We had to say goodbye to an important character on Hannibal tonight, and the rest of the gang spend the episode trying to figure out what happened and how to deal with it.
The beginning of the episode features Hannibal consoling Jack over almost losing his wife, and I wouldn’t find this important to mention except for the fact that Jack tells Hannibal that he’s a, and I quote, “great friend.” You’ll be singing a different tune in just a couple of episodes, buddy.
RIP Beverly
But the real story on this episode of Hannibal is that of the demise of Beverly Katz. Yes, folks, our beloved Beverly did in fact become the latest of Hannibal’s victims in the previous episode. Freddie Lounds, of all people, receives an anonymous tip early on in tonight’s episode and discovers the body.
When Jack heads to the site where Beverly’s body is found, we see that it’s been sliced into several pieces and encased, parts of her put on display, on gruesome, precise, terrible display.
Jack has to tell his colleagues, and then he and Alana go to tell Will. He asks to see her, so he’s put into restraining gear, muzzled, and brought to the site where her body was found. There, with only Jack in the room, his former supervisor of sorts un-restrains him and allows him to do his “this is my design” thing.
“Interpret the evidence,” a Beverly standing next to Will in his mind tells him, and he does so, and it’s awful to watch. Apparently, Beverly was strangled, frozen, then sliced and dismantled, and Will gets to act out the whole horrifying scenario with his friend in his mind.
But the trip is worth it. Will declares that Beverly figured out who the Ripper was, and thanks to her, now Will realizes that the Ripper and the copycat are one and the same: a killer with two masks. Jack asks Will to help him see what he sees, but Will knows Jack still won’t believe him. So he tells the man that he has to make the connection for himself.
Hannibal’s Worst Meal
Price and Zeller, or Thing One and Thing Two as I like to call them, make the choice to examine Beverly’s remains, and they make an interesting discovery. The kidneys in her body? They were not her own, but actually belonged to James Gray, also known as the Mural Killer.
So where are her kidneys? Our resident cannibal is eating them, of course! It’s the worst of the cooking scenes to date because we know that that’s Beverly he’s cooking and eating. I had a tough time watching it, and usually I’m weirdly fascinated by the cooking scenes (though I would of course be horrified in real life!).
Will Plays the Game
Will and Chilton chat some more, and Will knows that Chilton discussed his therapy with Hannibal despite him asking him not to. Chilton asks what Will and Beverly discussed when she visited before she died, because the room they were in is not one he’s legally allowed to monitor. Interesting. I feel like that might be important later.
Will tells him they discussed the Chesapeake Ripper, then very skillfully plays Chilton. He says it’s too bad he and Chilton can’t talk to Abel Gideon, whom Chilton claimed before was the Ripper, because then maybe Chilton could finally be the one to catch the real deal. Tricky, tricky Will!
Therapy
We do in fact get treated to another visit from Eddie Izzard as Abel, when Chilton has him brought to stay in the cell right next to Will’s. He and Will talk, and Will says he knows Gideon knows who the Ripper is, that he remembers the night he had his episode and Hannibal and Gideon were in the room.
Then Gideon does a little manipulating of his own. He tells Will the Ripper is “the devil,” and that he will never be caught. The only way to be rid of him? Is to kill him.
After this exchange, Chilton and Hannibal talk again, and Chilton claims that Gideon was brought back in order to help Will with his therapy. Will shot the man, but has no memory of it, he reminds the other doctor. Then Hannibal asks to interview Gideon, which is sure to go well.
Interestingly enough, when Hannibal does interview Gideon, they both act as if they’ve never met before. Of course, they both also know that they’re being recorded. Clever, those two.
During their conversation, Gideon tells Hannibal in a sort of code that the doctor has “built up” something in Will Graham. This is sure to please Dr. Lecter, who has been pulling at Will’s strings to see how he’d dance this whole time.
Interview
After Hannibal’s talk with Gideon, he finds Freddie Lounds outside, snapping photos of him leaving. He tells her she’s being rude, which I think we all know is never a good sign from him. You don’t want to cross this particular doctor.
Freddie informs him that she’s been asked to interview Will by the man himself, so she’s there for that little exclusive. Looks like Will is willing to work with just about anyone to get the truth out.
Will is lead to a room for the interview by a guy whose name I never actually catch, but who I recognize as Bob Little from earlier episodes of another NBC drama, Parenthood. When he and Freddie talk, he tells her that he thinks he has an “admirer” in this copycat killer, and he’d like to establish a line of communication to them in order to possibly draw them out.
Freddie agrees to use her website as the medium, in exchange for exclusive rights to Will’s story. He agrees, and soon enough, an interview with Will pops up on TattleCrime, and we get a quick scene of Hannibal reading the piece.
Will’s Request
After the interview, the episode throws a twist into the plot: the guy who led Will to the interview? Not Bob Little? Well, turns out he was the one to kill the baliff. He read Will’s interview, he tells the prisoner as he leads him back to his bigger cell, and feels that they are both misunderstood by other people.
He used to be in a mental facility like the one Will is in, and knows the ins-and-outs of that sort of place thanks to his experience. His job at this particular hospital, in fact, comes with the responsibility of wiring and being able to unwire the mics, the latter of which he has done for their conversation.
He admits to killing the bailiff, but claims the judge was killed by someone else. When he leads Will back to his cell, Will makes a startling request of the other man: he wants him to kill Hannibal Lecter. I guess he feels there’s really no other way to stop the man, but it’s a dangerous move on his part.
Alana’s Suspicions
Alana Bloom visits Will, after he has a quick hallucination in which he has stag antlers growing from his back, mind, and she knows something is up. She thinks Will would never work with Freddie, and she realizes quickly that something is wrong. “Will, what have you done?”, she asks.
After a quick conversation with Chilton, Alana asks to see Gideon. He reveals that someone wanted Will to have a reason to want to kill Gideon, hence his targeting of her. She declares that Will isn’t the Ripper, and Gideon replies, “Not yet.”
He then offers Alana a “gift,” as he calls it. A way to save Will before he really does become a murderer, no going back. He tells her that Will has a “little birdie” who could murder for him, since he himself is behind bars.
Hannibal’s Attack
That little birdie is Not Bob Little, and he follows Hannibal to a pool where the doctor is swimming. He joins the man for a little bit, then leaves the pool in order to shoot a tranquilizer in the guy’s back. Not Bon Little gets stuff done, y’all.
Not Bob Little puts Hannibal on display, restraining and cutting his arms so they steadily drip blood to the floor below him, and putting something underneath the man to stand on so the noose around his neck doesn’t quite hang him – yet.
He compares Hannibal to Judas for his betrayal, and says that the Biblical figure also hanged himself for his deception. Hannibal says that Will isn’t a murderer, but Not Bob Little says he will be now, by proxy, for what he’s about to do to the doctor.
The man questions Hannibal about his crimes, informing him that he doesn’t even need to speak his answers; his eyes, he says, will tell the story. If his pupils dilate, that’s a yes. If not, the answer is a negative one. So he asks Hannibal whether he killed the judge, and whether he’s the Chesapeake Killer. Hannibal’s eyes dilate, so his attacker has his answer.
Close Call
Just then, Jack runs in, after he and Alana rushed over to the facility after she spoke with Gideon and figured out that Hannibal was in danger. Hannibal warns Jack that the man has a gun, and Jack shoots the attacker.
But when the guy goes down, he kicks the thing below Hannibal’s feet, causing the doctor to begin to choke on the noose. Of course, Jack comes to his rescue, and yells to the just-appeared Alana to call an ambulance. Hannibal the Cannibal lives to kill another day.
Meanwhile, Will is hallucinating the sink in his cell filling up with blood. Is he realizing that with his decision to call for Hannibal’s death, he’s decided to make himself into a murderer, no better than Hannibal, after all? It’s a close call, but Will is still technically innocent of such a crime.
Hannibal returns next Friday, and airs every Friday night at 10pm on NBC.
(image courtesy of NBC)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
