Dexter, "I Had a Dream": Best man for the job

Very brief spoilers for last night's penultimate "Dexter" season three episode coming right up...

I hate the Internet some days. Every comment on the blog gets e-mailed to me as soon as it's posted so that I know if there's something I need to respond to -- or, on occasion, if there's something I need to delete. Last night, I came home late from giving a friend a lift home, put on "Dexter," and, as the opening credits were playing, checked my e-mail... and found a comment just posted to last week's "Dexter" discussion that spoiled virtually everything in the episode, including Dexter using a garrote instead of a knife on Miguel. So thanks a lot, anonymous d-bag.

Because of that marvelous specimen, I don't have a lot to say about "I Had a Dream," but I do feel like I would have been disappointed in the episode even if I didn't know what was coming. Having Dexter kill Prado with an episode to go was a surprise in its timing, but predictable in the larger scheme of things. We all assumed that Dex would eventually get Miguel on a table, and he did, with minimal difficulty. I would have liked the final showdown between these two men who were briefly kindred spirits to have been more complicated from an emotional and logistical standpoint. Dexter got to taunt Miguel about killing Oscar (and I guess we'll never find out exactly why Oscar was in Freebo's house), but the whole thing played out as you'd expect if you've watched this show for three seasons. Given their former close friendship, and Miguel's standing in the community, and whatever serial killer skills Miguel picked up from Dexter, I was hoping for something more.

Now, Dexter doesn't know that Miguel put the Skinner on his tail, but the Skinner was always a sideshow to the season's main story, and that's done in a fairly perfunctory fashion. (To be fair, it might have seemed brilliant and shocking if I'd been unspoiled, but I don't think so.)

Jennifer Carpenter gets beat up a lot here and on various message boards, but I thought she did a very nice job with Deb trying to deal with the news about Harry. And the scene where Anton talked about what it felt like to be the Skinner's captive gave us a different perspective on what it must be like to be the poor bastard trapped under Saran Wrap by Dexter. But I'm still waiting for the show to remember the business about Quinn being a dirty cop.

As always -- and especially after this recent incident -- I should remind you about the spoiler policy around here, which is no spoilers about upcoming episodes before they're written about by me. No talking about anything in the previews, anything you've read or heard elsewhere, about psychic visions you had, etc.

What did the non-spoiled among you think of the episode?