie’s character, Rita, was surprisingly killed.

Benz will also stars in the Hallmark movie, Uncorked. In the made-for-TV flick, She plays Johnetta “Johnny” Prentice, a workaholic CFO for a major corporation whose life is turned upside-down when she’s sent to a conference in California wine country to seal a deal, but winds up falling in love along the way.

“Johnny is a woman who relies on work to get things in her life done,” Benz explains about the character. “I understand that sort of mindset really well, though I think Johnny’s a lot more cut off emotionally than I am. I like to think I’ve got a lot of different sides to me that I can bring out in my performing.”

Uncorked debuts on Hallmark Saturday night at 9 p.m.

PaleyFest 2010, the Paley Center for Media’s annual television celebration, begins Friday in Beverly Hills, CA. During the fest, the casts and creators of the best shows currently on TV participate in panel discussions, Q & A sessions and meet and greets.

Here’s are all of the shows that will be featured in PaleyFest 2010: “Modern Family” (2/26), “Lost” (2/27), “NCIS” (3/1), “Community” (3/3), “Dexter” (3/4), “Cougar Town” (3/5), “The Vampire Diaries” (3/6), An evening with Seth Macfarlane and friends (3/9), “Breaking Bad” (3/10), “Flashforward” (3/11), “Men of a Certain Age” (3/12), “Glee” (3/13), “Curb Your Enthusiasm” (3/14).

Courteney Cox (“Cougar Town”), Larry David (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”), Ray Romano (“Men Of A Certain Age”), Michael C. Hall (“Dexter”), Chevy Chase (“Community”),and Ed O’Neill (“Modern Family”) will all be in attendance this year.

The festival will take place at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills. There are still tickets available to most of the events except for the “Lost” and “Glee”. Individual tickets  from $24 to $75 or you can purchasee the PaleyFest2010 Premium Package which include 2 guaranteed tickets to 4 star-studded PaleyFest2010 panels, premium seating within the Saban Theater for each package event, early admission to the Saban Theater for each package event, exclusive invitation for 2 people to attend 1 private after-party with surprise guests in attendance and a limited edition PaleyFest2010 Premium Package Souvenir lanyard for $750.

You can also follow the Paley Center on Twitter for news and info about the event too!