Hannibal Review: “Mizumono” (season 2, episode 13)

“A bloodbath that leaves no one unscarred”

There comes a moment in watching a television show when you go from being a fan to being… well, an avid fan. Let’s call it a becoming of sorts. It’s at that point the show takes on an abnormal importance in your life. I discovered that was true for me when I sat down to watch the Season 2 finale of Hannibal. To my dismay and horror, I found myself staring dumbfoundedly at a baseball game in its seventh inning. After a bit of Internet scurrying, I was able to watch the episode, and holy crap. Without exaggeration, I think I’m ready to declare this the most gut-punchingly amazing non-series-ending season finale I’ve ever seen.

At the beginning of Season 2, we were teased with a flash-forward of a brutal hand-to-hand combat fight between Hannibal Lecter and Jack Crawford. We rightly assumed that the show would build over the course of the season to this deadly confrontation. But what we didn’t expect was that this seemingly straight-forward fight between two characters would culminate in a bloodbath that leaves no one (including the audience) unscarred.

Last episode closed with Will Graham offering up Crawford to Hannibal as bait. As “Mizumono” opens, we learn that Jack is in on this plan. And in a crafty bit of editing we get two separate conversations (Will and Jack, and Will and Hannibal) juxtaposed. We’re seeing both sides of Will, and while it’s tempting to believe Will is lying to Hannibal (“Will’s the good guy!”), I don’t think it’s that black and white. As the editing shows us, these two sides of Will have merged. Somehow two entirely dissonant beliefs exist side by side in his mind — the belief that serial killer Hannibal must be caught, and the belief that friend Hannibal must be saved. “You were supposed to leave,” Will tells Hannibal in that final scene. That’s when I understood. Will expected Hannibal to run. Despite all his empathy and his gifts for insight, Will wasn’t privy to the flash-forward we saw. He didn’t know this confrontation was inevitable. I think he and Hannibal both believed it could somehow be avoided.

For Hannibal that belief was shattered when he smelled the supposedly dead Freddie Lounds on Will. But Will’s belief lived a little longer, right up until Hannibal gutted him. This gets me to the big surprise of the season: The “resurrection” of Abigail Hobbs. (Which makes me wonder, was it Abigail who Beverly Katz found in Hannibal’s basement? I’d assumed it was Miriam Lass.) In a show where off-screen “deaths” are rarely deaths, some viewers might say they saw this coming. But did you see the I’m-still-alive-and-I’ll-shove-you-out-the-window moment coming? I didn’t think so! Seriously though, whether or not you expected Abigail to return (and for the record, I did NOT), Will’s surprise-confusion-betrayal-love at seeing her alive again was heart-breaking. And then to lose her again, right in front of him… F**k you, Hannibal!

Will’s allegiance to Hannibal, no matter how shaky and complicated it was, cost him dearly. The body count hasn’t been tallied yet, but whatever it is, Will’s guilt at his own complicity will surely birth some major personal demons (as if he didn’t have enough already) while he mourns the violent death of Abigail, et al. The drop of blood in Alana’s tears not only foreshadowed the episode’s bloody and tragic climax, but it’s also the perfect metaphor for Will’s becoming. His folly with Hannibal Lecter cost him blood and tears. And we can count on a lot more blood (and at least a few more tears) on what will likely be Will’s Season 3 rampage for revenge.

Speaking of aesthetics, the cinematography and scoring, while always exceptional, reached a new level of artistry toward the end of this season. In Hannibal, these elements rarely call attention to themselves, yet boldly heighten the emotional resonance of the storyline. And in “Mizumono,” ALL of the ingredients of film production — story, cinematography, score, editing, acting — combined perfectly into a magical witch’s brew that left me by the end both choking on it and wanting more. The bar has been set very high for Season 3 of Hannibal. And for this avid fan, it can’t get here soon enough.

Hannibal Review: “Tome-Wan” (season 2, episode 12)

“The event horizon of chaos”

There are very few secrets left between Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter. And “Tome-Wan” begins with a frank conversation that picks up immediately after last week’s final scene. Will “warns” Hannibal he’s set Mason Verger out to kill him because, well, he “was curious what would happen.” Will is playing Hannibal, in both senses of the word: He’s performing a version of Hannibal; and he’s doing so in order to lure Hannibal onto his hook. Hannibal of course is aware of this possibility. From his perspective, it’s irrelevant whether or not Will has actually murdered anyone; Will is dancing so close to that line that Hannibal is sure to be delighting in the effects of his influence.

We are witnessing a psychological game of chicken, as Mason calls it. But with two completely different styles. Hannibal’s “veneer of self-composure” is impenetrable. He’s the rock that you don’t see move until it’s crushed you. Will, on the other hand, is like an old coal-fired train racing at dangerously high speeds. You’re never quite sure if it’s going to stay on the tracks, and when it does, you’re amazed that it didn’t crash. An unstoppable force about to hit an immovable object.

At the end of that opening scene, Hannibal instructs Will to close his eyes and imagine what he would like to happen. And as I watched Will’s fantasy of him feeding Hannibal to Mason’s pigs, it felt incredibly satisfying — a culmination of all of Will’s suffering, a vindication of all of his efforts. And at the same time, I could not help feeling sad (and this is coming from someone who thinks all this “Hannigram” stuff is cray-cray). Their friendship is a fascinating dance on “the event horizon of chaos,” and as much as I want Hannibal to get caught, I don’t want the dance to end. But as Will acknowledges, “This is not sustainable.” [Subtextually, imagine how different that line would have felt had the show been canceled last week instead of being renewed — yikes, I don’t want to even think about that.]

Gillian Anderson returns as Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier, Hannibal’s former psychiatrist, to finally fill in her backstory and to warn us that Hannibal is still in control, no matter how confident Will and Jack seem. She also prophecies two significant plot developments: One, that Hannibal will persuade Will into thinking the only choice Will has is to kill someone he loves; and two, that Hannibal’s downfall will be the result of “whimsy,” or “self-congratulation at his own exquisite taste and cunning.” Concerning the first prediction, we can make a pretty good guess at whose life Will has chosen to offer up (Jack Crawford), based on the flash-forward from the beginning of this season plus Will’s suggestion to Hannibal in the final scene of this episode. But that second prediction… that’s intriguing, and likely something we will see develop over the course of Season 3.

We also get the conclusion (for now, that is) of the beautifully bizarre Verger storyline. Margot Verger has become the surrogate surrogate daughter (redundancy intended) for Will and Hannibal, taking the place of Abigail Hobbs. This complicates their plans for Mason. Both Will and Hannibal know that by killing Mason, they will be hurting Margot, which neither wants to do. How fitting then that Hannibal finds a solution to humiliate Mason by “eating” him (not literally but by proxy), but without killing him. And in a clever twist on the book, Mason feeds his face not to his own dogs, but to Will’s dogs!

Small changes like this remind us of how skillfully Bryan Fuller and his creative team are building on Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter mythology. It’s rare that a derivative work outshines its source material. But I think that’s what we’re witnessing with Fuller’s Hannibal. Fuller has found a way to honor and respect the spirit of the original while shaping his Hannibal into something that’s different — transcendent even. And with just one episode left in Season 2, I can’t wait to see how he pays off that tantalizing flash-forward that began the season and sets up Hannibal’s downfall in Season 3.

Hannibal Review: “Ko No Mono” (season 2, episode 11)

“Every creative act has its destructive consequence”

Aside from the normal risks associated with being friends with a serial killer, being friends with Hannibal Lecter means being friends with someone who will happily set into motion a series of events that are likely to (and in fact do) result in the forced abortion of the child you were tricked into fathering. This is not an otherwise “good guy” who happens to murder people; this is a monster. And all you fans with a Hannibal fetish (the man, not the show) may want to get your heads checked.

After their relatively slow introduction over the past few episodes, “Ko No Mono” brings sister and brother Verger front and center into the plot. They’ve become additional pieces on Hannibal’s chessboard that he can use in his game with/against Will. Having encouraged Margot last episode to find someone (Will) with the right parts to give her a child, Hannibal reveals her intentions to her brother, Mason, who is none too happy about it. What follows is probably the most horrifying scene you could watch on television this Mother’s Day weekend — Mason mutilates his sister and eliminates his competition for the Verger fortune once and for all. And when Will (still haunted by the death of “daughter” Abigail) learns the fate of his unborn child, he goes after Mason.

It’s tempting to view Will’s relationship to Hannibal in one of two ways: He’s either Hannibal’s opponent in this twisted game of chess; or he, too, is a piece on Hannibal’s chess board. But I think he’s both. Will is like the chess piece that’s self-aware. He’s the play-thing that’s playing the player. It reminds me of the album cover for Iron Maiden’s Number of the Beast, which shows the devil pulling the strings of their mascot, Eddie, who’s also pulling the strings of the devil himself. Will is not free of Hannibal’s influence, but neither is Hannibal free of Will’s.

Alana Bloom, who’s been relegated to the background for several episodes, steps forward to do some emotionally moving and teary-eyed (where’s Mason Verger with his tissues?) psychological detecting. She’s becoming less and less certain of Will’s guilt, just as she is of Hannibal’s innocence. By the end of “Ko No Mono,” it’s clear to the viewer that Will is playing Hannibal. But what’s not clear is why is he playing Alana? He tells her, “I told everyone Hannibal was a killer, and no one believed me. Just like no one would believe you if you said I was a killer.” Is it just revenge for her doubting him? That would be my reason if I was Will. I would want to see her suffer in her wrongness about me (yes, I should probably get my head checked too). But I suspect as with anything on this show, it’s a bit more complicated. Ever since Will’s incarceration for murders he did not commit, he’s seemed content to let others wallow in their uncertainty. It’s enough that he knows the truth. Others, like Alana and Jack Crawford before her, can find their way to it at their own pace.

This is one of the things I love most about Hannibal. Even in the midst of unrealistic events, characters behave the way real people do. They don’t over-explain their motivations for the sake of the narrative. They have their own agenda, their own resentments, their own perspective that they obscure from the rest of the world — and often from themselves too.

The most moving scenes of all were the two in which Will and Hannibal discuss the death of Abigail Hobbs, as directly as they can anyway. This has been a long time coming. In life and death, Abigail has been at the center of their relationship: she was Hannibal’s first test for Will (when Will saved her life after Hannibal warned Abigail’s father Will was coming for him); she was the catalyst for their emotional connection (when they bonded over their mutual father-like protection of her); and she was the wedge between them (when Hannibal murdered her and framed Will).

Hannibal all but confesses to Will, expressing as much regret as a monster is capable of. He intellectualizes his emotion as a wish that time could reverse itself, that “teacups [could] come together.” We even get a visual of a shattered teacup reassembling itself; and I may be mistaken, but the musical cue and maybe even the shot itself were from the episode in which Abigail dropped a teacup in Hannibal’s kitchen.

But as we know, and as Will knows, time will not reverse itself. Abigail is gone forever. And Will is no longer content to simply kill Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal, who loves to humiliate his victims by eating them, deserves to be humiliated too. As Will tells Mason Verger, “Dr. Lecter’s the one you want to be feeding to your pigs.”

Hannibal Review: “Naka-Choko” (season 2, episode 10)

“Greatness… and some rough edges”

I didn’t appreciate “Naka-Choko” on first viewing. It felt like a jumble of really tasty ingredients that didn’t know what it wanted to be. After viewing it a second time, I like it a lot more, but still have some gripes.

Right off the bat, I felt the opening scene of Will’s confrontation with Tier/Hannibal/Ravenstag was unnecessary. Hannibal has always been a show where things happen off-screen. This is often done to enhance the dramatic tension and mystery — as seen at the end of the previous episode. Not showing us the fight between Randall Tier and Will made that final reveal in Hannibal’s dining room all the more powerful. So why revisit it now? All of the information we get from that fight scene (Will fantasizing that he’s beating Hannibal to death) is covered in dialogue in the very next scene. Aesthetically, something felt off to me as well. For example, the percussive score unintentionally (I hope) recalls Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” and jarred me right out of the episode every time I heard it.

My biggest criticism, however, did NOT survive my second viewing. In serialized storytelling, you want a good mix of paying off previously posed questions and setting up new mysteries and ambiguities. “Naka-Choko” felt skewed too far to the asking side. Is Jack Crawford in on Will’s game or completely in the dark? Why is Mason Verger breeding killer pigs? Why did Margot seduce Will? What happened to Freddie Lounds? And most importantly, is Will really becoming a serial killer or faking it to catch Hannibal? But to my surprise, many of these questions are in fact answered — if we look closely. And those that aren’t, are teased in dramatically satisfying ways.

Much of the mystery in Hannibal (and in life) lies between the lines of what a person’s true intentions are and what they present their intentions to be. As viewers we’re always looking for solid ground to stand on — what can we trust as true? I suggest that we can trust most of what we see in Will’s dreams and visions. For example, when Will does his empathy thing (on himself) at the Tier crime scene, we witness his vision of himself conversing with his victim. Tier says, “This is my becoming. And yours.” Will shakes his head and corrects him, “This is my DESIGN.” I think it’s safe to conclude that a part of Will (as represented by Tier) acknowledges the joy he’s taking in the violence, and as a result, the risk of him becoming the very thing he’s chasing (Hannibal). But there’s another part of him that’s in control (for the moment, that is) — the fisherman — that has designed a person suit for himself to carefully lure Hannibal onto his hook.

Contrast this to Will’s words when he comes out of his vision and back into the room with Jack and Hannibal; his words are no longer truth but bait. He tells Jack and Hannibal that Tier’s killer ENVIED him. “Randall Tier came into his own much easier than whoever killed him.” This is Will’s way of baiting Hannibal, essentially saying to him “It may be hard for me to admit, but you and I are the same.” No they aren’t. Not yet anyway.

So… Is Will really becoming a serial killer? I would say at this point it’s like asking whether Schödinger’s cat is alive or dead. There’s potential for either answer to be true, and we will not know until we open the box. Will has formed an alliance with Hannibal that is both alive and dead, both true and not true. It’s a dangerous game for him to play — as dangerous as its ever been, a tightrope walk without a net.

What happened to Freddie Lounds? My guess is that Will and Freddie have found common ground over their inability to help and save Abigail Hobbs. The confrontation between them at Will’s house was clearly real, but I’m pretty sure Freddie is alive and either willingly helping Will deceive Hannibal, or tied up somewhere. Or possibly in FBI custody — which leads us to…

Is Jack in on it with Will or is he clueless? Jack’s question to Will at the crime scene, “His killer EMPATHIZED with him?” is very interesting. If Jack is not in on it, this is a sign he might be getting suspicious of Will again. If he is in on it, it was a clever way to throw Hannibal off the scent. Makes me wonder if he in fact responded to Freddie’s call and took her (willingly or otherwise) into custody to prevent her from posting those incriminating photos online.

Why did Margot seduce Will? Quite simply, to leave a legacy, as Hannibal suggested in her therapy session. Of course, she needed someone with the “right parts” to help her with that. Enter Will Graham (pun intended). How ironic then are her words when she shows up at his door with a bottle of whiskey and says, “I’ve come to replenish your stores.”

And finally… Why is Mason breeding killer pigs? This question will likely not be answered too soon. Is it to torment his sister and/or keep her in line? Seems pretty elaborate for just that. Or is Mason a burgeoning serial killer too? If that’s the case, I expect we’ll get a lot more of him in Season 3.

Despite its flaws, I expect “Naka-Choko” will rise in my estimation within the larger context of this season as a whole. I think when storytelling dares to reach for greatness, it’s bound to have some rough edges from time to time.

Hannibal Review: “Shiizakana” (season 2, episode 9)

“What we desire most is the same thing we most fear”

With “Shiizakana” Hannibal gets a minor dose of The X-Files. I’ll admit, at first I was thrown off quite a bit by the pre-credits “monster” attack at the snowy truck stop. Oh no, my greatest fear second only to my own death — Hannibal has jumped the shark! As the camera slowly panned away from the bloody violence and the screen went black, in my head I heard Mark Snow’s “doo duh duh, doo duh duh, doo” opening theme music. But my fears were unwarranted; this is indeed Hannibal, where the monsters are all human and “man is the only creature that kills to kill.”

As the pace of Will’s becoming rapidly accelerates and the “Willdigo” (the name Bryan Fuller has given to the Wendigo aspect of Will’s personality) in him finally emerges, we meet a new serial-killer-of-the-week that has evolved himself into an animal predator, too, but much more tangibly so. Randall Tier has fashioned himself an animal suit equipped with a prehistoric jaw and claws powered by “pull ratchets and pneumatics” that allow him to literally tear his victims to pieces. It’s an animal version of the “person suit” that Hannibal and his psychiatrist so often discussed in Season 1. And it mirrors back to Will the dangerous transformation he is allowing (even encouraging) in himself, under the supervision of his “trusted” psychiatrist, of course. As it turns out, the good Dr. Lecter ALSO treated Randall Tier many years ago. And so Hannibal sees an opportunity to encourage the homicidal evolution of both patients by arranging for a deadly confrontation between them. Even murderers need personal empowerment, right?

We also get more great scenes with the creepy Margot Verger. For those unfamiliar with the source material, she’s the sister of Mason Verger, who plays a prominent part in the third book. (And on a related note, who else caught the glorious Manhunter homage when the killer leaps through Will’s window in the climactic scene?) This week, Margot leaves Hannibal’s office and meets Will. I absolutely loved when Margot and Will, while sipping whiskey together, each confess their “private carnage.” I tried to murder my brother, she says. Well, I’ve got that one beat, he retorts. I tried to murder my friend, our mutual psychiatrist. If you’ve ever wondered “What would happen if Hannibal’s patients started talking to one another?” you got your answer.

Story elements aside, “Shiizakana” exemplifies what I love most about this show: Hannibal is a show of paradoxes. It’s a show where characters never say exactly what they mean, yet somehow ALWAYS say exactly what they mean. It’s a show where the violence is both horrific and beautiful. It’s a show were best friends try to murder each other. And it’s a show that explores one of the most fundamental psychological paradoxes we experience as human beings: What we desire most is so often the same thing we most fear — to be seen by another as who we really are.

Hannibal desires a friend worthy of knowing him, but he fears that by revealing himself he’ll be locked up in a dark cage in the basement of a psychiatric hospital. So he dons a carefully constructed person suit to keep people at a distance. Will desires human connection with someone who can help him understand who he is, but he fears the pain of extreme empathy and risk of betrayal that comes with getting too close. But unlike Hannibal, Will doesn’t don a person suit to keep people at a distance. He keeps them at a distance to avoid donning THEIR person suits.

Before Hannibal’s framing of Will, I think each believed the other could “save” him. Much of this season has been about them each trying to reconcile their own paradoxical feelings since then. In “Shiizakana,” Will and Hannibal seem to have reached an equilibrium — for a moment at least. Both have found their match yet on opposite sides of right and wrong. Another paradox, or is it the perfect marriage, like matter and antimatter gravitating towards an inevitable explosion? Even though they are at odds and they know it, there’s a respect for what they recognize of themselves in the other. In Will’s dream, Hannibal tells him, “No one can be fully aware of another human being unless we love them.” They’re peers — intellectually, in terms of understanding human behavior, and in their isolation from the rest of society.

In other words, they’re even-steven.

Hannibal Review: “Su-zakana” (season 2, episode 8)

“Is your social worker in that horse?”

Following Miriam Lass’s identification, judgment, and execution of Gideon as the Chesapeake Ripper at the end of last week’s episode, Hannibal slows down a bit this week and takes a well-deserved deep breath. “Su-zakana” seems to signal a return to form: The Ripper case moves into the background as the FBI consults Will Graham to help catch the serial killer of the week.

On lesser shows episodes like this would be frustrating — even maddening — as if the creators pressed the reset button and undid all the events and relationships we’d invested with so much emotion and attention. (Cough, cough, X-Files.) But this is play pretend. Will, Hannibal, and Crawford are only acting like everything’s back to normal; below the surface there’s a rot than cannot be fixed.

The show itself is playing with us in the very same way. This may look like a season one episode, but it’s not. Take the killer of the week storyline: Certainly the most bizarre crime scene we’ve encountered so far. Not only is a dead woman found inside a dead horse, but then a live bird is found inside the dead woman… “What the f–k???” And those were just two of the half dozen delicious WTF? moments in this episode, including a man clawing his way out of a dead horse only to be greeted by Hannibal with a, “Might want to crawl back in there if you know what’s good for you.” The only line better than that was when Will, moments before, finds the dude sewing up the dead animal and asks, “Is your social worker in that horse?

But it’s not just new levels of bizarre. The writing seems to have gotten more sophisticated, too — if that’s even possible. The killer of the week storyline is typically used to comment on the larger storyline of Will’s pursuit of Hannibal, but this week it’s on the level of exegesis by metaphor. Plus, they somehow perfectly timed this bloody story of rebirth with Good Friday, a bloody story of rebirth. (I can hear Bryan Fuller’s whisper in my ear, “You owe me awe.”)

Will sees himself in brain-damaged Peter, whose serial killer social worker took advantage of his vulnerability. Just like Hannibal did to Will. Despite that fact, or more accurately BECAUSE of it, Will resumes his “therapy” with Hannibal. Both are playing a dangerous game. As Alana puts it, “The only thing stranger than finding a woman inside a horse is seeing you [Hannibal] back in therapy with Will Graham.” Will and Hannibal both know this is temporary so they seem to be relishing these moments together. We appreciate the dance more when we know that the magic will all vanish at the stroke of midnight.

Ironically, Hannibal is truly Will Graham’s story. Hannibal as a character is fascinating because of his paradoxical nature — intelligent and well-mannered yet homicidal and cannibalistic. But Hannibal is Hannibal; we wouldn’t want him to change, so there’s not much of a story to be told. No, this is the story of Will’s becoming. What exactly, we don’t know yet. But where the investigative work used to torture him, he seems to truly enjoy the hunt now. No longer the reluctant savant, he’s embraced his gift. He’s learned that doing bad things to bad people makes him feel good. That scares Alana, who wants the whole world to fit into her box (um, phrasing?); it emboldens Crawford who’s just happy he’s got his Will Graham tool back in his toolbox; and it excites Hannibal who relishes uncertainty and chaos as the natural order of things.

Will’s conflicted, though. He seems to be talking to himself as much as to Peter when he tells him, “He [the social worker serial killer] deserves to die, but you don’t deserve to kill him.” But then Will takes that burden upon himself, and at the moment of murder, Hannibal stops him from shooting the social worker. This is now Will’s second overt attempt at murder. I wonder if we’re seeing Will’s newest lure to catch Hannibal. Will is acting as both fisherman and bait, a seemingly impossible trick to pull off. Is he exploring this murderous part of his own nature to draw Hannibal close enough to hook him? If so, it seems to be working.

Hannibal all but confesses to Will (punctuated by timpani that sent shivers up my back), “With all my knowledge and intrusion I could never entirely predict you. I can feed the caterpillar, I can whisper through the chrysalis, but what hatches follows its own nature and is beyond me.”

Just like the rest of us, Hannibal can’t wait to tune in next week.

Hannibal Review: “Yakimono” (season 2, episode 7)

“It’s theater”

It was inevitable. A subpar episode. Instead of taking a step forward with the story, it felt like the show took a step sideways — a relatively interesting and entertaining step, but a misstep nonetheless. The biggest problem with “Yakimono” is that very little changed for the main characters and much of what did happen felt like we’d seen it before.

Will continues to accuse Hannibal despite evidence to the contrary, and no one but Chilton believes him. Alana Bloom again tells Will he was wrong to try to murder Hannibal. Not heeding her advice, Will sets out to murder Hannibal a second time but is unsuccessful once again. Hannibal frames another person for his own crimes. Crawford again bites and pursues Hannibal’s latest red herring. And by the end, Hannibal is no more in danger of being caught by Crawford or killed by Will (or vindicated by Alana) than he was at the end of last episode.

So what did happen that was new or different? Well, Will gets released from the hospital and pets his dogs. Miriam cleans herself up and gets a new arm. Crawford realizes that he gives up on his colleagues too soon. And Hannibal murders some more people.

Most of the entertainment of the episode — the sidestep I referred to earlier — concerns the framing of Dr. Chilton. As to the question posed last week (Why did Hannibal allow Crawford to find Miriam Lass alive?), the answer seems to be: To point the finger at poor Frederick. Not content with a mere finger, Hannibal, a master of the theatrical, then stages a second act in which he murders Gideon and two FBI agents in Chilton’s home, leaving the weaselly psychiatrist to wake up there… covered in blood, gun in one hand, knife in the other. After a brief cat-and-mouse with Crawford, Chilton is “recognized” by Miriam as the Ripper and she shoots him.

And here’s where things get really interesting for avid fan of this series: With the apparent killing of Dr. Chilton, Hannibal has gone “off book,” literally. Not that this is the first time the television series has strayed from the source material. I mean, given that Will’s entire pre-capture relationship with Hannibal Lecter in the books consisted of a single conversation, the whole premise of the show is a deviation. But, presuming a bullet to Chilton’s face does in fact mean death in this fictional world, this is the first time a character significant to the plot of the books has been killed off early, and it means that those of us who thought we knew where this story was going DON’T.

So what else did the episode get right? I liked how Crawford’s guilt over the discovery that Miriam was alive acted as a mirror for him to see how he’d given up on Will, too. I loved the “red” on white kitchen décor when Chilton wakes to find the dead FBI agents. It was interesting to see how uncomfortable Will was to be out in the world again. Hugh Dancy skillfully turned up the volume on his facial ticks and eye contact avoidance. And speaking of great acting, Mads Mikkelsen was amazing in that final scene. When Will tells Hannibal, “I’d like to resume my therapy,” I don’t think we’ve seen Hannibal happier. Which goes to Mikkelsen’s credit because the change in his facial expression was almost imperceptible, yet conveyed so much.

And maybe it’s because the plotting was less interesting this episode, but I appreciated the score a lot more. It’s so deftly crafted to NOT call attention to itself that it’s easy to overlook the subtle brilliance of Brian Reitzell’s compositions when the story takes front stage. (One note for those who enjoy the music as much as I do: When you watch the episodes on NBC.com, the music over the end credits plays uninterrupted, unlike the television broadcast that overlays a preview of next week’s episode.)

The low point of “Yakimono” was Chilton’s bumbling attempt to escape Crawford through the snow. The whole tone of that sequence felt off, like I was suddenly watching a different show. But as “bad” as it was, the worst episode of Hannibal is still better than most other shows on television. Because what’s great about Hannibal is that even when things go wrong — the story goes awry, some of the acting is melodramatic, and the CGI is a bit goofy — there’s still so much to appreciate.

When Will tells Crawford “It’s theater,” he’s talking to us, too. Because like the titular character’s crimes, the show itself is theater. It’s both beautiful and horrifying — sometimes confounding — especially when the crime is a subpar episode and not murder.

Hannibal Review: “Futamono” (season 2, episode 6)

“Hannibal the cannibal”

Dear god, please spare me “friends” like Alana Bloom. I’d prefer a cannibal who frames me for multiple murders than a psychologist who thinks friendship is trying to convince me I’m crazy enough to have murdered people and then when I act that way, she discards me like the condom she used to screw the cannibal who framed me. Poor Will Graham.

The silver lining for Will, of course, is that Jack Crawford is starting to get suspicious about Hannibal Lecter. In Dr. Chilton’s words, yes, Will is delusional but “that doesn’t mean he is not right.” As the bodies pile up and Hannibal’s dinner party approaches, Crawford’s suspicions grow. But Hannibal’s far too crafty to let Crawford’s suspicions or Will’s homicidal intent slow him down. It comes as no real surprise that the big dinner party was a ploy by Hannibal to increase suspicion of his cannibalism only to subvert that suspicion when the meat is tested. Take that Crawford! Psych!

The true surprise of the hour was Crawford’s discovery of Miriam Lass… alive! You’ll remember that Miriam was the FBI trainee a la Clarice Starling sent by Crawford two years earlier to investigate a lead in the Chesapeake Ripper case; in a callback to the novel Red Dragon, she is attacked by Hannibal in his office after seeing the Wound Man sketch, which matched injuries of one of the Ripper’s victims. I’ll confess, with the recent deaths of both Abigail Hobbs and Beverly Katz, it was a relief to discover that Miriam is not dead. Though I’m curious why Hannibal kept her alive and allowed her to be found. What’s that crazy cannibal up to?

Composing music, for one thing. It’s fitting that Hannibal composes for the harpsichord. Unlike the piano, the harpsichord is limited in dynamics — in other words, playing the keys harder or softer does not change the volume of the strings. Hannibal’s murders seem also to be carefully constructed compositions that have only one volume: loud and extravagant grotesqueries. With this latest merging of man and tree, I find myself fully accepting, appreciating, and even enjoying the hyper-reality of his murder set-pieces. This is gothic horror — in a modern day setting, yes — but gothic none-the-less. I can no longer criticize Hannibal’s otherworldly designs because, no matter how unrealistic they may be, they are entirely consistent with the atmosphere of this fictional world.

“Futamono” is a solid, smart, entertaining episode from a creative team that’s set the bar very high. It suffers slightly from following one of the best episodes of the series to date. The actions Will set into motion last week had consequences that are only just beginning to reveal themselves. It makes sense to slow things down a little to allow those consequences to develop.

That said, there’s still plenty going on. At the same time that Hannibal is fabricating evidence of his own innocence, he’s also purposely leaving evidence that exonerates Will. Fishing lures constructed from hairs, bone fragments, and other body parts of Will’s supposed victims are found at a new murder scene. Drs. Gideon and Chilton continue to one-up each other, culminating in Gideon’s back being broken by two hospital guards in retaliation for Gideon’s murder of one of their colleagues last season. (What’s up with this hospital’s hiring practices? Sadistic security guards? Psycho nurses?) Hannibal then abducts Gideon from the hospital, and in a clever callback to the novel Hannibal, the good Dr. Gideon is fed his own leg as his last supper.

What I find most compelling about this episode (and this whole season) is Will’s transformation, his journey from the light to the dark. In a brilliantly scripted bit of double-talk, Will tells Hannibal, “I’m no more guilty of what you’ve accused me of than you are of what I’ve accused you of.” The show is raising some very interesting questions about empathy. If one can feel the feelings and think the thoughts of a killer, then what if anything distinguishes him from the killer? Is good or bad simply defined by one’s actions? If so, it seems the aphorism is false; it’s not the thought that counts after all.

Season 2’s driving question seems to be this: Is Will’s transformation a mutation or a metamorphosis? In other words, is the profiling work he’s done for the FBI distorting his nature from good to bad or simply revealing the moth that was hidden inside the caterpillar from the start?

Hannibal Review: “Mukozuke” (season 2, episode 5)

“Every permutation of crazy”

Confession: If Hannibal cooked it, I’d eat it. No matter what (or who) the “it” was. “Hi, my name is Curtis, and I’m a cannibal.” That kidney pâté de Beverly looked dee-lish.

So, yes, what we all feared is true. Beverly Katz did not survive her visit to Hannibal’s house of horrors. The reveal of her corpse is wonderfully paced, set to such beautifully jarring yet somehow perfectly poignant percussion. The presentation of her “body” (as it were) is as poetic as we’ve come to expect. Hannibal dissects her “layer by layer like she would a crime scene.” Though, I have to admit, his elaborate murder set-pieces are really starting to strain believability. The amount of glass and specialty hardware needed for such a presentation would surely leave a trail the FBI could trace. I mean, my local WalMart doesn’t sell Body Worlds display cases, does yours?

The writers’ decision to kill off a strong Asian female character has caused quite a stir on the Internet, attracting accusations like “racist” and “sexist.” Hettience Park, the actor who portrayed Beverly Katz, has even weighed in on the debate. I, for one, think she WAS the right character to sacrifice. Price or Zeller wouldn’t have evoked the same emotional resonance, nor would their deaths have recalled the death of Abigail Hobbs the way Beverly’s did. You could feel how big a blow this was to all of the characters who cared about her, not the least of which is Will, who in effect got her killed by enlisting her as his agent against Hannibal.

And as a direct result of her death, we get one of the biggest dramatic turns of the season, maybe even the whole show: Will turns to the dark side and commissions his homicidal “admirer” to kill Hannibal. For those familiar with the source material, you’ll recognize this as a clever spin on Hannibal’s attempt to use his own “avid fan” (the Tooth Fairy) to kill Will and his family. This episode offers another delicious reversal with Will in the face mask and straight-jacket being wheeled around on a hand truck a la Silence of the Lambs. (And did you catch the “face mask” on Hannibal’s dinner plate later in the episode?)

The actual path to murder for Will Graham is comprised of a series of one-on-one conversations between the various characters, like carefully crafted wine and cheese pairings. To put it another way, we get every permutation of crazy:

Will plays to Chilton’s vanity to get a face-to-face with Dr. Gideon, who you remember from last season was the wife-murderer that Chilton brainwashed into believing he was the Chesapeake Ripper and who Will shot in a drama orchestrated by Hannibal. Will then tries to cajole Gideon into revealing the Ripper’s identity, but it’s Gideon who plays to Will’s murderous impulse. Hannibal and Chilton play their games with each other, but as in the scene with Will, it always seems like Chilton is bringing checkers to a chess game, and he agrees to let Hannibal meet with Gideon. Amidst some verbal sparring soaked in subtext, Gideon all but warns Hannibal that Will’s primed for his murder. Next, Will makes another devil’s bargain, this time with Freddy Lounds, offering her exclusive rights to his story if she’ll help him contact his “admirer” through her tabloid website. And it works: Nurse Brown, his admirer, reveals himself, culminating in a line of dialogue from Will that had me giggling with glee, “I want you to kill Hannibal Lecter.”

And so it is. Will becomes what everyone has been wrongly accusing him of all season — a murderer. But Hannibal didn’t die, you say? Therefore Will didn’t actually murder anyone, you say? A technicality. Will pulled the trigger with murderous intent. The fact that the gun misfired does not undo the intent. Will knows this, as demonstrated by his delusion of metamorphosis into the stag.

The episode climaxes with Nurse Brown shooting Hannibal with a tranquilizer and stringing him up in mock crucifixion. Here we see Hannibal truly vulnerable for the first time. It’s an interesting glimpse into a complicated character that also holds the key to understanding what he really is. Not a sociopath or psychopath, Hannibal in my opinion can best be understood as a pure philosopher. Earlier, when Jack Crawford thanks him for saving Bella’s life, Hannibal responds, “As a doctor I had no choice; as a philosopher I had too many.” And then in this climactic scene, he confesses to his would-be killer, “Life is precious.” This is truly revelatory: Hannibal’s choices, including his choices to murder, are driven by his philosophical need to answer the question, “What would happen if…?”

Which is the same question that drives a writer. No wonder this show is so fascinating.

Hannibal Review: “Takiawase” (season 2, episode 4)

“Oh my God…”

Three words: Oh my God… The three final words we hear spoken at the end of this episode. Likely crime scene investigator Beverly Katz’s three final words ever. And they would have been the three words coming out of my mouth were I not such a concisely profane heathen (“Shit…”). But we’ll get there.

“Takiawase” opens on what we’ve come to know as Will’s happy place — the tranquil stream he visits in his mind to find peace while his body sits in his dark, solitary cell in Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He’s fly-fishing as usual, though this time instructing murder victim Abigail Hobbs. Abigail, remember, was daughter of serial killer Garrett Jacob Hobbes. Will rescued Abigail literally from the clutches of her father only to inadvertently introduce her to another serial killer (Hannibal) who would ultimately finish the job her father couldn’t. As I watched Will teach her how to bait the hook, all of the questions I raised last week about whether or not Will was faking his doubt about Hannibal’s guilt were resolved: He has been faking, or more accurately fishing, patiently luring Hannibal onto a hook from which he will not escape.

Interestingly, takiawase is a mixture of vegetables cooked separately and combined with tofu, fish, or meat. If you consider Hannibal the cook, he does seem to be working his games on several characters separately. Or better yet, the writers are the metaphorical cook, and Hannibal is the meat (definitely NOT tofu) — or fish, swimming around Will’s hook.

One of the things that unites these separate characters in this episode is the theme of chance, as illustrated by my favorite scene of the night. Jack Crawford’s wife Bella, cancer-ridden and dying, returns to Hannibal’s office and confesses she has taken “every bit” of her morphine, welcoming death as “not a defeat but a cure” (repeating Hannibal’s words to her in an earlier scene). Hannibal observes her curiously as she expires right in front of him. Will he save her or watch her die? He waits a moment, tosses a coin high into the air, and decides her fate by chance: life.

Unlike Bella who needs to control the timing of her death, unlike Jack who needs to save the people he loves, unlike Will who needs to catch the killer, and unlike all the criminal justice professionals who need Will to be guilty so that the world can make sense again; unlike all of them Hannibal is comforted by randomness. He embraces it, encourages it, and even introduces a little here and there like extra spice in the recipe — BAM!

Will takes his own big chance and ups the stakes of his game, essentially going all in psychologically when he makes his devil’s bargain with Dr. Chilton to let the doctor use sodium amytal (truth serium) to interview him. In return, he asks Chilton to cut Hannibal out of the loop concerning Will and his treatment, something which is sure to antagonize Hannibal. More bait on the hook, but to what end, exactly? Maybe it’s enough just to put Hannibal off guard and keep him guessing.

Unfortunately, for the first time this season, the storyline does stumble in a few spots. As fun as it is to see “Honey Bunny” Amanda Plummer show up as the serial killer of the week, that whole subplot felt extraneous and its resolution unsatisfyingly abrupt, as if its sole raison d’etre was to get Beverly to have her “ah ha” moment and find the clue that links a murder victim from two episodes ago to the Chesapeake Ripper. But much more egregious than that are the series of stupid “horror movie character” choices Beverly makes at the end of the episode. Yes, it was thrilling to watch her discover Hannibal’s secret “kitchen” and his basement. But not at the expense of the intelligence of the character. You find a human liver in a secret refrigerator, YOU CALL IN BACKUP. You don’t go snooping in the basement!

Relatively small gripes, though. This was another great chapter in a story that’s getting more and more exciting each week. Assuming Beverly Katz doesn’t make it out of Hannibal’s basement alive, that alone should hip Crawford and the gang to the fact that Will is not the killer they’ve been looking for. And just what was it that poor Beverly saw that made her exclaim those three final words? Oh my God, I can’t wait to find out.