page_title: Return to Sender (Dexter)
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: Return to Sender (Dexter) / Production
caption_attribution_description: Airstream recreational vehicle. Original title: "1966 Airstream Overlander International"
context_page_description: "Return to Sender" is the sixth episode of the first season of the American television drama series Dexter, which first aired on November 5, 2006 on Showtime in the United States. The episode was written by Timothy Schlattmann and was directed by Tony Goldwyn. In the episode, Dexter Morgan investigates a murder scene where one of his own victims has returned after he disposed of the body. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Rita Bennett tries to prevent her husband Paul from attending their daughter's birthday party, and Lt. María LaGuerta considers adopting a young witness of the murder whom she finds at the crime scene.
  Though set in Miami, Florida, the episode was filmed at various locations in and around Los Angeles, California including a salvage yard, a field by Tujunga Wash and a waterfront house on Hibiscus Island. Goldwyn, who Erik King said was "a joy to work with", allowed actor C.S. Lee to improvise and David Zayas to memorize his Spanish lines in English and translate them mentally during each take. "Return to Sender" received generally positive reviews from critics.
context_section_description: The day of filming in the salvage yard, which took place at LA Japanese Auto Parts in Sun Valley, California, was abnormally hot according to Lauren Vélez. The Airstream trailer in which Dexter's victim is found was brought into the salvage yard for filming externally, but was assembled on a studio sound stage for shooting scenes inside the trailer. Erik King remarked that the trailer was dirty, odorous and humid—"all the things we needed it to be". Other filming locations included a waterfront house on Hibiscus Island in Biscayne Bay, Florida as the Castillos' home, an empty field next to Sun Valley's Tujunga Wash where a young Debra practices shooting with Harry's pistol, and a house in a residential neighborhood of Long Beach, California which stands in for Dexter's childhood home.
  King said that Tony Goldwyn was "a joy to work with", while Vélez called him "an absolute actors' director". Shooting a scene in which Det. Angel Batista converses with a witness entirely in Spanish, David Zayas did not feel confident to memorize all of his Spanish lines. Instead, he learned his lines in English and translated the dialogue mentally during each take. In a scene between Dexter and Vince Masuka (C.S. Lee), Masuka pauses after examining a corpse and says, "I'm hungry." Michael C. Hall said that "C.S. [Lee's] ad libs are different every time. When he said, 'I'm hungry,' that was the only take that I didn't laugh." When asked about improvising on the show, Lee said that the writers "come up with some good lines themselves. [...] So I pretty much leave it up to them."
caption: The salvage yard's Airstream trailer was shot both on location and on a sound stage.
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