Hannibal 1x04: "Oeuf" (again) (some more) (and Red Dragon)
AT SOME POINT I WILL WRITE ABOUT SOMETHING OTHER THAN CANNIBALS, DAMN.
(How about vampyres? You guys like vampyres?)
So they just put "Ceuf" (yes, they confirmed that's what it's called; they call the shots and I accept their reality) up for purchase on iTunes and Amazon. (I just broke down and got a season pass on iTunes, because whatever. The show's earned my money, and it turns out there was enough in the tip jar to cover it, so everybody wins.) Apparently there are a few changes to the scenes we did see, and now I also have captioning, so... I'm gonna recap what we didn't get and then I'm going to recap the previous recap as necessary. BWONNNNNNNG.
I also reread Red Dragon the other night for the first time in about twenty years, so I'll put some thoughts on that at the end. So between that and the magic I'm about to drop on you, this is going to be sort of a grab-bag entry.
>> Filed Under: Things I Know Are Relevant to Your Interests: David Tennant nearly got the title role but might play another killer next season.
>> Filed Under: Things I Do Not Even Know How to Handle: Bryan Fuller Wants David Bowie As Hannibal’s Uncle.
LISTEN TO ME, NBC. YOU CAN'T CANCEL THIS SHOW. YOU CAN'T TELL ME I COULD LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE DAVID BOWIE PLAYED HANNIBAL LECTER'S UNCLE AND THEN TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME. YOU CAN'T. TAKE MY MONEY.
So. Mind metronome rewind. PREVIOUSLY ON: "Potage": Abigail Hobbs woke from her coma, she and Will trembled at each other a lot, and her trip home promptly racked up a body count; Alana had an amazing coat and an unfortunate encounter with a stone wall; Lecter and Miss Freddie decided to battle it out for the Absolute Worst at Helping trophy, and GUESS WHO WON.
We open with The Best Office Ever as before, therapy session a thousand miles apart, etc. The constant flashbacks really are in the final version of the scene, not edited into the "webisode" for clarity. The "past the slides and vials" and "I felt like we were doing the same things" bits are adapted from the book, by the way. The scene cuts to credits immediately after "I'm not Garrett Jacob Hobbs, Dr. Lecter."
Red wine scaryfaces, show title. SLAM CUT TO: ~MAGGOTS.~ On greenish-black meat. In a swarm of flies. Well. That's nice. It's the centerpiece of a big dinner that's been sitting out rotting for God knows how long; a couple and their two daughters are face-down in their plates. They don't look so hot either. Will empath-reverses the scene back past the maggots and the mold and the... oh. That tablecloth wasn't originally red. Oh. Then blood unsplatters from family photographs--and you see a boy in them who isn't at the table.
"The table has been set. Family dinner. I wasn't invited," intones Will in his Creepy Empath voice. The now-unmurdered family sits frozen. *FINGER POINT* "If you don't eat your growing foods, you won't get any dessert." TABLE SLAM* "NO ONE! LEAVES THE TABLE!!" JESUS CHRIST, HUGH DANCY! "All afraid to move." I'm kind of scared to type, yes. "I brought my own... family... to this home invasion, controlling the Turners with threats of violence. Threats... that turn to action." EMPATH CLOSEUP. EMPATH CLOSEUP. GIANT EMPATH EYEBALL. CAPTIONS: "(woman crying.)" I WANT TO GO HOME NOW.
"The Turner family is executed simultaneously," he intones, except for Mrs. Turner, "who dies last. This is my design. I shoot Mrs. Turner." And, with a pleasant bullet to the center of her forehead, blood re-splatters all the framed photographs.
Meanwhile, Crawford's chilling in the doorway while Will, in his blue investigator gloves, is silently acting this out to himself. "What do you see, Will?" GAH! THE EMPATHING IN PROGRESS SIGN WAS ON! "Family values," says Will, his concentration broken. "Whose family values?" asks Crawford, and then I dodged a falling anvil.
And here's the scene with Lecter stopping by to feed All the Dogs and creep through Will's worldly possessions. Oh, and the way too appreciative thumb-bloodsucking.
The Turner home. Childhood sweethearts, successful real estate agents, pillars of the community, not too lively at the moment. It turns out that Jesse, the absent son, was actually "a possible runaway, probable abduction" the year before; he was last seen "boarding an RV at a rest stop on Route 47." "False faces in family portraits," says Will. "Layers and layers of lies, betrayed by a sad glint in a child's eyes." I enjoy your poetry, Will, but Jesse doesn't look that sad to me? "Norman Rockwell with a bullet," Jimmy quips, taking pictures. There's no sign of forced entry. "Yeah, they probably rang the front door," says Crawford, with kind of a vocal eye-roll as Beverly points out the bullets lodged in various walls. Brian's talking about exit wounds and conical spray and Will is totally ignoring him. "When was Jesse abducted?" "Little over a year ago," says Crawford, while Will gazes at a picture of Mrs. Turner kissing Jesse's forehead. That's a very handsome plush octopus that Jesse has, by the way. Will looks sad that he never had any plush octopi.
Here's the scene with Abigail and Alana at the psychiatric hospital, etc. "How did that make you feel?" DRINK! Speaking of, here's Alana demanding beer at Lecter's office--the discussion of Abigail's treatment that gets flirtatious at the end.
New scene! Over in Forensics, Brian announces, "I would have shot my sisters just to get them out of the bathroom"; Beverly says she liked having a large family; Jimmy reveals that he has a twin ("Who wouldn't want two of me?"). "Let me guess: only child," Brian says to Will, who's hanging back in a corner. Oh? Why? "Because family friction is usually a catalyst for personality development." BRIAN! What was THAT? "I was the oldest, so all the friction rolled downhill," Beverly says cheerfully (high five, Beverly!)."Yes," says Crawford, "all the attention and responsibilities heaped on first-born children prepares them for success in the future." Damn straight. "Middle's the sweet spot," smarms Brian. "Always trying to figure out where they fit in," says Will. "They can be great politicians. Or LOUSY ONES."
(You know, Will correcting Brian on the Jim Morrison thing in the next episode now has a bit more weight to it.)
"All the victims have defensive wounds except Mrs. Turner," Crawford notes, surprised. "There's forgiveness," says Will. "What kind of victim forgives the killer at the moment of death?" asks Crawford. "A mother," Will says quietly.
The Best Office Ever. "Tell me about your mother," says Lecter--we're on to that scene now, the one where we get both characters' (current) back stories. At least now we know why Will would start talking about how weird the idea of family feels to him. Oh! And apparently case-related things got cut from this scene! "Tell me about the Turner family," says Lecter. They were rich; Will says he grew up poor. He followed his father from the boatyards, he created a family of stray dogs for Lecter to feed people-sausage to, Lecter was actually referring to Abigail, etc. "What grudge was Mrs. Turner's killer harboring against her?" asks Lecter. "Motherhood," Will says finally. Lecter: "Not motherhood. A perversion of it." Will is a sad motherless puppy.
Chez Lecter, as before: Lecter reminds Crawford to bring his wife to dinner next time; Crawford alludes to his troubled marriage (see the next episode for further developments on both of those). Also: RUN, RABBIT, RUN. "We don't know what nightmares lie coiled beneath Will's pillow," says Lecter, but this time Crawford replies, "Children killing other children is not that unfamiliar a notion to Will." (Wait, what's he referring to? The idea that 17-year-old Abigail might have helped her father kill college girls?) Crawford still suspects Abigail; "Will needs an anchor." Over at the Nobark Home, Will watches All the Dogs frisk around outside his house.
Forensics lab. Beverly and Jimmy discuss how an old pair of Jesse's sneakers reveals "uneven leg length," which (Brian explains) is actually not unusual for a kid in the middle of growth spurts. He's extrapolated Jesse's current height and weight and estimates that he'd only be 4-1/2 feet and 80 pounds, at best. Meanwhile, Jimmy admires "God's gift to trace analysts," a video game controller with "gorgeous" finger prints. Beverly's identified three other sets of footprints belonging to neither Jesse nor his family ("the Lost Boys," Brian dubs them)--and then Jimmy pulls up a fingerprint match.
Academy lecture hall, Quantico. "Most of the time in sexual assaults, the bite mark has a livid spot at the center--a suck bruise," Will says professorially. "Sometimes, it does not. For some killers, biting may be a fighting pattern as much as a sexual behavior." Yeah, that's pretty directly from Red Dragon. "OKAY CLASS DISMISSED EVERYONE OUT," shouts Crawford, striding in. "WHAT DID I JUST SAY? LET'S GO!" "You're making it difficult to provide an education, Jack," Will murmurs. Crawford--quietly now--says that the matched set of prints belongs to another missing boy, a Conner Frist who disappeared from Virginia ten months before. The Frist family? Also had three kids, to Will's dismay. "We're ready to go when you are and you're ready to go now so let's go," says Crawford. Will realizes: "You're expecting a crime scene."
Only the most festive crime scene ever!
Damn, that is a big-ass house. A song with the lyrics "There's no Christmas like a home Christmas, with your dad and mom and sis and brother there" plays cheerfully on the soundtrack, because of course. Oh, what the hell, there's a small charred body curled up in the fireplace? A SWAT team leads the way; Crawford and the gang start gagging and coughing as they bring up the rear. Will, gazing over the scene, is Not Happy.
(Also, I'm confused about when this is supposed to be happening--around Christmas? A day a family would be opening Christmas presents? After Christmas? The week before? A day that FBI trainees would be in class taking notes on sexual bite marks? Where in spacetime are we located right now?)
After a break, the gang's back in the lab with a new set of bodies. Once again, the father and children were killed first. But the situation is "not exactly the same," Will points out. "Something went wrong." Apparently they itemized all the gifts under the tree, in turn discovering that there weren't any for Mrs. Frist. "He took her presents. He took her motherhood," says Will (I am trying really hard not to find this hilarious. NOT HER CHRISTMAS PRESENTS, TINY KILLER! DAAAAAAMN YOUUUUU). Brian points out that the first shot was inept and didn't kill her; rather, it caused brain damage and sent her into convulsions. A different gun "shot her again. Put her out of her misery." So who was in the fireplace? Will: "I'd say Conner Frist. He had been prepped to shoot his mother, not watch her suffer." "Conner couldn't put his panic back in a bottle, so he got shot too," concludes Crawford. Uh, you are forgetting the part where Conner needs to be absolved of present-stealing because he was also curled up on fire. Will: "Whoever shot him"--emphatic hand wave--"disowned him."
And here's Whoever: a pensive Molly Shannon, with three boys drinking milkshakes in a diner. The first kid we see is Jesse Turner. "Don't feel sad about Conner," says the oldest boy, not terribly sympathetically. "I guess I couldn't make him understand," says Molly Shannon sadly. "The family you're born into isn't really family. Those are just people you didn't choose. You have to make family, that's what we're doing, we're making our family." "What happened to your family?" asks a third boy. "WE'RE HER FAMILY," says the oldest one. "I meant... your other family," the third boy says meekly. Molly Shannon (does she ever get a name?) explains, "The family you think is family is just a stepping stone to real family." Third Boy looks kind of not entirely on board with the whole killing-your-family thing, maybe. "Are you feeling okay, sweetie pie?" YES YES WE'RE OKAY WE'RE ALL TOTALLY OKAY. "HE'S FINE," says Enforcer Boy. She says his name ("C.J.") by way of rebuke, then smiles and sort of squirms joyfully in her seat. "You should be excited to go home. Even if it is to say goodbye. Because we're your family now, Christopher. You can only have one family." SMIIIIILE.
Will's back in his lecture hall, alone, zoned into his laptop (MacBook Air: recommended by four out of five haunted empaths), when Beverly comes in. "Ever heard of Willard Wigan?" she asks, walking up to his desk. "He's this artist that does micro-sculptures, like... putting the Obamas in the eye of a needle. He's so focused that he can work between beats of his heart. I guess archers do the same thing, right?" Will: "Hm?" He's looking at official MISSING PERSON pictures of the Turner and Frist boys: "Both these kids are small... underweight for their age," he says, noticing the same thing Brian did. He thinks they might have both been diagnosed with ADHD, as attention deficit drugs with methylphenidate can "affect appetite and slow long-term growth in kids." (In retrospect, I have no actual idea what this has to do with anything--I seem to recall reading something about Molly Shannon being a counselor of some kind? Maybe this is how she was supposed to have chosen boys to brainwash? Was she an itinerant child therapist working her way down the East Coast in an RV? I don't know.) "Another thing about Willard Wigan," says Beverly, "he had a lonely childhood. He used his tiny sculptures as an escape." "Who's Willard Wigan?" he asks blankly. Beverly just laughs and starts to tell him about Jimmy's ballistics matches--one of the bullets matches a gun used in a Bangor, Maine murder. The murder of a mother with a teenage son. Will: "Thirteen-year-old milk carton material?"
Yeahhhh, here's C.J.'s missing persons page. "He has none of the characteristics of a sadist or sociopath," Will notes. Crawford: "Right, no shoplifting, no malicious destruction of property, no assault, no battery--he was kind to animals, for God's sake." And yet, "the firearm," says Will, "says we are looking at the Peter Pan to our Lost Boys." (If Molly Shannon's name turns out to be Wendy, I'm gonna throw something.) "But it takes a sophisticated level of manipulation to convince young boys to kill their families in cold blood," says Crawford. Will: "Kindness to animals doesn't suggest that particular kind of sophistication--" "But he's older, he's been out in the world--maybe he picked up a few things."
Cut to: a convenience store, where C.J. is picking up a few things. Well, actually Molly Shannon is paying for something at the register, and C.J. is standing behind a stack of soda bottles STARING DOWN THE LITTLEST LOST BOY. Who is now standing in a large puddle of urine. "Oh, honey, are you feeling okay?" cries Molly Shannon, telling the cashier that Chris has never done this before. "You have a fever? You don't feel warm--" Uh, a fever of TERROR, maybe? She tries to clean up the mess with napkins as he stands there, stock still: "I'm so embarrassed--but you shouldn't feel embarrassed," she says quickly, "this happens with little bladders, right?" (Honestly, this scene made me more uncomfortable than almost anything else in the episode, because it's a much more mundane, likely-to-happen thing than, you know, being brainwashed by Molly Shannon.) "Right?" Chris stands there, frozen. C.J. is still staring at him.
And here's the scene where Will shows up at The Best Office Ever with the present he's not giving to Abigail; a holiday season at least explains why the hell he was compelled to buy her a gift in the first place. "Has Christmas come early--or late?" you will remember Lecter asking him--so I guess all this is happening before Actual Christmas Day, then? Or maybe Lecter is literally asking when the hell this episode takes place? After Lecter notes that Alana said they shouldn't get "too personal" with Abigail, he now asks, "Tell me, why are you so angry?" YES, WHY. "I'm angry about those boys," says Will. "I'm angry because I know, when I find them, I can't help them! I can't--I can't give them back what they just GAVE AWAY!" "Family," obviouses Lecter. "Yeah," says Will. "We call them the Lost Boys." Lecter: "Abigail's lost too." YES BECAUSE WILL SHOT THE FUCK OUT OF HER FATHER THANK YOU FOR REMINDING US. "And perhaps it's our responsibility, yours and mine, to help her find her way." Okay, this makes a lot more sense than going straight from, "Well, Alana said not to get too personal, so whatevs."
And now, to the part where Lecter jailbreaks Abigail from the hospital and takes her ~home~ for dinner. This proceeds as previously recapped (wait, maybe that is a different house from his office? WHERE IN SPACETIME ARE WE?!?) all the way through "You want me to [drink psychedelic mushroom tea after having busted me out of a psychiatric facility]?" Once the Weird Woodwinds set in, we're back at the Crawffice, greeted by a very boy-bandish photo of C.J. pinned on the wall.
Crawford laser-points out various crime scenes on the map: the Maine (C.J.), Connecticut (Jesse) and Virginia (Conner) murders are evenly spaced, roughly 500 miles apart. "We know they're moving south, so that means we want to cover the border of North Carolina and Georgia." "There's a pattern. Less to do with geography than psychology," says Will, noting that all the missing boys so far have been middle children from affluent "traditional" families. "What kind of kid does this?" asks Crawford. Will: "And what kind of kid follows a kid who does this?" Crawford says that the families don't seem to have been abusive--but no, Will says, it's not that: "Capture bonding. It's a passive psychological response to a new master. You bond with your captor; you survive. You don't--you're breakfast."
Guess what scene comes next. Guess. Guess.
Cut to: breakfast for dinner and Abigail tripping on shroom tea. Oh, show. Well, now I can tell you what all that business about the Spanish chef was: "High Life Eggs. A chef in Spain called Muro claims he invented it in the 19th century." Also, Lecter catches a peeled potato on a knife and Abigail is very impressed, I forgot to mention that. After "this is the first meal you're having with me,"
we get a new scene where Alana helps Beverly and Will sort through (per Crawford's orders) all the missing boys in that age group for 200 miles. "Without the interference of a leader, these kids would never consider violent action," she psychologizes. Will (who looks kind of ragged--related to his trouble sleeping in the next episode?) theorizes that they're looking for "a paradox in the midst of a normal family; he's an outsider but doesn't look like one," and he'll probably have inventive or mechanical interests, because sure, let's go with that. Beverly finds a kid who won an award for "pretty sophisticated computer circuitry." "Why do you think these kids are susceptible to C.J. Lincoln?" asks Alana, and Will replies that their profile type is alienated within his own family, "a brother without a brother." (Particularly if... he only has sisters?) "Brothers looking for a mother. They're killing the mothers last," concludes Alana.
The Crawffice. Will tells Crawford that C.J. isn't the ringleader after all: "There's an adult with some formative sway. It's a woman--a mother figure, I think she's looking to form a family." (Did Hugh Dancy just blow his cover by pronouncing "figure" the British way, or does anyone over here also say it that way? I wouldn't have noticed, except that his American accent is otherwise that good.) Crawford: "Well, family can have a contagion effect on some people that influences them to adopt similar behaviors and attitudes." "Whoever this woman is," says Will, "she wants these children to burst with love for her. But she has to erase their family to do that." "So, she abducts them, convinces them no one can love them as much as she does, and then makes damn sure of it." Pretty much the way of it, yeah. Also, one of those missing children was seen on a security camera... in a convenience store... in Virginia. With Molly Shannon. Yeahhhh.
A Big-Ass Affluent Traditional Family Home, North Carolina. You know, I wonder what it would be like for your kid to disappear, and you to have to cope with that for a year, terrified that either he's dead or terrible things are currently happening to him, and then he rolls up at your front door one day all chill like, "Hi, Mom." I'm not sure "Oh my God! Chris!" would really cover it.
After a break, Crawford and posse reach the house five actual minutes later. Like, the actual amount of time it took commercials to run, that is how fast they got there. With a SWAT team charging through the neighborhood to a jaunty techno beat! SWAT teams are the best, you guys. Also, apparently the Investigators Three aren't just lab technicians, because Jimmy, Brian, Beverly, Beverly's knee boots, and Beverly's super-cute jacket are also out in force. Also, Crawford has his Morpheus sunglasses on. By the time they get there, the boys are already holding the O'Halloran family at gunpoint--apparently we're having a cookout in a still-green backyard at some point in time and space (I give up). Peter Pan gets his shoulder shot out and the Lost Boys are tactically shoved to the ground while Chris runs away, past a huge swimming pool towards a pool house, and Will gamely gives chase. Captain Plaid is an extremely quick draw, by the way, when Chris turns and points his own gun. "Don't shoot!" he warns the SWAT dudes behind him, holding up both gun and hands. Aaaand out of the pool house comes Molly Shannon, also with a gun, which she clasps to the kid's chest because she's pretty much going to shoot him if he doesn't shoot Will, and Will's getting down on his knees, because it looks like somebody didn't bring Special Weapons or Tactics ("Christopher... please," he whispers) and everyone kind of looks screwed when BAM! the fuck out of nowhere, Beverly shoots Molly Shannon. Also in the shoulder, through the trees, like a boss. And that's why you bring knee boots to a gunfight.
Who was Molly Shannon and where did she come from and why the hell did she feel compelled to do any of this? We don't know.
Crawford puts Chris into one of the vans for a quiet talk. "Can I go home now?" "I don't think you're gonna go home for a loooong time," Crawford says gently. "You came here to kill your family. That's all anybody knows. It may be all that anyone ever believes." "I wasn't gonna do it," says Chris, which is suddenly really sad because you know he knows what happens when you refuse (probably end up in the grill). When Crawford admits that he doesn't have any children of his own, Chris says, "Then you don't understand what it's like." But Chris does ask to talk to his mom--"my real mom."
Chez Lecter. The master of the house is Getting Told ("RUDE! SHOCKINGLY RUDE!!") by Alana, she finds Abigail all zoned out in the dining room, Abigail sees "family," and this is so bad, you guys.
And now we understand why Crawford asks Bella if it's too late to have kids--and now, from having seen the episode after this, why she says it's too late for her.
And finally, Will settles down to (try to) get some sleep at the Nobark Home. I hope you bought an extra box of Milkbones for All the Dogs, dude, because they're about to pull some overtime.
Red Dragon, teal deer:
(A text from my mother: Oh. By the way I bought some plants that have dragon in their name and they're red. Red Dragon. Lol.)
I'm going to try to be vague and not spoil the actual "Tooth Fairy" storyline, but if you want to be surprised by the show, you might want to save this for some later date anyway.
>> I think I must have read this book (once, maybe twice) when I was about 14, and while I remembered it being pretty good... I remembered a lot less than I thought I did, after y'all busted out all kinds of things you were noticing in the show. You know what really surprised me? How the best scenes were the procedural aspects. There's this great scene where they have--what, forty minutes?--to forensically attack a letter found in Lecter's cell, then put it back, intact, so that he won't realize it was discovered. This is where the Investigators Three (and a few other people) come in, although the characterizations are different (Jimmy was originally an adorably cranky old man). And it's way more engaging and suspenseful than it has any right to be, with Crawford demanding a helicopter to airlift this letter out of there and hustling it through the various departments to get it searched for fibers and fingerprints.
>> The thing that struck me about the book even then was that the two crime scenes they start with are in Atlanta and... Birmingham. (See? Alabama really is the center of the universe.) And the big yuppie rich-people house in the woods facing farm pastures--that is so Alabama, you guys. (Well. Needs moar cows.) There are trees everywhere you go, even downtown, and swaths of wildflower-sprinkled green even in the most developed areas. Highways are just interrupted forests. And that's one of the reasons I'm so attached to the area. So I've always been kind of--proud?--that this was one of the settings of the book, and that it had been genuinely observed rather than just some imagined redneck stereotype stuck in.
>> Alan Bloom is indeed around a lot more than I remembered, although he doesn't want to be alone in a room with Will only because Will might twig to the fact that Alan's observing him professionally and "snatch down the shades."
>> What Happens to Freddy Lounds is one of the most famous things from the book. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it happening to Miss Freddie now. "Oh God, not me!" takes on a more direct significance, in fact.
>> Speaking of which, I have no idea how the show would do the various newspaper ad and telephone booth shenanigans, particularly now that Freddie's a blogger. (Did they update the technology for the 2002 movie? I'm so "fucking Brett Ratner goddammit" about that whole thing that I don't remember a whole lot). I dearly hope they keep the book code, though, because the reveal on that is hilarious ("It had to be a book Dolarhyde knew he would have"!).
>> Speaking of that, it's interesting to see how Lecter was first written--more mischievous than antiheroically ominous. In the back story, Will only meets him once--the time he catches him. Well, the time he realizes Lecter's the killer they're looking for, at least--I'm trying to stay vague and not spoil the living hell out of this, but Lecter getting caught and imprisoned is a foregone conclusion, and the whole point of the show is that Will is eventually going to be the one to get him. Let's just say that Will barely recovers from how that goes down. So Lecter knows him as "the guy who got me." Nothing else.
So yeah, there is no CANNIBAL AND EMPATH: They Fight Crime at all. Garrett Jacob Hobbs and "See? See?" is in the book; it's mentioned that he killed his wife and "shoved her out the door," and that Will does indeed shoot the fuck out of him as Hobbs is in the middle of cutting his daughter's throat (she isn't named or mentioned again) ( wait). "See?" is given no explanation or further context; we're told he killed college girls, but there's no cannibalism or even a particular motive given. Will is so traumatized by having to kill someone that he has a four-week hospital stay for depression, so that does affect him--but since he hasn't met Lecter yet, there's no cannibal-provided therapy (or "helpful" phone calls). But Lecter does throw "the reason you caught me is that we're alike" (not like other various killers--like him) at Will, and the whole "feeling so bad because killing him felt so good" thing as well. But it's purely in the context of "I so seriously hate you, for real." In fact, when Lecter does decide to be the Worst at Helping, it's because Will 1) caught him and 2) wasn't terribly "civil" on his one (1) visit.
And he does not pussyfoot around, either. He goes straight to "KILL THEM ALL" the moment he's given an opportunity to communicate with a killer on the outside. The reason I now really want to see the show get far enough to do the Red Dragon story (I think they said it could be the third or fourth season?) is because--imagine how amazing that conflict would be with two seasons of personal relationship behind it. In the book it's just, Yeah, put me away for life, I'll show you. In the TV series, we would go from " Never apologize for coming to me, my kitchen is always open to friends" to HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A CANNIBAL SCORNED. This gon' be good.
>> It's pretty amazing, the number of things they've already used from the book, word for word, in the first five episodes--a number of things y'all caught, but a few more as well. "It's the ugliest thing in the world," "the bone arena of your skull," "Do you have trouble with taste"/"My thoughts are not very tasty" (although this is third-person narration in the book, not dialogue), "the boatyards of Biloxi and Greenville to lake boats on Erie," "a job as a diesel mechanic in a boatyard," "the first and worst sign--sadism to animals as a child" (spoken of Lecter, not by him, interestingly enough), "shadows suspended on dust," "the last three we had, you caught," "that's what you brought out in him" (said now to Abigail rather than Reba), the entire "sweet and easy peace" spiel. (Lecter also snarks on the Old Spice in the book. In fact, that's his opening salvo. Given that Will has a wife and stepson at that point, "I keep getting it for Christmas" makes a bit more sense there.) And, of course, the wonderful letter about the church roof collapse. That's by no means an exhaustive list ( more!), but it'll be fun looking for other bits in future episodes. TELL YOUR FRIENDS.
(No, you don't actually have to tell your friends.)
(David Bowie, you guys.)
(Continue: 1x05: "Coquilles" )
(How about vampyres? You guys like vampyres?)
So they just put "Ceuf" (yes, they confirmed that's what it's called; they call the shots and I accept their reality) up for purchase on iTunes and Amazon. (I just broke down and got a season pass on iTunes, because whatever. The show's earned my money, and it turns out there was enough in the tip jar to cover it, so everybody wins.) Apparently there are a few changes to the scenes we did see, and now I also have captioning, so... I'm gonna recap what we didn't get and then I'm going to recap the previous recap as necessary. BWONNNNNNNG.
I also reread Red Dragon the other night for the first time in about twenty years, so I'll put some thoughts on that at the end. So between that and the magic I'm about to drop on you, this is going to be sort of a grab-bag entry.
>> Filed Under: Things I Know Are Relevant to Your Interests: David Tennant nearly got the title role but might play another killer next season.
>> Filed Under: Things I Do Not Even Know How to Handle: Bryan Fuller Wants David Bowie As Hannibal’s Uncle.
LISTEN TO ME, NBC. YOU CAN'T CANCEL THIS SHOW. YOU CAN'T TELL ME I COULD LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE DAVID BOWIE PLAYED HANNIBAL LECTER'S UNCLE AND THEN TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME. YOU CAN'T. TAKE MY MONEY.
So. Mind metronome rewind. PREVIOUSLY ON: "Potage": Abigail Hobbs woke from her coma, she and Will trembled at each other a lot, and her trip home promptly racked up a body count; Alana had an amazing coat and an unfortunate encounter with a stone wall; Lecter and Miss Freddie decided to battle it out for the Absolute Worst at Helping trophy, and GUESS WHO WON.
We open with The Best Office Ever as before, therapy session a thousand miles apart, etc. The constant flashbacks really are in the final version of the scene, not edited into the "webisode" for clarity. The "past the slides and vials" and "I felt like we were doing the same things" bits are adapted from the book, by the way. The scene cuts to credits immediately after "I'm not Garrett Jacob Hobbs, Dr. Lecter."
Red wine scaryfaces, show title. SLAM CUT TO: ~MAGGOTS.~ On greenish-black meat. In a swarm of flies. Well. That's nice. It's the centerpiece of a big dinner that's been sitting out rotting for God knows how long; a couple and their two daughters are face-down in their plates. They don't look so hot either. Will empath-reverses the scene back past the maggots and the mold and the... oh. That tablecloth wasn't originally red. Oh. Then blood unsplatters from family photographs--and you see a boy in them who isn't at the table.
"The table has been set. Family dinner. I wasn't invited," intones Will in his Creepy Empath voice. The now-unmurdered family sits frozen. *FINGER POINT* "If you don't eat your growing foods, you won't get any dessert." TABLE SLAM* "NO ONE! LEAVES THE TABLE!!" JESUS CHRIST, HUGH DANCY! "All afraid to move." I'm kind of scared to type, yes. "I brought my own... family... to this home invasion, controlling the Turners with threats of violence. Threats... that turn to action." EMPATH CLOSEUP. EMPATH CLOSEUP. GIANT EMPATH EYEBALL. CAPTIONS: "(woman crying.)" I WANT TO GO HOME NOW.
"The Turner family is executed simultaneously," he intones, except for Mrs. Turner, "who dies last. This is my design. I shoot Mrs. Turner." And, with a pleasant bullet to the center of her forehead, blood re-splatters all the framed photographs.
Meanwhile, Crawford's chilling in the doorway while Will, in his blue investigator gloves, is silently acting this out to himself. "What do you see, Will?" GAH! THE EMPATHING IN PROGRESS SIGN WAS ON! "Family values," says Will, his concentration broken. "Whose family values?" asks Crawford, and then I dodged a falling anvil.
And here's the scene with Lecter stopping by to feed All the Dogs and creep through Will's worldly possessions. Oh, and the way too appreciative thumb-bloodsucking.
The Turner home. Childhood sweethearts, successful real estate agents, pillars of the community, not too lively at the moment. It turns out that Jesse, the absent son, was actually "a possible runaway, probable abduction" the year before; he was last seen "boarding an RV at a rest stop on Route 47." "False faces in family portraits," says Will. "Layers and layers of lies, betrayed by a sad glint in a child's eyes." I enjoy your poetry, Will, but Jesse doesn't look that sad to me? "Norman Rockwell with a bullet," Jimmy quips, taking pictures. There's no sign of forced entry. "Yeah, they probably rang the front door," says Crawford, with kind of a vocal eye-roll as Beverly points out the bullets lodged in various walls. Brian's talking about exit wounds and conical spray and Will is totally ignoring him. "When was Jesse abducted?" "Little over a year ago," says Crawford, while Will gazes at a picture of Mrs. Turner kissing Jesse's forehead. That's a very handsome plush octopus that Jesse has, by the way. Will looks sad that he never had any plush octopi.
Here's the scene with Abigail and Alana at the psychiatric hospital, etc. "How did that make you feel?" DRINK! Speaking of, here's Alana demanding beer at Lecter's office--the discussion of Abigail's treatment that gets flirtatious at the end.
New scene! Over in Forensics, Brian announces, "I would have shot my sisters just to get them out of the bathroom"; Beverly says she liked having a large family; Jimmy reveals that he has a twin ("Who wouldn't want two of me?"). "Let me guess: only child," Brian says to Will, who's hanging back in a corner. Oh? Why? "Because family friction is usually a catalyst for personality development." BRIAN! What was THAT? "I was the oldest, so all the friction rolled downhill," Beverly says cheerfully (high five, Beverly!)."Yes," says Crawford, "all the attention and responsibilities heaped on first-born children prepares them for success in the future." Damn straight. "Middle's the sweet spot," smarms Brian. "Always trying to figure out where they fit in," says Will. "They can be great politicians. Or LOUSY ONES."
(You know, Will correcting Brian on the Jim Morrison thing in the next episode now has a bit more weight to it.)
"All the victims have defensive wounds except Mrs. Turner," Crawford notes, surprised. "There's forgiveness," says Will. "What kind of victim forgives the killer at the moment of death?" asks Crawford. "A mother," Will says quietly.
The Best Office Ever. "Tell me about your mother," says Lecter--we're on to that scene now, the one where we get both characters' (current) back stories. At least now we know why Will would start talking about how weird the idea of family feels to him. Oh! And apparently case-related things got cut from this scene! "Tell me about the Turner family," says Lecter. They were rich; Will says he grew up poor. He followed his father from the boatyards, he created a family of stray dogs for Lecter to feed people-sausage to, Lecter was actually referring to Abigail, etc. "What grudge was Mrs. Turner's killer harboring against her?" asks Lecter. "Motherhood," Will says finally. Lecter: "Not motherhood. A perversion of it." Will is a sad motherless puppy.
Chez Lecter, as before: Lecter reminds Crawford to bring his wife to dinner next time; Crawford alludes to his troubled marriage (see the next episode for further developments on both of those). Also: RUN, RABBIT, RUN. "We don't know what nightmares lie coiled beneath Will's pillow," says Lecter, but this time Crawford replies, "Children killing other children is not that unfamiliar a notion to Will." (Wait, what's he referring to? The idea that 17-year-old Abigail might have helped her father kill college girls?) Crawford still suspects Abigail; "Will needs an anchor." Over at the Nobark Home, Will watches All the Dogs frisk around outside his house.
Forensics lab. Beverly and Jimmy discuss how an old pair of Jesse's sneakers reveals "uneven leg length," which (Brian explains) is actually not unusual for a kid in the middle of growth spurts. He's extrapolated Jesse's current height and weight and estimates that he'd only be 4-1/2 feet and 80 pounds, at best. Meanwhile, Jimmy admires "God's gift to trace analysts," a video game controller with "gorgeous" finger prints. Beverly's identified three other sets of footprints belonging to neither Jesse nor his family ("the Lost Boys," Brian dubs them)--and then Jimmy pulls up a fingerprint match.
Academy lecture hall, Quantico. "Most of the time in sexual assaults, the bite mark has a livid spot at the center--a suck bruise," Will says professorially. "Sometimes, it does not. For some killers, biting may be a fighting pattern as much as a sexual behavior." Yeah, that's pretty directly from Red Dragon. "OKAY CLASS DISMISSED EVERYONE OUT," shouts Crawford, striding in. "WHAT DID I JUST SAY? LET'S GO!" "You're making it difficult to provide an education, Jack," Will murmurs. Crawford--quietly now--says that the matched set of prints belongs to another missing boy, a Conner Frist who disappeared from Virginia ten months before. The Frist family? Also had three kids, to Will's dismay. "We're ready to go when you are and you're ready to go now so let's go," says Crawford. Will realizes: "You're expecting a crime scene."
Only the most festive crime scene ever!
Damn, that is a big-ass house. A song with the lyrics "There's no Christmas like a home Christmas, with your dad and mom and sis and brother there" plays cheerfully on the soundtrack, because of course. Oh, what the hell, there's a small charred body curled up in the fireplace? A SWAT team leads the way; Crawford and the gang start gagging and coughing as they bring up the rear. Will, gazing over the scene, is Not Happy.
(Also, I'm confused about when this is supposed to be happening--around Christmas? A day a family would be opening Christmas presents? After Christmas? The week before? A day that FBI trainees would be in class taking notes on sexual bite marks? Where in spacetime are we located right now?)
After a break, the gang's back in the lab with a new set of bodies. Once again, the father and children were killed first. But the situation is "not exactly the same," Will points out. "Something went wrong." Apparently they itemized all the gifts under the tree, in turn discovering that there weren't any for Mrs. Frist. "He took her presents. He took her motherhood," says Will (I am trying really hard not to find this hilarious. NOT HER CHRISTMAS PRESENTS, TINY KILLER! DAAAAAAMN YOUUUUU). Brian points out that the first shot was inept and didn't kill her; rather, it caused brain damage and sent her into convulsions. A different gun "shot her again. Put her out of her misery." So who was in the fireplace? Will: "I'd say Conner Frist. He had been prepped to shoot his mother, not watch her suffer." "Conner couldn't put his panic back in a bottle, so he got shot too," concludes Crawford. Uh, you are forgetting the part where Conner needs to be absolved of present-stealing because he was also curled up on fire. Will: "Whoever shot him"--emphatic hand wave--"disowned him."
And here's Whoever: a pensive Molly Shannon, with three boys drinking milkshakes in a diner. The first kid we see is Jesse Turner. "Don't feel sad about Conner," says the oldest boy, not terribly sympathetically. "I guess I couldn't make him understand," says Molly Shannon sadly. "The family you're born into isn't really family. Those are just people you didn't choose. You have to make family, that's what we're doing, we're making our family." "What happened to your family?" asks a third boy. "WE'RE HER FAMILY," says the oldest one. "I meant... your other family," the third boy says meekly. Molly Shannon (does she ever get a name?) explains, "The family you think is family is just a stepping stone to real family." Third Boy looks kind of not entirely on board with the whole killing-your-family thing, maybe. "Are you feeling okay, sweetie pie?" YES YES WE'RE OKAY WE'RE ALL TOTALLY OKAY. "HE'S FINE," says Enforcer Boy. She says his name ("C.J.") by way of rebuke, then smiles and sort of squirms joyfully in her seat. "You should be excited to go home. Even if it is to say goodbye. Because we're your family now, Christopher. You can only have one family." SMIIIIILE.
Will's back in his lecture hall, alone, zoned into his laptop (MacBook Air: recommended by four out of five haunted empaths), when Beverly comes in. "Ever heard of Willard Wigan?" she asks, walking up to his desk. "He's this artist that does micro-sculptures, like... putting the Obamas in the eye of a needle. He's so focused that he can work between beats of his heart. I guess archers do the same thing, right?" Will: "Hm?" He's looking at official MISSING PERSON pictures of the Turner and Frist boys: "Both these kids are small... underweight for their age," he says, noticing the same thing Brian did. He thinks they might have both been diagnosed with ADHD, as attention deficit drugs with methylphenidate can "affect appetite and slow long-term growth in kids." (In retrospect, I have no actual idea what this has to do with anything--I seem to recall reading something about Molly Shannon being a counselor of some kind? Maybe this is how she was supposed to have chosen boys to brainwash? Was she an itinerant child therapist working her way down the East Coast in an RV? I don't know.) "Another thing about Willard Wigan," says Beverly, "he had a lonely childhood. He used his tiny sculptures as an escape." "Who's Willard Wigan?" he asks blankly. Beverly just laughs and starts to tell him about Jimmy's ballistics matches--one of the bullets matches a gun used in a Bangor, Maine murder. The murder of a mother with a teenage son. Will: "Thirteen-year-old milk carton material?"
Yeahhhh, here's C.J.'s missing persons page. "He has none of the characteristics of a sadist or sociopath," Will notes. Crawford: "Right, no shoplifting, no malicious destruction of property, no assault, no battery--he was kind to animals, for God's sake." And yet, "the firearm," says Will, "says we are looking at the Peter Pan to our Lost Boys." (If Molly Shannon's name turns out to be Wendy, I'm gonna throw something.) "But it takes a sophisticated level of manipulation to convince young boys to kill their families in cold blood," says Crawford. Will: "Kindness to animals doesn't suggest that particular kind of sophistication--" "But he's older, he's been out in the world--maybe he picked up a few things."
Cut to: a convenience store, where C.J. is picking up a few things. Well, actually Molly Shannon is paying for something at the register, and C.J. is standing behind a stack of soda bottles STARING DOWN THE LITTLEST LOST BOY. Who is now standing in a large puddle of urine. "Oh, honey, are you feeling okay?" cries Molly Shannon, telling the cashier that Chris has never done this before. "You have a fever? You don't feel warm--" Uh, a fever of TERROR, maybe? She tries to clean up the mess with napkins as he stands there, stock still: "I'm so embarrassed--but you shouldn't feel embarrassed," she says quickly, "this happens with little bladders, right?" (Honestly, this scene made me more uncomfortable than almost anything else in the episode, because it's a much more mundane, likely-to-happen thing than, you know, being brainwashed by Molly Shannon.) "Right?" Chris stands there, frozen. C.J. is still staring at him.
And here's the scene where Will shows up at The Best Office Ever with the present he's not giving to Abigail; a holiday season at least explains why the hell he was compelled to buy her a gift in the first place. "Has Christmas come early--or late?" you will remember Lecter asking him--so I guess all this is happening before Actual Christmas Day, then? Or maybe Lecter is literally asking when the hell this episode takes place? After Lecter notes that Alana said they shouldn't get "too personal" with Abigail, he now asks, "Tell me, why are you so angry?" YES, WHY. "I'm angry about those boys," says Will. "I'm angry because I know, when I find them, I can't help them! I can't--I can't give them back what they just GAVE AWAY!" "Family," obviouses Lecter. "Yeah," says Will. "We call them the Lost Boys." Lecter: "Abigail's lost too." YES BECAUSE WILL SHOT THE FUCK OUT OF HER FATHER THANK YOU FOR REMINDING US. "And perhaps it's our responsibility, yours and mine, to help her find her way." Okay, this makes a lot more sense than going straight from, "Well, Alana said not to get too personal, so whatevs."
And now, to the part where Lecter jailbreaks Abigail from the hospital and takes her ~home~ for dinner. This proceeds as previously recapped (wait, maybe that is a different house from his office? WHERE IN SPACETIME ARE WE?!?) all the way through "You want me to [drink psychedelic mushroom tea after having busted me out of a psychiatric facility]?" Once the Weird Woodwinds set in, we're back at the Crawffice, greeted by a very boy-bandish photo of C.J. pinned on the wall.
Crawford laser-points out various crime scenes on the map: the Maine (C.J.), Connecticut (Jesse) and Virginia (Conner) murders are evenly spaced, roughly 500 miles apart. "We know they're moving south, so that means we want to cover the border of North Carolina and Georgia." "There's a pattern. Less to do with geography than psychology," says Will, noting that all the missing boys so far have been middle children from affluent "traditional" families. "What kind of kid does this?" asks Crawford. Will: "And what kind of kid follows a kid who does this?" Crawford says that the families don't seem to have been abusive--but no, Will says, it's not that: "Capture bonding. It's a passive psychological response to a new master. You bond with your captor; you survive. You don't--you're breakfast."
Guess what scene comes next. Guess. Guess.
Cut to: breakfast for dinner and Abigail tripping on shroom tea. Oh, show. Well, now I can tell you what all that business about the Spanish chef was: "High Life Eggs. A chef in Spain called Muro claims he invented it in the 19th century." Also, Lecter catches a peeled potato on a knife and Abigail is very impressed, I forgot to mention that. After "this is the first meal you're having with me,"
we get a new scene where Alana helps Beverly and Will sort through (per Crawford's orders) all the missing boys in that age group for 200 miles. "Without the interference of a leader, these kids would never consider violent action," she psychologizes. Will (who looks kind of ragged--related to his trouble sleeping in the next episode?) theorizes that they're looking for "a paradox in the midst of a normal family; he's an outsider but doesn't look like one," and he'll probably have inventive or mechanical interests, because sure, let's go with that. Beverly finds a kid who won an award for "pretty sophisticated computer circuitry." "Why do you think these kids are susceptible to C.J. Lincoln?" asks Alana, and Will replies that their profile type is alienated within his own family, "a brother without a brother." (Particularly if... he only has sisters?) "Brothers looking for a mother. They're killing the mothers last," concludes Alana.
The Crawffice. Will tells Crawford that C.J. isn't the ringleader after all: "There's an adult with some formative sway. It's a woman--a mother figure, I think she's looking to form a family." (Did Hugh Dancy just blow his cover by pronouncing "figure" the British way, or does anyone over here also say it that way? I wouldn't have noticed, except that his American accent is otherwise that good.) Crawford: "Well, family can have a contagion effect on some people that influences them to adopt similar behaviors and attitudes." "Whoever this woman is," says Will, "she wants these children to burst with love for her. But she has to erase their family to do that." "So, she abducts them, convinces them no one can love them as much as she does, and then makes damn sure of it." Pretty much the way of it, yeah. Also, one of those missing children was seen on a security camera... in a convenience store... in Virginia. With Molly Shannon. Yeahhhh.
A Big-Ass Affluent Traditional Family Home, North Carolina. You know, I wonder what it would be like for your kid to disappear, and you to have to cope with that for a year, terrified that either he's dead or terrible things are currently happening to him, and then he rolls up at your front door one day all chill like, "Hi, Mom." I'm not sure "Oh my God! Chris!" would really cover it.
After a break, Crawford and posse reach the house five actual minutes later. Like, the actual amount of time it took commercials to run, that is how fast they got there. With a SWAT team charging through the neighborhood to a jaunty techno beat! SWAT teams are the best, you guys. Also, apparently the Investigators Three aren't just lab technicians, because Jimmy, Brian, Beverly, Beverly's knee boots, and Beverly's super-cute jacket are also out in force. Also, Crawford has his Morpheus sunglasses on. By the time they get there, the boys are already holding the O'Halloran family at gunpoint--apparently we're having a cookout in a still-green backyard at some point in time and space (I give up). Peter Pan gets his shoulder shot out and the Lost Boys are tactically shoved to the ground while Chris runs away, past a huge swimming pool towards a pool house, and Will gamely gives chase. Captain Plaid is an extremely quick draw, by the way, when Chris turns and points his own gun. "Don't shoot!" he warns the SWAT dudes behind him, holding up both gun and hands. Aaaand out of the pool house comes Molly Shannon, also with a gun, which she clasps to the kid's chest because she's pretty much going to shoot him if he doesn't shoot Will, and Will's getting down on his knees, because it looks like somebody didn't bring Special Weapons or Tactics ("Christopher... please," he whispers) and everyone kind of looks screwed when BAM! the fuck out of nowhere, Beverly shoots Molly Shannon. Also in the shoulder, through the trees, like a boss. And that's why you bring knee boots to a gunfight.
Who was Molly Shannon and where did she come from and why the hell did she feel compelled to do any of this? We don't know.
Crawford puts Chris into one of the vans for a quiet talk. "Can I go home now?" "I don't think you're gonna go home for a loooong time," Crawford says gently. "You came here to kill your family. That's all anybody knows. It may be all that anyone ever believes." "I wasn't gonna do it," says Chris, which is suddenly really sad because you know he knows what happens when you refuse (probably end up in the grill). When Crawford admits that he doesn't have any children of his own, Chris says, "Then you don't understand what it's like." But Chris does ask to talk to his mom--"my real mom."
Chez Lecter. The master of the house is Getting Told ("RUDE! SHOCKINGLY RUDE!!") by Alana, she finds Abigail all zoned out in the dining room, Abigail sees "family," and this is so bad, you guys.
And now we understand why Crawford asks Bella if it's too late to have kids--and now, from having seen the episode after this, why she says it's too late for her.
And finally, Will settles down to (try to) get some sleep at the Nobark Home. I hope you bought an extra box of Milkbones for All the Dogs, dude, because they're about to pull some overtime.
Red Dragon, teal deer:
(A text from my mother: Oh. By the way I bought some plants that have dragon in their name and they're red. Red Dragon. Lol.)
I'm going to try to be vague and not spoil the actual "Tooth Fairy" storyline, but if you want to be surprised by the show, you might want to save this for some later date anyway.
>> I think I must have read this book (once, maybe twice) when I was about 14, and while I remembered it being pretty good... I remembered a lot less than I thought I did, after y'all busted out all kinds of things you were noticing in the show. You know what really surprised me? How the best scenes were the procedural aspects. There's this great scene where they have--what, forty minutes?--to forensically attack a letter found in Lecter's cell, then put it back, intact, so that he won't realize it was discovered. This is where the Investigators Three (and a few other people) come in, although the characterizations are different (Jimmy was originally an adorably cranky old man). And it's way more engaging and suspenseful than it has any right to be, with Crawford demanding a helicopter to airlift this letter out of there and hustling it through the various departments to get it searched for fibers and fingerprints.
>> The thing that struck me about the book even then was that the two crime scenes they start with are in Atlanta and... Birmingham. (See? Alabama really is the center of the universe.) And the big yuppie rich-people house in the woods facing farm pastures--that is so Alabama, you guys. (Well. Needs moar cows.) There are trees everywhere you go, even downtown, and swaths of wildflower-sprinkled green even in the most developed areas. Highways are just interrupted forests. And that's one of the reasons I'm so attached to the area. So I've always been kind of--proud?--that this was one of the settings of the book, and that it had been genuinely observed rather than just some imagined redneck stereotype stuck in.
>> Alan Bloom is indeed around a lot more than I remembered, although he doesn't want to be alone in a room with Will only because Will might twig to the fact that Alan's observing him professionally and "snatch down the shades."
>> What Happens to Freddy Lounds is one of the most famous things from the book. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it happening to Miss Freddie now. "Oh God, not me!" takes on a more direct significance, in fact.
>> Speaking of which, I have no idea how the show would do the various newspaper ad and telephone booth shenanigans, particularly now that Freddie's a blogger. (Did they update the technology for the 2002 movie? I'm so "fucking Brett Ratner goddammit" about that whole thing that I don't remember a whole lot). I dearly hope they keep the book code, though, because the reveal on that is hilarious ("It had to be a book Dolarhyde knew he would have"!).
>> Speaking of that, it's interesting to see how Lecter was first written--more mischievous than antiheroically ominous. In the back story, Will only meets him once--the time he catches him. Well, the time he realizes Lecter's the killer they're looking for, at least--I'm trying to stay vague and not spoil the living hell out of this, but Lecter getting caught and imprisoned is a foregone conclusion, and the whole point of the show is that Will is eventually going to be the one to get him. Let's just say that Will barely recovers from how that goes down. So Lecter knows him as "the guy who got me." Nothing else.
So yeah, there is no CANNIBAL AND EMPATH: They Fight Crime at all. Garrett Jacob Hobbs and "See? See?" is in the book; it's mentioned that he killed his wife and "shoved her out the door," and that Will does indeed shoot the fuck out of him as Hobbs is in the middle of cutting his daughter's throat (she isn't named or mentioned again) ( wait). "See?" is given no explanation or further context; we're told he killed college girls, but there's no cannibalism or even a particular motive given. Will is so traumatized by having to kill someone that he has a four-week hospital stay for depression, so that does affect him--but since he hasn't met Lecter yet, there's no cannibal-provided therapy (or "helpful" phone calls). But Lecter does throw "the reason you caught me is that we're alike" (not like other various killers--like him) at Will, and the whole "feeling so bad because killing him felt so good" thing as well. But it's purely in the context of "I so seriously hate you, for real." In fact, when Lecter does decide to be the Worst at Helping, it's because Will 1) caught him and 2) wasn't terribly "civil" on his one (1) visit.
And he does not pussyfoot around, either. He goes straight to "KILL THEM ALL" the moment he's given an opportunity to communicate with a killer on the outside. The reason I now really want to see the show get far enough to do the Red Dragon story (I think they said it could be the third or fourth season?) is because--imagine how amazing that conflict would be with two seasons of personal relationship behind it. In the book it's just, Yeah, put me away for life, I'll show you. In the TV series, we would go from " Never apologize for coming to me, my kitchen is always open to friends" to HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A CANNIBAL SCORNED. This gon' be good.
>> It's pretty amazing, the number of things they've already used from the book, word for word, in the first five episodes--a number of things y'all caught, but a few more as well. "It's the ugliest thing in the world," "the bone arena of your skull," "Do you have trouble with taste"/"My thoughts are not very tasty" (although this is third-person narration in the book, not dialogue), "the boatyards of Biloxi and Greenville to lake boats on Erie," "a job as a diesel mechanic in a boatyard," "the first and worst sign--sadism to animals as a child" (spoken of Lecter, not by him, interestingly enough), "shadows suspended on dust," "the last three we had, you caught," "that's what you brought out in him" (said now to Abigail rather than Reba), the entire "sweet and easy peace" spiel. (Lecter also snarks on the Old Spice in the book. In fact, that's his opening salvo. Given that Will has a wife and stepson at that point, "I keep getting it for Christmas" makes a bit more sense there.) And, of course, the wonderful letter about the church roof collapse. That's by no means an exhaustive list ( more!), but it'll be fun looking for other bits in future episodes. TELL YOUR FRIENDS.
(No, you don't actually have to tell your friends.)
(David Bowie, you guys.)
(Continue: 1x05: "Coquilles" )