You’ve got to love Debs. In my interview with Jennifer Carpenter a few weeks ago she told me that she enjoyed coming up with new combinations of swear words. How’s about this for starters? “Kind of a c****, aren’t you?” she asked the Internal Affairs woman who tried to lure her to snitching on one of her colleagues by using some tough tactics. “I’ve gone through every scum-sucking ball sack of a pimp I know… you are my last-ditch ass-fucked effort!” she pleaded to a potential informant. So Debs had it rough in last night’s episode, but so did her brother too.

For all our Dexter news and reviews (including interview with Michael C Hall and Jennifer Carpenter) go here.

Dexter, after Rita revealed that she was pregnant at the end of the last episode, was grappling with the idea of fatherhood. He was blanking Rita, and was having visions of what it would be like to be a dad. All of them featured Harry. Most of them were portentous – he was scared that the kids would turn out like him.

Becoming a dad wasn’t the only thing on Dexter’s mind. In the last episode the team were called to investigate a dead body – Freebo’s junkie girlfriend Teagan. Dexter knew who it was but no one else did, and he soon realised that following Teagan’s trail might lead him to Freebo, who Dexter was very much up for taking out. He went to a frat party but she wasn’t there

Another thorn in his side was Debs. Taken off the Prado case, but keen to make amends she was making full use of her new, funky informant. She soon found out that the dead girl was Freebo’s girlfriend, and suddenly Dexter was being pitted against his sister.

As ever, Dexter was one step ahead of everyone and, after finding out where Teagan used to live, he found Freebo there, hiding out. He quickly got to work. He went home, gathered up his instruments and decided that the garage adjacent to the house would be the perfect kill room. It didn’t take him long to overpower the dealer and murderer and get to work.

But it wasn’t just Dexter hanging out at Teagan’s house. Prado was there too, and in an almost unwatchably exciting sequence Dexter had to clear up all his mess before Prado found him. It was too late. Dexter did manage to cover up the killing room and claimed self-defence to Prado outside of the garage. The DA looked on, incredulous. Dexter was done for surely. His secret was out. Surely. But no. Prado hugged him , sobbing and thanked him. Thanked him for taking care of the man who killed his brother. He even got away with the fact that he used the same murder weapon on Freebo that he used on Oscar.

That was all well and good, but there was a price to pay for his escape – Prado and Dexter had been getting uncomfortably close anyway (Dexter and Rita had visited his hacienda for dinner earlier in the episode), but now they were linked in ways that really could become too close for comfort.

Wash my feet! Iron my trousers and call me Susan! What an (almost) stunning twist. I really did think that it was all over for Dex. Well, not all over because there’s another (almost) three series of this. But it was testament to the writers that I almost believed it was all over for him.