Here we are again, a new season, bold new killings and no longer do we need to send someone to help Will Graham. Because really, who are we going to send that can get past Dr. Chilton? Or Hannibal for that matter.
One thing we do know from the very beginning, Jack Crawford doesn’t look like he’s going to make it past Dr. Lecter! Wow, what a start. Now, if I were putting money on the actors, of course I think Fishburne would have it. But this isn’t the actors, so I think Jack Crawford is kinda screwed. Knives flying, guns being disarmed, and Hannibal throwing himself violently against the door!
How did I not see you were a cannibal? Stop eating my hand!
Aside from the excitement of the actual physicality of the scene, if indeed Jack Crawford is going to bite it, this could be a major trumpeting that this ain’t your daddy’s Hannibal. There have been tweaks from cannon all along, of course. Alan Bloom is Alana. Freddie Lounds is a lady, too. Miriam Lass seemed to be a roll up of Clarise Starling and Will Graham from the books, only while Will sort of happened into Lecter’s lair and made it out alive, poor Miriam did not.
Okay, so that part is kind of major as far as marrying it all back to the books, and of course Will Graham winding up in the sanitarium where he’s consulted like Lecter is later is also a major divergence, but, I mean, what are we going to do without Jack Crawford? Oh, the perils of not being the titular character.
Anyway, Kaiseki! And we move into the past, 12 weeks earlier with some sushi that I’m not sure is people, because I’m pretty sure flounder is flounder but for all I know, I’ve been eating human this whole time. Damn you, flounder!
Anyway, it’s a flounder of mourning that Hannibal is sharing with Jack. They are both very sad about Will Graham. Apparently Hannibal’s ruse only lasts 3 months, at least with Jack. I’m not sure how long Will winds up in the sanitarium because Hannibal knows what to do with bodies.
Now that his mind is no longer on fire, Will Graham has taught himself the art of mind fishing. He’s still haunted by the nightmare stag, even when he’s actually in Chilton’s dunking booth–a very small cell where Will is not being psychoanalyzed, though not for lack of trying. He asks to see Dr. Lecter, who shows up as the Wendigo in Will’s mind-creek. But don’t worry, that’s not the official visit.
Apparently, Alana Bloom filed a report that questions Jack Crawford’s judgement in bringing Will Graham into the field. There is an internal investigation being launched. Apparently, if Dr. Bloom does not recant her report, Jack Crawford will be SOL in the future of the FBI. He’s incredibly calm about this, but you know he feels responsible. However, it does set up that it’s maybe in his best interest if Will Graham is correct and Hannibal is the devil.
Workers trying to clear a clog in a dam come across bodies that have piled up. Gross.
Then the pretty. Hannibal visits with Dr. Du Maurier where he discusses Will Graham’s request to see him. Hannibal misses him, he says. Du Maurier says he’s obsessed. I agree! I have read fanfics, so I think I know how deep this obsession goes.
Anyway. Hannibal still feels that he and Will are friends. He sees them as very much alike and therefore they can’t help but be friends, right? Right. Sure.
Only, when Hannibal gets to Will’s cell, Will doesn’t seem delighted to see him. In fact, he says that they are a million light years from being friends! But he does also admit that he no longer hears himself inside of his skull, now he hears Hannibal’s voice as his own.
This is, of course, what Hannibal considers friendship. Losing his individual self to Hannibal. I get the feeling later in the episode that Hannibal is hearing Will’s voice as his own. But we’ll see about this.
Will warns that what Hannibal did to him is somewhere in his head and he’ll find it. I get the feeling that Hannibal would like to see this happen, like part of him really loves having Will trapped in a cage where he can visit as he likes, because Will is dangerous to Hannibal’s freedom. However, I think he’d also like to know if Will can get himself out of this predicament. He probably likes to think that if Will can and does that he’ll come to the realization that he and Hannibal are more alike than not alike and will see his imprisonment as a soft punishment for not coming to that conclusion sooner.
Or not. But Hannibal definitely does not see what he did to Will as something that should impede their friendship. I mean, really, what’s a little murder and intubation between friends?
In the meantime, the FBI is set to investigate Hannibal. It’s apparent that everyone’s upset with themselves for not seeing Will’s trouble. No one seems to believe he was a stone cold killer, just that the encephalitis got the best of him.
Without Will, they are less one empath to solve crime for them, so Jack enlists Hannibal to come on down to the dam to start clueing for looks. There are several weird floaty bodikins. There is no mind metronome for Hannibal, but he does deduce that they were injected with silicone and perhaps the discards of imperfect trophies.
Du Maurier receives informed consent from Hannibal to tell the FBI whatever she thinks they want to know. She rightly realizes that she’s taking on all of the risk while Hannibal looks like he’s being cooperative. If she becomes a danger to him, she seems to realize what that could mean. But that doesn’t matter to Hannibal at the moment. He’s in happyland having played Will Graham for the day, seeing things as he would see them. Yeah, he acts like he’s got a crush, which would be kinda sweet in someone less demented. It’s a little like being a mouse who’s attracted the affection of a cat.
Alana visits Will. She’s taking good care of Will’s dogs, so she gets an A+. Poor Winston. He misses Will so much that he keeps going to Will’s house looking for him. That made me a little teary. Winston cares! “I WOULD’VE HELPED WILL GRAHAM BUT I DON’T HAVE THUMBS! IT’S BACON!”
While Will has given up some hope of mounting a legal defense that will get him out of this situation, Alana has not. He keeps firing his lawyers while she tries to put on record that he shouldn’t have been out in the field and throws him possible defense strategies. Will talks Alana into some hypnotism to try and remember how this was done to him, or for her, how he’d done it. Chilton listens in because he’s a creep. There don’t seem to be any other inmates in the basement, but who knows, someday.
Even in hypnotism, Will has a hard time not making people scary spooky. His fantasy Alana is a very pretty water smoke monster who kisses him into a weird buffet table of rotting food and a Wendigo. What’s for dinner? An ear.
Chilton goes to Hannibal’s for dinner to report on Alana and Will’s conversation. He’s apparently a vegetarian now due to losing his kidney. Or, as Hannibal says, it was taken from him. That doesn’t bother Chilton nearly so much as the prom king of patients giving him the cold shoulder in the dunk tank. Oh, that Will. He’s so smart and perceptive, why won’t he talk to me? Maybe you answered your own question, Chilty.
Hannibal seems especially chuffed to hear that he is Will’s favorite topic of conversation to anyone who will listen. Sure, he’s keeping tabs on that situation, but he probably believes his defense won’t be seen through.
On the subway, a young man with nice skin is told he has nice skin. Later, the man with nice skin’s car alarm is going off. I guess he uses his car on weekends or not in the city? Anyway there’s a plastic bag sticking out. He opens the trunk and… wakes up with his hand sewn to his cheek in a pile of bodies.
Team sassy science is stumped. Heroin in the discards, preservatives, silicone, they get the how, but not the why. None of the people have any rhyme or reason for why they were chosen. So Beverly Katz goes to visit Will to ask him what’s going on. I guess Hannibal can’t do that good of an imitation of Will Graham.
She presents the file, then pictures of people who are missing under similar circumstances. Will looks at the pictures, starts sorting them like a deck of cards and declares it…a color palette. Someone indict Pantone!
While eating what appears to be a school lunch on a tray…memories of intubation in which Hannibal inserts an ear into Will’s stomach return. I will never eat Salisbury steak again.
I think I saw a porn like this…what? I watch a variety for research. RESEARCH.
It appears that Winston isn’t the only one who goes to Will’s old home. Jack Crawford greets a mildly disappointed but still game Winston. Alana shows up in search of Winston. Apparently the dog is more willing to forgive Jack than Alana. There they discuss Will’s lack of interest in a defense versus letting everyone know that Hannibal is a serial killer.
Alana is frustrated because to her this means Will isn’t a psychopath, that he’s just terrified of admitting to himself what he’s done rather than reveling in it. Both Jack and Alana agree that in no way does a man whose name rhymes with cannibal eat people. Okay, that’s not how they said it, but Hannibal is, for the moment, above suspicion.
Jack visits Will who was enjoying more mind fishing. Not sure if Jack went to visit Will on his own or if Will summoned him, but Will is more than eager to share that he has recovered a memory and now he is like a dog with a bone. Now he knows without a shadow of a doubt that shenanigans were played and that he knows his own mind and his mind, even while on fire, would not let him go killerating people for no reason other than being kind of inflamed.
It seems that Hannibal learned the system well–well enough not to crowd the issue with an overabundance of evidence. Just enough. Jack says that Will stood over Cassie Boyle’s body and described himself to Jack. Will maintains he was describing Hannibal. Just, neither of them knew it.
Maybe that planted a seed of doubt that took three months to blossom. Or maybe Jack sees something that makes him doubt. We will find out soon what unravels Hannibal in Jack’s mind this season and what that means for Hannibal’s future!
Also, the color palette thing.
So, if you have Amazon Prime, you can stream last season’s Hannibal free!
If you missed this episode, you can watch it online until 5/23/14