Dexter:' Season 4, Episode 2

One of my favorite running gags on the recently-retired animated sitcom “King of the Hill” would show a Spanish-language soap opera running on various characters’ televisions. It was called “Los Dios y Los Noches de Monsignor Montenegro” and presented the torrid adventures of an ass-kicking man of the cloth in mirrored sunglasses. He’d whisper his catch-phrase “Vaya… con Dios!” before, say, whipping out an Uzi at a baptismal font.

Watching “Dexter,” it’s so easy to get caught up in Michael C. Hall’s performance as a different kind of avenging angel that one forgets how soap operatic the Showtime series can be. Whenever “Dexter’s” subplots take telenovela-worthy turns, I usually make “Monsignor Montenegro” reference. They’ve been coming fast and furioso in the fourth season, with one regular now entering a potential love triangle, and two others having a secret affair. “Dexter’s” version of the Miami police department looks more like the set of a day-time drama, anyway: ever thought about how uniformly young and hot the cast is? Is it too much to ask for the precinct to have a Dennis Franz type? One imagines that the equivalent of a grizzled vet in this department would be a 29 year-old former J. Crew model.

The new episode, “Remains to be Seen,” features a reliable soap opera gimmick: amnesia induced by a blow to the head. In this case, at least, the script feels closer to the realm of possibility, as Dexter’s concussion gives him short-term memory loss after he flips the family minivan. (In)conveniently enough, the only thing he can’t remember is what he did with the body of his latest victim, so he has to retrace his steps and stay ahead of his colleagues and family while shotgunning Red Bull. I remember the idea of keeping a concussion victim awake from a "MASH" episode that had Hawkeye Pierce delivering a 20-minute monologue.