Dexter, "Go Your Own Way": Somebody messes with me, I'm gonna mess with him

Spoilers for last night's "Dexter" coming up just as soon as I ask the dry cleaner if they can get out cow's blood...

Okay, now this is getting fun.

Overall, I'm still underwhelmed by a lot of this season, but these last few episodes have been really strong. Dexter and Prado's cat and mouse game is the obvious highlight -- their pretense-abandoning argument on the rooftop was one of the show's funniest, most electric scenes to date -- but at last some of the less interesting subplots are getting tied into the main action. Angel's relationship with the vice cop gives Dexter a chance to prevent the creation of yet another homicidal vigilante in Miami's law-enforcement community. Deb's relationship with Anton provides fodder for Miguel to blackmail Dexter with (and push Dexter firmly into Prado Must Die mode), and the Skinner becomes Miguel's tool to take out Dexter once and for all. Even the wedding storyline gave us the delightful spectacle of Masuka in charge of the bachelor party.

Now, we all know that the Skinner isn't going to succeed in killing Dex -- not unless the show is going to change its title to "Miguel" or "Skin-NER!" (said in my best Superintendent Chalmers voice) -- but seeing Dexter at the mercy of another serial killer, and seeing how he gets out of this predicament, should compensate for a lot of the sluggishness we needed to get to this point.

While I still assume that Prado winds up Saran-wrapped to a table, he's proving to be a much more formidable foe than I expected. And Dexter's internal debate about the problems of killing such a high-profile figure -- and one with such a close personal connection to himself -- suggests that we might get a more creative solution in the end

Finally, this late in the season, let me remind you of one of the cardinal parts of this site's No Spoilers policy: no talking about the previews, or anything else you've seen/read/heard about the next episode, or the rest of the season. I just barely changed the channel in time to avoid something I was sure I didn't want to see, given the cliffhanger.

What did everybody else think?