Hannibal 1x08: "Fromage"
To begin: The problem with "I just really want to be your friend," the kind of philosophical rambling you have come to expect from Cleolinda Industries; I am officially threatening NBC with my wrath. Also, here's some fan street art that turned out really, really well.
Also, yes. Korea is very, very excited about this show.
@particle_p: We need to make screencaps of this right away.
@it_grrl: Right? I need gifs of Sparkly Dreamboat HAN-ni-bal!
@cleolinda: I THOUGHT I WASN'T A TWILIGHT BLOGGER ANYMORE! D: D: D:
PREVIOUSLY ON: EMPATH AND CANNIBAL: Gillian Anderson told Fancy Cannibal that he wears a very nicely-tailored person suit, which gave Hannibal Lecter a sad; Will empathed an organ harvester pretending to be a serial killer who then pretended to be an organ harvester; beer really IS people; A CULINARY RAMPAGE.
The episode was delayed fifteen minutes so the finale of The Office could run over; however, we were treated to ~LIMITED COMMERCIAL INTERRUPTION~ in order for the show to finish on time. The delay was also extremely fortunate for me, because at 9:08 pm, AT&T U-verse decided that just too many people in my household were doing too many televisionary things at the same time.
@cleolinda: THE TV DOESN'T WORK!!!
@queenanthai: That is the most anguished tweet I have ever seen in my life.
Apparently I have no ruth where this show is concerned--I am entirely ruthless--because I might have used the "Interrupt TV" function, which AT&T shouldn't have put on there if they didn't want someone to use it, with ninety seconds to spare. I watch ONE SHOW, y'all. AND EVEN THAT MAY BE TAKEN FROM ME.
We open with Will tinkering with a boat motor (in his bedroom...?) with All the Dogs lounging around him in their beds like a furry audience.
Executive producer Martha De Laurentiis tweeted that "fixing boat motors and semi-feral dogs are anchors for Will Graham," continuing the nautical " I only feel safe around the sea" theme they have going for him; she also referred back to Lecter's comment to Crawford that "Will needs an anchor." However--dog overboard? Will looks up, hearing (according to the captions) "(animal snarling) (animal whining outside) (animal growling outside)," but when he goes outside chasing after "(animal shrieking)" into the scrubby, snow-dappled fields outside his house... nothing's there.
Chordophone Strings, a house-turned-music-shop owned by one Tobias Budge, the best name Dickens never thought of. (Demore Barnes--some of y'all seemed to recognize him last time from Supernatural?) He's giving a cello lesson to a kid who complains about starting out on the superfine awesomesauce "authentic" strings, which are harder to play, but offer a better sound. Did you know Tobias makes his own? Well, I think we can all safely assume here that the strings are people. I mean, that's just playing the odds at this point.
@BryanFuller: #TOBIASBUDGE's Music Student is playing Bach's Minuet No. 3 on his cello. #HANNIBAL #CATGUT #ITSNOTCAT
@lapetitesinge: @cleolinda CLEO THE CELLOS ARE PEOPLE I am literally just going to run around screaming "IT'S PEOPLE" whenever things seem unusual
Ah, but how are cellos people, you ask? (You will regret this.) First, Tobias lays out some hapless murder victim on a slab in his basement and starts disemboweling him, as you do, then carefully washes ropes of intestine and hangs them up on racks to dry out like meaty pink garden hoses, bathes them in chemicals and stretches them out until he has some nice white uniform fibers, and soon they're ready for the kid to play Bach on and we all sob in horror. (The captions say "Minuet in G Major" by Petzold; maybe they were too busy whimpering in fear to pay proper attention.) Bryan Fuller then posted a link to a short documentary about the catgut process (which has nothing to do with cats), but I'm really okay with not knowing a whole lot about this? Somewhere around the "ropes of intestine" point, my mother ducked in to see if my TV was, in fact, working, and I started flailing at her to leave! go! run! "--augh, Jesus, that's disgusting, get outta here--" and she fled. So much for convincing her to read the recaps, I guess. (She still reads all y'all's comments.)
Back at the Nobark Home for Therapeutic Strays, Will has now enlisted Alana in his fruitless search for the unknown animal, who must be hurt and might be emotionally available. "If it wasn't a coyote, the coyotes probably got it. Probably got it even if it was a coyote." (Coyote cannibalism?) Alana: "You're not expecting to find it alive, are you?" "We'll be lucky to find a paw," he says. And then what, you're gonna make her a lucky critter-foot keychain? "So... you invited me over to help you collect animal parts?" See, this is why people hoard cats instead of dogs: they deliver. Will laughs: "I invited you over on the off chance we do find it alive. It's hard for me to wrangle a wounded animal by myself. Did you think it was a date?" "Honestly, it never crossed my mind," she says, because wha--? Will: "WHY NOT." Why not? Why not? Will, you invited her out into the middle of snowy nowhere for beast wrangling. And not even as a euphemism. "You just don't seem like you date," says Alana, as they tromp romantically through the field. "Oh. Too ~broken~ to date?" Will says wryly. "You're not broken," she says. What's her excuse for not dating? "Why are you assuming I don't date?" "Do you?" No, she just has hearts and roses and people beer for dinner with the fancy cannibal. (Speaking of which, this is my new favorite theory as to how Miriam became beer.) "Seems like something for somebody else," she says. "I'm sure I'll become that somebody someday, but... right now I think too much." "So, what are you gonna do?" asks Will. "Are you gonna try to think less, or are you just gonna wait till it happens naturally?" "I haven't thought about it." OH, FOR FUCK'S SAKE. And it's about that point that Will realizes he's not seeing any evidence of any animal anywhere--not even tracks.
The Best Office Ever. "I have a lot of respect for you," the Unwelcome Cheesemancer tells Lecter. "Since we can't be friends, or... you're not comfortable with that" (aw, but who doesn't like to be stalked through the cheese aisle?) "I found myself looking at my friends through your eyes, imagining what your diagnosis might be. I become you." OH, FACEPALM, FRANKLYN. "Who are you psychoanalyzing?" asks Lecter, somehow not strangling him with his own tie. Franklyn sighs: "My friend Tobias," who we previously saw calling Franklyn out on spending an entire aria staring at the back of Lecter's head. "I Googled psychopaths, went down the checklist, and I was a little surprised to see how many boxes I had checked." Presumably he then went on WebMD and discovered that he was dying of everything. "He's been saying very dark things and then saying, 'Just kidding!' a lot. It started to seem kind of crazy." Wait, like what? I'm going to wear your face as a mask and go trick-or-treating with your skull. LOL j/k. Lecter: "Psychopaths are not crazy. They're fully aware of what they do and the consequences of those actions." AND I GUESS HE WOULD KNOW.
"Would you diagnose someone like Tobias as a psychopath? Or, uh... are you supposed to diagnose other people in front of me? Do you... would you rather just talk about me?" "Not at all," says Lecter, which is sort of a hilariously NONE OF THE ABOVE answer. Franklyn: "Are you bored with me?" "No. This is your hour, Franklyn. We will talk about whatever you would like to talk about." He is a paying client, after all, and those tailored checker-plaid suits don't buy themselves. Franklyn: "I'd like to talk about Tobias. Perhaps you can help me analyze him." "I'm not analyzing your friend," Lecter says patiently. "I'm analyzing your perception of him. You could be projecting onto him what you consider to be your flaws." Wait, does that mean Franklyn's a psychopath? "You're not a psychopath, although you may be attracted to them." Franklyn: *GULP.* And you know, I thought, oh, good job! You're not just explaining how Franklyn seems to have found both the serial killers currently operating in Baltimore--you're foreshadowing that this is, as previously stated, the character who later gets involved with the Silence of the Lambs villain (no, the one we don't like)! Well played! Yes, that's a very nice rug I'm standing on--you're not planning on pulling it out from under me or anything, right?
Meanwhile, at the Baltimore Symphony: music is people. Specifically, one Douglas Wilson, a trombonist "killed shortly after his last performance. Blunt force trauma to the back of the head," Crawford tells Will. Currently, Mr. Wilson is seated in a chair onstage, head thrown back, throat flayed open, with the neck of a cello inserted through his mouth so that his exposed vocal cords are the strings. Yeah.
oh look here are plenty of screencaps over here so I don't have to look at it again yay
like I am mostly impressed that the show people think up horrors like this
but also a little afraid of them?
There's no reason not to tell you this now-- the original version of the Franklyn character, Benjamin Raspail, was a flutist with the orchestra as well as one of Lecter's patients; I can't remember precisely if he was the musician who played badly and that's why he got chomped, or if he really was just that annoying. (Lecter then served his sweetbreads at a dinner party.) But we find this out in Silence of the Lambs (which, due to rights issues, is why he can't be on the show by that name), and he's a major plot point regarding the killer, who Franklyn/Benjamin doesn't seem to have met yet, so you'd think he'll be around for a while. In the book, Lecter "displayed" his body in a church (which kind of sounds like the "tongue used as a page marker" crime scene mentioned in the previous episode), and now we have a symphony musician killed. It should have struck me sooner that they were using bits of the Raspail back story piecemeal, and why they might be doing that... but it didn't.
"His killer brought him here to... put on a show," says Will, perhaps stating the obvious. "Will, is it me, or is it becoming easier for you to look?" asks Crawford, while Beverly stands by with the cello bow. "I tell myself... it's purely an intellectual exercise," replies Will. "Well, in the narrow view of forensics, that's exactly what it is," Crawford says ever so helpfully. "It's not any easier, Jack," says Will, tossing back a handful of aspirin (actually, the bottle kind of looks like Advil). "I shake it off... keep on looking." "Good," says Crawford, who really needs to notice how not-well Will is doing. "You shake it off. Get to work. We'll come back in when you're ready for us."
*~EMPATHING IN PROGRESS.~* The mind metronome rewinds Will to the edge of the stage; he jumps down to the floor backwards (a weirdly cool little effect) and stretches out in a front row seat to look at the body from the audience's point of view. Then he's back on stage with a knife and an untouched body, preparing to nnngahhh: "I open his throat from the outside to access the trachea and expose the vocal cords. I open his throat from the inside, using the neck of a cello. Powder on the wound...? Rosin from the bow," says Will, imagining Beverly smacking it against her palm in a white cloud of dust. "I wanted to play him. I wanted to create a sound. My sound. This... is my design." (I would say drink!, but we should all probably be drinking anyway.) And then Will plays the guy's throat and actual music happens.
Oh, look, there's Dead Milky-Eyed Garrett Jacob Hobbs and his sardonic applause out in the seats. I mean, Will often sees Hobbs in his empath trances, but it's an interesting pairing--Will playing for his killer-victim, and (as it turns out) one serial killer playing for another.
(You guys. Official show Tumblr. Look at the tags. #You're welcome for the new slow clap gif.)
Maison Du Maurier. "I worry that I've made Franklyn feel powerless," Lecter tells Bedelia at his next session. "He wants to be my friend. His obsession with me is interfering with his progress," and so he thinks he might refer Franklyn to another doctor (presumably one he hates). "Referrals can be complicated," says Bedelia. "I referred you to another psychiatrist. You refused." (Man, how did that conversation go? "I'd really rather retire from--" "No." "But I don't want patients any--" "No." "If you come next week I'm not opening the--" "NOPE.") "I'm more tenacious than Franklyn. I feel protective of you," he says. "You support me as a colleague and psychiatrist, and as a human being" (or at least providing him with a reasonably good facsimile thereof). "I want to be supportive of you... after what happened." (Ahhhh, Bedelia's "early retirement," now we're getting to it.) "I'm not the only psychiatrist who's ever been attacked by a patient," she says calmly, and now I'm wondering if her throat was injured, given how quietly she always speaks. Lecter says he hesitated "to even bring up the subject of an obsessive patient because of your traumatic experience." "Hannibal... I'm your psychiatrist," says Bedelia. "You're not mine."
Over in the forensics lab, Brian quips, "Played him like a fiddle," because someone had to. I'm also a little unnerved now that I kept saying the " Entrée" episode "played me like a violin." Beverly says that, "along with rosin powder, we found sodium carbonate, sulfur dioxide, lye, and olive oil in the wounds." (Brian: "What is the deal with the olive oil?" Jimmy: "Sure wasn't making salad.") Brian goes on to explain, "[The killer] removed anything non-muscular or fatty from around the vocal folds. The cords themselves were treated with a sulfur dioxide solution," which, in turn, hardened the vocal cords. "Made them easier to play," Will growls. "Had to open you up to get a decent sound out of you."
So mostly we're going to pretend that didn't just happen.
"He took the time to whiten the vocal cords before playing them," notes Brian, but Will corrects him: "It's not about whitening them. It was about increasing elasticity." Beverly's the one to point out that the cords were given the same treatment as catgut string--"Yes. I played the violin." Will: "This takes a steady hand. A confidence." Has the killer done this before? "No... not like this. This is a skilled musician trying a new instrument," he says, looking both painfully aware of his increasingly unhideable weirdness and in actual pain as well.
[Director/producer] @DAVID_A_SLADE: Hey @winston_graham your dad needs a medical checkup, take him NOW! and psst you are a girl.
@winston_graham: can't drive i'm a dog???!!!! also i'm having an identity crisis
@DAVID_A_SLADE: oh and psstt...don't trust the well dressed man.
@winston_graham: but he gives me delicious treats! i feel lied to
Speaking of whom: The Best Office Ever. BOE, you are looking exceptionally superlative today.
(Please note Chekhov's Letter Opener in the upper middle of the desk there.)
"Among the first musical instruments were flutes, carved from human bone," says Lecter (of course he would know this). "This murder was a performance," says Will. Not to be confused with the " theatricality" of the Chesapeake Ripper, mind you, although the Ripper does have some thoughts on the subject: "Every life is a piece of music. Like music, we are finite events, unique arrangements... sometimes harmonious, sometimes dissonant." "Sometimes not worth hearing again," Will says wryly. "He's a poet and a psychopath," says Lecter--somewhat admiringly? Will: "And a craftsman--he was shrinking and tanning the vocal chords." "Like turning iron wire into musical steel string. Was there olive oil?" You come for the therapy, you stay for the baroque historical trivia. "Whatever sound he was trying to produce, it was an authentic one. Olive oil hasn't been used in the production of catgut for over a century. It was said to increase the life of the strings and create a sweeter, more melodic sound."
"No, I hear what he was playing behind my eyes when I close them," says Will. (We heard four actual notes, but I don't think it was meant to be a recognizable piece of music?) "What do you see behind closed eyes?" asks Lecter. Will flashes back to Garrett Jacob Hobbs in the auditorium. Uneasily: "... I see myself." Then who was the killer performing for? "I don't know... patron of the arts? A fellow musician? Or... another killer?" "It's a serenade," Lecter realizes. Wait, isn't that kind of romantic? Turns out that, in the classical sense more likely in this context--it's "a musical composition and/or performance in someone's honor." Ohhhh. But Will thinks that "normally, he doesn't kill for an audience." "And you believe he risked getting caught for a serenade?" "I believe he wants to show someone how well he plays," says Will. And, judging by his expression, Lecter's got a pretty good idea of who and whom.
Indeed, at his next session, Franklyn leads off with, "Do you remember when I said Tobias was saying very dark things? Well, he said that he wanted to cut someone's throat and play it like a violin." In case you're not picking up what he's putting down, "They found somebody whose throat was cut, AND PLAYED LIKE A VIOLIN." So you think Tobias is the killer? "I DON'T KNOW!" says Franklyn, throwing up his hands. "If I do... do I have to report it?" "Do you have a reason not to?" "What if I'm wrong?" "What if you're right?" "I'm always wrong!" Heeee. I can't help it, you guys, I'm kind of starting to love Franklyn, or at least the actor who plays him. "I don't know. Why would he say something like that to me?" Then Franklyn realizes: " 'Cause he knows I'd tell you." DUNNNNN.
So Lecter goes straight to Chordophone Strings, holding the bell at the top of the door so he can listen to Tobias playing the violin in a back room. (It's interesting that they specifically set Tobias up to be a sophisticated, well-dressed, creatively murderous fellow music lover--in a way, they've created a mirror image for Lecter to accept or reject.) "You're Franklyn's therapist--Dr. Lecter," Tobias says, remembering him from that awkward as hell introduction at the opera. "Your strings are all gut," Lecter observes, walking around the shop. "I also carry steel and polymer strings, if you prefer," says Tobias, but Lecter replies, "I prefer gut." (This better be in the Supercut of Cannibal Puns, y'all.) "Harps strung with gut still make music after two thousand years," Lecter says, plucking at a cello on display. What Tobias was playing, "was it an original composition?" "Something I've been writing. You compose?" "I discover," says Lecter. "Can't impose traditional composition on an instrument that's inherently free-form." Which would be...? "The theremin. It can generate any pitch throughout its range--even those between conventional notes." You know, now that they mention it, I kind of remember this being a thing in the book Hannibal? As if Thomas Harris sat down and said, "What is the weirdest, eeriest instrument I could possibly think of?" SIR, YOU SUCCEEDED. "And so can a violin, or a trombone," says Tobias, not coincidentally, which leads into a (barely) coded conversation about how they are "comfortable playing between conventional notes" and it was just so terrible, the orchestra getting improved by murder like that. "At least the brass section," snarks Tobias. "What brings you here looking for gut?" "My harpsichord needs new strings." I was going to say, of course Hannibal Lecter has a fucking harpsichord, of course he does, but y'all, HE HAS A THEREMIN. I don't know why anything should surprise us at this point. "It's making an awful noise" (why, is it people?). "Perhaps you could help."
The Nobark Home for Mellow Chillaxing Strays. Will's working at his desk on a fishing fly--something so delicate that it must occupy your brain in a very relaxing fashion, I imagine. But then he looks up--there's scratching and digging and squeaking sounds coming from the general direction of the fireplace. Around which All the Dogs happen to be chilling in their beds, which they would not possibly be doing if anything were actually in there. (Over here, House of Bark freaks out when they hear something in someone else's chimney.) But Will climbs up to the mantelpiece anyway, and in his experience of reality, certainly, there's some really squirrelly chittering sounds in there.
Aaaand now here's a big hole in the wall over the fireplace. "What kind of animal was it?" asks Alana, who apparently dropped by on a whim. "It might've been a raccoon," says Will, hammer still in hand. "Might've been?" "Well, by the time I knocked a hole in the chimney, it had climbed out the top..." Yeah, it... sure, yeah. What's she doing here, anyway? "I thought I'd come over, make some noise, shoo away any predators at your door. It looks like you're making plenty of noise all by yourself." Will then changes the subject: "You've avoided being in a room alone with me essentially since I met you. You were smooth about it." "Evidently not smooth enough," she says, perhaps thinking of the three different people with whom she's discussed Not Being In A Room Alone With Will, including Will himself, because she liiii~iiiikes him. "And now you're making house calls?" Alana: "Just a drive-by on my way home." ( Well, her car is good for stalking.) "Since you're not my patient." "No. I'm not," says Will, and goes in for the kiss yaaaay!!
@HettiennePark: My Mom: Blah, blah, blah Me: Shhhhh!!!! They're making out!!! #HANNIBAL #DOITALREADY
@LaraJeanC: @HettiennePark @BryanFuller more make outs please.
Heh. Beverly and Miss Freddie ship it.
"I'm confused," whispers Alana, pulling away. ALANA! DO YOU NEED ME TO DRAW YOU A DIAGRAM!! "You have to stop thinking so much," says Will, not to mention thinking too much about thinking too much instead of thinking about kissing. "The way that I am in relationships-- not that this is a relationship--it's just a kiss," Alana ramble-flounders (flambles?), "... a great kiss... but I... the way that I am isn't compatible with the way that--" Will, bitterly: "The way I am." "I wouldn't be good for you--you wouldn't be good for me, and I wouldn't be able to stop analyzing, because I have this professional curiosity about you and--" Will, however, has an unprofessional curiosity about her tongue (moar kissings), but she pulls away again, albeit reluctantly. "I am not your patient," he insists. I mean, unless Alana wants to play doctor; I'm sure he'd be up for that. "If I were my patient," she says, "my advice to me would be: don't do this. I have to follow my own advice." Noooo, Alana, kissings require you. :( "Goodnight, Will." And Will is left to make sad puppy faces at the hole in the chimney.
Chez Lecter, where Tobias has been invited over for real talk and paella. (Well, the crab probably isn't people--oh, wait: SAUSAGE.)
@BryanFuller: #HANNIBAL is playing Mendelssohn's MIDSUMMER'S NIGHT'S DREAM - Intermezzo during his dinner with #TOBIASBUDGE
as the snow falls outside, which is kind of an interesting "summer in the middle of winter" theme the dessert picks up on as well. (Apparently the Intermezzo itself "expresses one’s crazed search for a bewitched lover"? Hm... that serenade.) Lecter, ever the locavore, leads off with a white wine, "a late harvest Vidal from Linden. The Virginia wine revolution is upon us." Wait, what? Tobias: "Oh, Virginia. I thought it was French." No, but it's probably people. "I apologize for being so blunt, Tobias, but I have to ask. Did you kill that trombonist?" A head tilt and a smile: "Do you really have to ask?" Tobias even confirms that all that "just kidding" talk was a message he intended Franklyn to repeat. "The murder is being investigated by the FBI," Lecter tells him. "They're going to find you." "Let them." Wait, he wants to get caught? "I want them to try. They may investigate me because I own a string shop. They'll send men to investigate, and I'll kill them. Then I'll find Franklyn and kill him. Then I would disappear." "Don't kill Franklyn," says Lecter--not like omg no, please don't kill him, but more like I CALLED DIBS Ugh, don't waste your time. "I've been looking forward to it. Actually," Tobias says, leaning in confidentially, "I was going to kill you." Lecter smiles: "Of course you were. I'm lean. Lean animals yield the toughest gut." (Hilarity aside, the previous episode seemed to imply that Tobias was super jealous because he was into Franklyn but Franklyn was, instead, staring at Lecter with stars in his eyes like Tobias wasn't even sitting right there, hello. Lecter, who was like OH MY GOD, TAKE HIM, YOU CAN HAVE HIM. I don't really know how to interpret Tobias there now.) "What stopped you from wanting to kill me? Or have you stopped?"
"I stopped after I followed you one night. Out of town. To a lonely road. To a bus yard." Ohhhh noooo. Remember Andrew Caldwell, Independent Medical Examiner, sitting beside himself on a school bus? Now you've got Lecter's attention. He points out that it is perhaps reckless of Tobias to play the I Know What You Did Last Episode card in the first hand, but Tobias replies, "I'm not going to tell anyone what I saw you do--and do well. I could use a friend. Someone who can understand me. Who thinks like I do and can see the world and the people in it the way I do." "I know exactly how you feel," says the Sad Cannibal. "But I don't want to be your friend." Well, then... why did you invite him over for dinner and not cook him? "It wasn't just to restring your harpsichord." "I was going to kill you," says Lecter, adding, "I didn't poison you, Tobias. I wouldn't do that to the food." 1) Seriously, the food has already suffered enough. 2) LOL HANNIBAL. Wait, who's that at the door?
"WELL I KISSED ALANA BLOOM," announces Will, barging in. Blessedly, Tobias has slipped out through the French doors into the snow. "You have a guest?" "A colleague. You just missed him. An urgent call of some sort. He had to leave suddenly. This benefits you," says Lecter, "because I have dessert for two." And so, no sooner than I said "I want to see more desserts" in last week's comments, we get--I don't even know what this is, what is this? Some kind of shortcake? You'd have to tell me what it is before I can tell you how it's probably people. (Short people?) Wait, no! It's bread pudding! With pomegranate-mango sauce and tropical fruit, because fancy cannibal is fancy. (Ah, suet, you say? Pudding is people.)
Okay, Will, dish. "She said she wouldn't be good for me, and I wouldn't be good for her." "I don't disagree," says Lecter. "She would feel an obligation to her field of study to observe you, and you would resent her for it." "I know!" says Will, which leaves Lecter "wondering, then, why you kissed her, and felt compelled to drive an hour in the snow to tell me about it." Well, when you have a woman in common, you want to share everything, I guess. "I wanted to kiss her since I met her--she's very kissable," says Will. Jellus yet? Actually... kind of not? Lecter merely points out that Will waited a long time (apparently forgetting that making a move would require Will to socialize), "which suggests you were kissing her for a reason, in addition to wanting to." Yeah... Will admits broke through the wall because he heard something in the chimney: "Alana showed up, she looked at me... I... maybe her face changed. I don't know. But... she knew." "What did she know, Will?" "There was no animal in the chimney. It was only... in my head." (As akathorne dubbed them: the brain raccoons.) "I sleepwalk... I get headaches. I am... hearing things," says Will, and then he whispers pitifully, "I feel unstable." Ahhhh: "That's why you kissed her. A clutch for balance. You said yourself what you do is not good for you." Will: "Well, unfortunately, I am good for it." "Are you still hearing this killer's serenade behind your eyes?" A wry laugh: "Well, it's our song." Now Lecter looks a little concerned. Almost like, "But... we don't have a song. :( " After a moment's thought--perhaps remembering how nice it was to be the Best at Helping last episode?--Lecter says, "I hesitate telling you this, as it borders on a violation of doctor-patient confidentiality... a patient told me today he suspects a friend of his may be involved with the murder at the symphony." Will rubs his eyes, looking more overwhelmed than, you know, glad his case is going somewhere, as Lecter goes on to suggest, "Perhaps you should interview him."
OKAY, STOP. I HAVE QUESTIONS. NAMELY what are you doing?! I can't tell what Lecter's primary impulse here is--get rid of Tobias by sending Will after him, or get rid of Will (JELLUS) by sending him to Tobias? Because, while I know he can't really tell Will everything, if he really wanted to get rid of Tobias for sure, he would just tell Will that Franklyn said Tobias was super incredible dangerous and also Will should probably be prepared to shoot the fuck out of him, since Will is so good at that. Perhaps you should interview him. No big. It'll be fine *shrug* suggests that he wants Will to be unprepared for shit getting real. And yet... he seems surprisingly chill about the whole Alana thing? But then Lecter always seems able to produce "appropriate" emotional reactions, like sympathy or regret, even when we know he did it and he'd do it again. Who even knows.
Of course, there's a third possibility, courtesy of Dr. Bedelia. "For the first time in a long while, I see the possibility of friendship," he tells her at his next therapy session. "I met a man... much like myself. Same hobbies, same worldviews... but I'm not interested in being his friend. I'm curious about him, and that got me curious about friendship." God, he really does talk like some alien creature in a person suit. This thing you huu-mans call "friendship," is it quality? "Whose friendship are you considering?" she asks. Lecter replies, "Oddly enough, a colleague and a patient, not unlike how I'm a colleague and a patient of yours." Ah, Will Graham, she says--they've talked about him before. "He's nothing like me," says Lecter. "We see the world in different ways, yet he can assume my point of view." "By profiling the criminally insane," Bedelia says with a dry (knowing?) smile. "As good a demonstration as any. I find it reassuring," says Lecter, perhaps thinking of that time he said Will was " the mongoose I want under the house when the snakes slither by." At the time, it was sort of like, wait, what are you worried about? That... was before Tobias. "It's nice when someone sees us, Hannibal," she says. "Or has the ability to see us." (And of course, Will is going to see him someday. See?) "It requires trust. Trust is difficult for you." Lecter: "You've helped me to better understand what I want in a friendship... and what I don't." "Someone worthy of your friendship," Bedelia says: "You spend a lot of time building walls, Hannibal. It's natural to want to see if someone is... clever enough to climb over them." He seems struck by the idea, which--I'm sorry, that just really sounds like a Takes One to Know One kind of insight right there. I think she knows--she knows something, she is something. And also, she's given us the third idea--that Lecter wants to send Will into a trap not to get rid of him, but in hopes that he's good enough to get out of it.
At Chordophone Strings, Will (who at least had the good sense to bring two uniformed officers with him) arrives just as Tobias is showing out the student we saw before. "We're investigating the death of Douglas Wilson. He was--" "The trombonist," says Tobias, who openly admits that he was aware of a fellow musician in a small town like Baltimore (Baltimore is a small town?). "I hear someone cut his throat and tried to play it with a bow," he adds, a little too avidly. Man, you really are trying to get something started here, aren't you? "Why do you say try?" Will asks warily. Well, "the strings have to be treated. You can't just open somebody up and draw a bow across their innards and expect to produce a sound." GOOD GOD, TOBIAS. Will snarls, "The vocal chords were chemically treated, similar to how catgut string is treated. WE KEPT THOSE DETAILS OUT OF THE PRESS," lurching through the shop somewhere between AND THUS YOU GIVE YOURSELF AWAY!! and MY BRAIN IS EXPLODING. But Tobias denies that he manufactures catgut strings at all: "Mine are imported from Italy. The best catgut is," says Tobias, handing Will a hooped bundle of them. "More authentic?" retorts Will. Yes, says Tobias: "A richer, darker sound. Allows music to say what words can't." But suddenly Will hears "(tires screeching) (crash) (shrieking and moaning) (car horn honking)"--like a car hitting a whimpering animal. DOG RESCUE IMPULSE ACTIVATE! And as Will tears outside, Tobias gives some long pointy thing--@MartianBethany says it's an endpin?--an enterprising look.
Out in the street, Will can still hear "(animal moaning) (animal shrieking) (animal shrieking)" but there's nothing out of the ordinary to be seen, except for the ambulance that nearly hits him. He slams down another handful of aspirin before going back inside: "Sorry about that," he says... to an empty shop. Ohhhh shit. "Officers...?" he calls, reaching for his gun. (Dude, how did Tobias take both of them down in an actual minute with no noise? He really is a match for Lecter.) And you know, all of Will's symptoms sound a lot like a brain tumor. Believe me, my grandmother had one (she's fine now), and the only difference was that she hallucinated ghosts and intruders and cheating neighbors and... raccoons in the basement, actually (and then I heard the ghosts myself. But that's a story for another time) and empathed a lot fewer murders. However, whatever's going on with Will seems more purposeful than a tumor, as the brain raccoons stepped in at just the right moment to save his ass. So I'm not sure if a real-world medical condition is being foreshadowed here or a unique fictional one. Like, I'm kind of starting to imagine them as little Disney sidekicks romping around tunefully inside his head? Whatever it is, it apparently impairs Will's judgment to the point where he thinks he needs to go pointing his gun AROUND THE EMPTY HOUSE BY HIMSELF WITHOUT CALLING FOR BACKUP. The first thing he finds is one of the cops lying in a pool of blood with the endpin through his neck, and this guy's the lucky one. Okay, at least now Will calls in, as quietly as he can: "I need ERT at Chordophone Strings, downtown Baltimore. Officer down--" And then he hears noises deeper in the house and decides that THIS IS THE APPROPRIATE CHOICE FOR THIS MOMENT IN LIFE:
WILL
OMG WILL
TRUST ME THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO FOR OFFICER GUY
HE'S IN A HELL BASEMENT NOW
GET OUT OF THE HOUSE
GET OUT OF THE HOUUUUSE
Gahhhh, is it just part of the building code that basements have to be bone-marrow terrifying? Oh, look, there's dank stone dungeon walls and nice jars of full of creepy things and creepy things are preserved intestines and there's a table full of freaky tools and washed intestines hanging out to dry like ropes and dripping sounds behind an operating room screen and GET OUT GET OUT GET OUUUUUT the other officer is face down in a tank of something with bloody cello strings garroted around his face THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO FOR THIS GUY, WILL, TOBIAS IS BEHIND YOU TOBIAS IS BEHIND YOU
@BryanFuller: We talked a lot about John Lithgow and #BLOWOUT when referring to #TOBIASBUDGE's weapon of choice. #HANNIBAL pic.twitter.com/RG6b3NIhJX
Fortunately, Will has His Hands at the Level of His Eyes and is able to prevent the Phantom of the Orchestra from choking his face off--he even manages to fire a surprisingly well-aimed shot back over his shoulder. Unfortunately, the gunshot blast temporarily deafens Will with an awful whining shriek on the soundtrack, and while he manages to stagger after the fleeing Tobias, he is only able to attempt to shoot the fuck out of him.
Over at The Best Office Ever, "Nine. Nine times," says Franklyn, holding up as many fingers. "I can count on two hands the number of times I've been dumped by a psychiatrist." "I'm sorry, Franklyn, but I think you should see another doctor." "You're giving me a referral? YOU WERE A REFERRAL!!" "I am also a part of the problem," says Lecter (Franklyn, listen to the man, or you gonna get et). "You focus too much on your therapist, and not enough on your therapy." "You lost respect for me because I wouldn't report Tobias, didn't you?" Honey, that's the least of your--
"Report Tobias for what?" Aw, shit, y'all. "I came to say goodbye, Franklyn," says Tobias, surprisingly calm for a guy with half his ear blown off and blood running down his neck. Like, a neat round bullet hole and everything. "I just killed two men. The police came to question me about the murder," he announces, to which Lecter, fearing for Will's life, reacts vehemently (a blink and a wince). "Okay... you have to give yourself up right now," Franklyn starts yammering in a panic. "This plane is going down. Let it have a controlled descent. We can get you back up in the air again. There's rehabilitation for everyone." God bless, Franklyn, but what the fuck are you talking about? Lecter, who is quietly sidling around behind him: "Franklyn, I want you to leave now--" "STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE, FRANKLYN." And I'm thinking, the way Tobias has his coat folded so stiffly over his arm, he's probably hiding a gun that he's going to suddenly shoot Franklyn with, so I am sitting there waiting for this to happen through all of Franklyn's naive, heroic, clueless speech: "You've done a horrible thing, and... I know... that you wish to God that you didn't. But you did. And there's nothing you can do to change that. Only thing you can change is your future. Right? You're probably scared. You probably feel like you're all alone." "I'm not alone," says Tobias, shooting Lecter a Significant Look. "That's right," Franklyn says eagerly, "you're not alone. Nothing has happened in our relationship that you and I can't--" And then Lecter steps forward and snaps Franklyn's head around like a bottle cap. YOU! YOU KILLED FRANKLYN! YOU JUST DID THAT! WHAT WAS THAT?!?
(Well, his therapy was going nowhere, I guess.)
"I was looking forward to that," Tobias says.
"I saved you the trouble," says Lecter.
You know, I was pissed when NBC revealed that there would be a fight (AND UH THAT TOBIAS WAS A SERIAL KILLER WHO WANTED TO KILL LECTER) in last week's previews, because I love a good surprise, and can you imagine how awesome it would have been to not see this coming at all? I understand now why they did that: because there is more than enough ass-kicking surprise left to go around. You wouldn't think that a cello teacher and a psychiatrist would absolutely wreck some shit, but you would be wrong. Tobias starts off whirling his cello string like a bola or what the hell and snapping it like a whip and even Lecter's like what the fuck is this and gets kicked in (appropriately enough) the gut and shoves the Cannibal Library Paradise ladder at him and then Tobias garrotes Lecter's fancy patterned shirt cuff AND NOW YOU DONE IT and there is shoving and punching and Lecter BREAKS A GLASS TABLE OVER TOBIAS' HEAD (NO! YOU GUYS! STOP! DON'T HURT THE OFFICE!) and apparently the bone arena of one's skull is also good for head-butting? WHAT IS EVEN GOING ON and then Lecter throws Tobias against his desk and just STRAIGHT-UP FLYING-SQUIRREL TACKLES HIM but Tobias has grabbed Chekhov's Letter Opener and there is wrestling and tiny office dagger swashing and finally he stabs Lecter OH! right in the ham leg but I guess the pen is mightier than the letter opener because Lecter fends him off by stabbing in him the arm with one and y'all they are STILL face-punching and kick-wrestling each other around the office. I am serious, this scene lasts a full actual two minutes and either these two actors are really, really good at stage fighting, or they are beating the ABSOLUTE FUCK out of each other. And you know who I'm rooting for? Let's be entirely clear about this: Hannibal Lecter is the absolute worst. BUT HE IS OUR ABSOLUTE WORST, GODDAMMIT. GET TOBIAS! GET HIM!!!
@BryanFuller: MADS MIKKELSEN REHEARSES THE FIGHT #HANNIBAL pic.twitter.com/YyqCXafDxH
(You're welcome.)
For a moment it looks like Lecter is on the ropes, as it were, when Tobias throws him back against the ladder, but he finally catches Tobias' arm through the rungs and BREAKS IT ALL THE WAY BACK, DAMN, and bless Tobias' heart, he is still trying to fling his arm in a fightwards direction when Lecter finally just punches him in the throat. I adore that he then pulls out his silk handkerchief to pick up the (incredibly heavy) Dire Ravenstag statue, I guess not wanting to get symbolism all over his hands or something, and when he's done, carefully tips over the stand and folds the handkerchief back up into his pocket. Because: FINISHING MOVE: STAGNATION.
@DireRavenstag: Good. That statue was a poor representation of my magnificence anyway.
(So now do we have our first onscreen cannibal fatality? I'm ever so slightly disappointed it didn't involve chewing someone's face off, just on general principle, but the Investigators Three probably would have noticed that. The sheer quantity of beatdown makes up for it.)
And as he staggers through the wreckage of his office,
@BryanFuller: #HANNIBAL plays Bach Goldberg Variations - the Aria Movement on his harpsichord
or plinks out the opening notes, anyway, since it's not only his personal musical motif but also possibly a final fuck you grace note aimed at the String Maker, I don't know.
Sometime later, a stern Crawford arrives to take charge of the scene, and I swear to you, Lecter anxiously watches the doorway until Will finally walks through as well, then makes an audible little gasp of relief. (Meanwhile, Will is staring at the carnage with a what the haaaale expression.) "I was worried you were dead," says Lecter, because this thing the huu-mans call friendship really is quality. AWWW, YOU GUYS. C'mon, hug it out. Crawford, on the other hand, is... perturbed. "Tobias Budge killed two Baltimore Police officers... nearly killed an FBI special agent... and after all of that... his first stop is here, at your office." Look, Tobias just magically knew that Franklyn, to whom he described a uniquely creative murder before he committed it, would be in session with Lecter at the same time Tobias was forced to launch Project Kill Everyone. What could possibly sound sketchy about that, Crawford?
"Your patient... is that who Budge was serenading?" asks Will. "I don't know," Lecter LIES LIKE A LYING LIAR. "Franklyn knew more than he was telling me... he told Mr. Budge that he didn't have to kill anymore. And then he broke Franklyn's neck, and then... he attacked me." Crawford: "You killed him?" "You're damn straight I fucking tenderized him Yes," whispers Lecter. Could Franklyn have been helping Tobias? Lecter replies with seeming ruefulness, "I thought this was a simple matter of poor choice in friends." "This doesn't feel simple to me," Crawford says grimly.
Will sits down on the desk and sighs while Lecter continues nursing his leg wound. "I feel like I've... dragged you into my world," he says, because he doesn't knoooow, you guys. "I got here on my own," says Lecter. "But I appreciate the company." They smile at each other. And then, somewhere, a hurt/comfort fic breaks out.
Maison Du Maurier. It turns out that Lecter has taken a few days off from work (I'm sure just getting the office patched up took a while), but he's returning now. "It's strange, thinking about going back to daily practice," he says. "Patients will sit where Franklyn died. I will sit where I almost died, and I will offer therapy." Y'all, I kind of think he's more disturbed that this happened in his sanctum--not that it happened per se, because God knows he's wanted to twist Franklyn's head off since always. "It's easy to understand why you retired after you were attacked. Will you ever feel comfortable returning to psychiatric work?" "This is psychiatric work," says Bedelia, a bit archly. Lecter: "One patient isn't a practice." He leans in: "I can't help feeling responsible for what happened to Franklyn." Okay, I think we all have to call absolute bullshit on this. He sounds pretty sincere, because he's really good at that, but I can't figure out if he's just like, "That's a thing the real-person human-people say, right?" or if he's saying "Franklyn" because he can't say "Will." For whatever reason he did send Will after Tobias--does he now feel guilty that he nearly got his only friend killed?
"Every person has an intrinsic responsibility for their own life, Hannibal. No one else can take on that responsibility. Not even you," she tells him. And it's true, really, that it's Will's job to catch a guy like Tobias, and turning in Tobias was the right thing for Lecter to do, although maybe he could have told Will a bit more than "Go talk to him," damn. "Did you take responsibility when you were attacked by your patient?" he asks. "Yes," she says. "But I don't take responsibility for his death." Y'all, Bedelia totally killed this guy. ( Remember the 1945 Bedelia? I am convinced this is relevant.) Lecter replies, "Nor should you," and the episode ends on a Significant Expression. As a few of y'all suggested on Twitter... maybe she shouldn't feel responsible because her ~protective patient~ killed him. Hell, maybe she knows he did. Maybe they both know whatever either one of them did--and that's why she couldn't refuse to keep him on as a patient? Either way, I am calling Shenanigans, Exact Nature To Be Determined.
@MrAaronAbrams: Thanks everyone for watching and forgoing any good sleeps you might have enjoyed this eve. Night terrors are more exciting anyway.
@HettiennePark: My Mom - final thought: Everybody Crazy.
...
@BryanFuller: Yes. RT @leia_hall: In Aperitif, when Hannibal mentions his secretary leaving for the UK, is that a euphemism for "I had her for dinner?"
WE KNEW IT.
NEXT WEEK: Son, you got the brain raccoons.
(Continue: 1x09: "Trou Normand")
Also, yes. Korea is very, very excited about this show.
@particle_p: We need to make screencaps of this right away.
@it_grrl: Right? I need gifs of Sparkly Dreamboat HAN-ni-bal!
@cleolinda: I THOUGHT I WASN'T A TWILIGHT BLOGGER ANYMORE! D: D: D:
PREVIOUSLY ON: EMPATH AND CANNIBAL: Gillian Anderson told Fancy Cannibal that he wears a very nicely-tailored person suit, which gave Hannibal Lecter a sad; Will empathed an organ harvester pretending to be a serial killer who then pretended to be an organ harvester; beer really IS people; A CULINARY RAMPAGE.
The episode was delayed fifteen minutes so the finale of The Office could run over; however, we were treated to ~LIMITED COMMERCIAL INTERRUPTION~ in order for the show to finish on time. The delay was also extremely fortunate for me, because at 9:08 pm, AT&T U-verse decided that just too many people in my household were doing too many televisionary things at the same time.
@cleolinda: THE TV DOESN'T WORK!!!
@queenanthai: That is the most anguished tweet I have ever seen in my life.
Apparently I have no ruth where this show is concerned--I am entirely ruthless--because I might have used the "Interrupt TV" function, which AT&T shouldn't have put on there if they didn't want someone to use it, with ninety seconds to spare. I watch ONE SHOW, y'all. AND EVEN THAT MAY BE TAKEN FROM ME.
We open with Will tinkering with a boat motor (in his bedroom...?) with All the Dogs lounging around him in their beds like a furry audience.
Executive producer Martha De Laurentiis tweeted that "fixing boat motors and semi-feral dogs are anchors for Will Graham," continuing the nautical " I only feel safe around the sea" theme they have going for him; she also referred back to Lecter's comment to Crawford that "Will needs an anchor." However--dog overboard? Will looks up, hearing (according to the captions) "(animal snarling) (animal whining outside) (animal growling outside)," but when he goes outside chasing after "(animal shrieking)" into the scrubby, snow-dappled fields outside his house... nothing's there.
Chordophone Strings, a house-turned-music-shop owned by one Tobias Budge, the best name Dickens never thought of. (Demore Barnes--some of y'all seemed to recognize him last time from Supernatural?) He's giving a cello lesson to a kid who complains about starting out on the superfine awesomesauce "authentic" strings, which are harder to play, but offer a better sound. Did you know Tobias makes his own? Well, I think we can all safely assume here that the strings are people. I mean, that's just playing the odds at this point.
@BryanFuller: #TOBIASBUDGE's Music Student is playing Bach's Minuet No. 3 on his cello. #HANNIBAL #CATGUT #ITSNOTCAT
@lapetitesinge: @cleolinda CLEO THE CELLOS ARE PEOPLE I am literally just going to run around screaming "IT'S PEOPLE" whenever things seem unusual
Ah, but how are cellos people, you ask? (You will regret this.) First, Tobias lays out some hapless murder victim on a slab in his basement and starts disemboweling him, as you do, then carefully washes ropes of intestine and hangs them up on racks to dry out like meaty pink garden hoses, bathes them in chemicals and stretches them out until he has some nice white uniform fibers, and soon they're ready for the kid to play Bach on and we all sob in horror. (The captions say "Minuet in G Major" by Petzold; maybe they were too busy whimpering in fear to pay proper attention.) Bryan Fuller then posted a link to a short documentary about the catgut process (which has nothing to do with cats), but I'm really okay with not knowing a whole lot about this? Somewhere around the "ropes of intestine" point, my mother ducked in to see if my TV was, in fact, working, and I started flailing at her to leave! go! run! "--augh, Jesus, that's disgusting, get outta here--" and she fled. So much for convincing her to read the recaps, I guess. (She still reads all y'all's comments.)
Back at the Nobark Home for Therapeutic Strays, Will has now enlisted Alana in his fruitless search for the unknown animal, who must be hurt and might be emotionally available. "If it wasn't a coyote, the coyotes probably got it. Probably got it even if it was a coyote." (Coyote cannibalism?) Alana: "You're not expecting to find it alive, are you?" "We'll be lucky to find a paw," he says. And then what, you're gonna make her a lucky critter-foot keychain? "So... you invited me over to help you collect animal parts?" See, this is why people hoard cats instead of dogs: they deliver. Will laughs: "I invited you over on the off chance we do find it alive. It's hard for me to wrangle a wounded animal by myself. Did you think it was a date?" "Honestly, it never crossed my mind," she says, because wha--? Will: "WHY NOT." Why not? Why not? Will, you invited her out into the middle of snowy nowhere for beast wrangling. And not even as a euphemism. "You just don't seem like you date," says Alana, as they tromp romantically through the field. "Oh. Too ~broken~ to date?" Will says wryly. "You're not broken," she says. What's her excuse for not dating? "Why are you assuming I don't date?" "Do you?" No, she just has hearts and roses and people beer for dinner with the fancy cannibal. (Speaking of which, this is my new favorite theory as to how Miriam became beer.) "Seems like something for somebody else," she says. "I'm sure I'll become that somebody someday, but... right now I think too much." "So, what are you gonna do?" asks Will. "Are you gonna try to think less, or are you just gonna wait till it happens naturally?" "I haven't thought about it." OH, FOR FUCK'S SAKE. And it's about that point that Will realizes he's not seeing any evidence of any animal anywhere--not even tracks.
The Best Office Ever. "I have a lot of respect for you," the Unwelcome Cheesemancer tells Lecter. "Since we can't be friends, or... you're not comfortable with that" (aw, but who doesn't like to be stalked through the cheese aisle?) "I found myself looking at my friends through your eyes, imagining what your diagnosis might be. I become you." OH, FACEPALM, FRANKLYN. "Who are you psychoanalyzing?" asks Lecter, somehow not strangling him with his own tie. Franklyn sighs: "My friend Tobias," who we previously saw calling Franklyn out on spending an entire aria staring at the back of Lecter's head. "I Googled psychopaths, went down the checklist, and I was a little surprised to see how many boxes I had checked." Presumably he then went on WebMD and discovered that he was dying of everything. "He's been saying very dark things and then saying, 'Just kidding!' a lot. It started to seem kind of crazy." Wait, like what? I'm going to wear your face as a mask and go trick-or-treating with your skull. LOL j/k. Lecter: "Psychopaths are not crazy. They're fully aware of what they do and the consequences of those actions." AND I GUESS HE WOULD KNOW.
"Would you diagnose someone like Tobias as a psychopath? Or, uh... are you supposed to diagnose other people in front of me? Do you... would you rather just talk about me?" "Not at all," says Lecter, which is sort of a hilariously NONE OF THE ABOVE answer. Franklyn: "Are you bored with me?" "No. This is your hour, Franklyn. We will talk about whatever you would like to talk about." He is a paying client, after all, and those tailored checker-plaid suits don't buy themselves. Franklyn: "I'd like to talk about Tobias. Perhaps you can help me analyze him." "I'm not analyzing your friend," Lecter says patiently. "I'm analyzing your perception of him. You could be projecting onto him what you consider to be your flaws." Wait, does that mean Franklyn's a psychopath? "You're not a psychopath, although you may be attracted to them." Franklyn: *GULP.* And you know, I thought, oh, good job! You're not just explaining how Franklyn seems to have found both the serial killers currently operating in Baltimore--you're foreshadowing that this is, as previously stated, the character who later gets involved with the Silence of the Lambs villain (no, the one we don't like)! Well played! Yes, that's a very nice rug I'm standing on--you're not planning on pulling it out from under me or anything, right?
Meanwhile, at the Baltimore Symphony: music is people. Specifically, one Douglas Wilson, a trombonist "killed shortly after his last performance. Blunt force trauma to the back of the head," Crawford tells Will. Currently, Mr. Wilson is seated in a chair onstage, head thrown back, throat flayed open, with the neck of a cello inserted through his mouth so that his exposed vocal cords are the strings. Yeah.
oh look here are plenty of screencaps over here so I don't have to look at it again yay
like I am mostly impressed that the show people think up horrors like this
but also a little afraid of them?
There's no reason not to tell you this now-- the original version of the Franklyn character, Benjamin Raspail, was a flutist with the orchestra as well as one of Lecter's patients; I can't remember precisely if he was the musician who played badly and that's why he got chomped, or if he really was just that annoying. (Lecter then served his sweetbreads at a dinner party.) But we find this out in Silence of the Lambs (which, due to rights issues, is why he can't be on the show by that name), and he's a major plot point regarding the killer, who Franklyn/Benjamin doesn't seem to have met yet, so you'd think he'll be around for a while. In the book, Lecter "displayed" his body in a church (which kind of sounds like the "tongue used as a page marker" crime scene mentioned in the previous episode), and now we have a symphony musician killed. It should have struck me sooner that they were using bits of the Raspail back story piecemeal, and why they might be doing that... but it didn't.
"His killer brought him here to... put on a show," says Will, perhaps stating the obvious. "Will, is it me, or is it becoming easier for you to look?" asks Crawford, while Beverly stands by with the cello bow. "I tell myself... it's purely an intellectual exercise," replies Will. "Well, in the narrow view of forensics, that's exactly what it is," Crawford says ever so helpfully. "It's not any easier, Jack," says Will, tossing back a handful of aspirin (actually, the bottle kind of looks like Advil). "I shake it off... keep on looking." "Good," says Crawford, who really needs to notice how not-well Will is doing. "You shake it off. Get to work. We'll come back in when you're ready for us."
*~EMPATHING IN PROGRESS.~* The mind metronome rewinds Will to the edge of the stage; he jumps down to the floor backwards (a weirdly cool little effect) and stretches out in a front row seat to look at the body from the audience's point of view. Then he's back on stage with a knife and an untouched body, preparing to nnngahhh: "I open his throat from the outside to access the trachea and expose the vocal cords. I open his throat from the inside, using the neck of a cello. Powder on the wound...? Rosin from the bow," says Will, imagining Beverly smacking it against her palm in a white cloud of dust. "I wanted to play him. I wanted to create a sound. My sound. This... is my design." (I would say drink!, but we should all probably be drinking anyway.) And then Will plays the guy's throat and actual music happens.
Oh, look, there's Dead Milky-Eyed Garrett Jacob Hobbs and his sardonic applause out in the seats. I mean, Will often sees Hobbs in his empath trances, but it's an interesting pairing--Will playing for his killer-victim, and (as it turns out) one serial killer playing for another.
(You guys. Official show Tumblr. Look at the tags. #You're welcome for the new slow clap gif.)
Maison Du Maurier. "I worry that I've made Franklyn feel powerless," Lecter tells Bedelia at his next session. "He wants to be my friend. His obsession with me is interfering with his progress," and so he thinks he might refer Franklyn to another doctor (presumably one he hates). "Referrals can be complicated," says Bedelia. "I referred you to another psychiatrist. You refused." (Man, how did that conversation go? "I'd really rather retire from--" "No." "But I don't want patients any--" "No." "If you come next week I'm not opening the--" "NOPE.") "I'm more tenacious than Franklyn. I feel protective of you," he says. "You support me as a colleague and psychiatrist, and as a human being" (or at least providing him with a reasonably good facsimile thereof). "I want to be supportive of you... after what happened." (Ahhhh, Bedelia's "early retirement," now we're getting to it.) "I'm not the only psychiatrist who's ever been attacked by a patient," she says calmly, and now I'm wondering if her throat was injured, given how quietly she always speaks. Lecter says he hesitated "to even bring up the subject of an obsessive patient because of your traumatic experience." "Hannibal... I'm your psychiatrist," says Bedelia. "You're not mine."
Over in the forensics lab, Brian quips, "Played him like a fiddle," because someone had to. I'm also a little unnerved now that I kept saying the " Entrée" episode "played me like a violin." Beverly says that, "along with rosin powder, we found sodium carbonate, sulfur dioxide, lye, and olive oil in the wounds." (Brian: "What is the deal with the olive oil?" Jimmy: "Sure wasn't making salad.") Brian goes on to explain, "[The killer] removed anything non-muscular or fatty from around the vocal folds. The cords themselves were treated with a sulfur dioxide solution," which, in turn, hardened the vocal cords. "Made them easier to play," Will growls. "Had to open you up to get a decent sound out of you."
So mostly we're going to pretend that didn't just happen.
"He took the time to whiten the vocal cords before playing them," notes Brian, but Will corrects him: "It's not about whitening them. It was about increasing elasticity." Beverly's the one to point out that the cords were given the same treatment as catgut string--"Yes. I played the violin." Will: "This takes a steady hand. A confidence." Has the killer done this before? "No... not like this. This is a skilled musician trying a new instrument," he says, looking both painfully aware of his increasingly unhideable weirdness and in actual pain as well.
[Director/producer] @DAVID_A_SLADE: Hey @winston_graham your dad needs a medical checkup, take him NOW! and psst you are a girl.
@winston_graham: can't drive i'm a dog???!!!! also i'm having an identity crisis
@DAVID_A_SLADE: oh and psstt...don't trust the well dressed man.
@winston_graham: but he gives me delicious treats! i feel lied to
Speaking of whom: The Best Office Ever. BOE, you are looking exceptionally superlative today.
(Please note Chekhov's Letter Opener in the upper middle of the desk there.)
"Among the first musical instruments were flutes, carved from human bone," says Lecter (of course he would know this). "This murder was a performance," says Will. Not to be confused with the " theatricality" of the Chesapeake Ripper, mind you, although the Ripper does have some thoughts on the subject: "Every life is a piece of music. Like music, we are finite events, unique arrangements... sometimes harmonious, sometimes dissonant." "Sometimes not worth hearing again," Will says wryly. "He's a poet and a psychopath," says Lecter--somewhat admiringly? Will: "And a craftsman--he was shrinking and tanning the vocal chords." "Like turning iron wire into musical steel string. Was there olive oil?" You come for the therapy, you stay for the baroque historical trivia. "Whatever sound he was trying to produce, it was an authentic one. Olive oil hasn't been used in the production of catgut for over a century. It was said to increase the life of the strings and create a sweeter, more melodic sound."
"No, I hear what he was playing behind my eyes when I close them," says Will. (We heard four actual notes, but I don't think it was meant to be a recognizable piece of music?) "What do you see behind closed eyes?" asks Lecter. Will flashes back to Garrett Jacob Hobbs in the auditorium. Uneasily: "... I see myself." Then who was the killer performing for? "I don't know... patron of the arts? A fellow musician? Or... another killer?" "It's a serenade," Lecter realizes. Wait, isn't that kind of romantic? Turns out that, in the classical sense more likely in this context--it's "a musical composition and/or performance in someone's honor." Ohhhh. But Will thinks that "normally, he doesn't kill for an audience." "And you believe he risked getting caught for a serenade?" "I believe he wants to show someone how well he plays," says Will. And, judging by his expression, Lecter's got a pretty good idea of who and whom.
Indeed, at his next session, Franklyn leads off with, "Do you remember when I said Tobias was saying very dark things? Well, he said that he wanted to cut someone's throat and play it like a violin." In case you're not picking up what he's putting down, "They found somebody whose throat was cut, AND PLAYED LIKE A VIOLIN." So you think Tobias is the killer? "I DON'T KNOW!" says Franklyn, throwing up his hands. "If I do... do I have to report it?" "Do you have a reason not to?" "What if I'm wrong?" "What if you're right?" "I'm always wrong!" Heeee. I can't help it, you guys, I'm kind of starting to love Franklyn, or at least the actor who plays him. "I don't know. Why would he say something like that to me?" Then Franklyn realizes: " 'Cause he knows I'd tell you." DUNNNNN.
So Lecter goes straight to Chordophone Strings, holding the bell at the top of the door so he can listen to Tobias playing the violin in a back room. (It's interesting that they specifically set Tobias up to be a sophisticated, well-dressed, creatively murderous fellow music lover--in a way, they've created a mirror image for Lecter to accept or reject.) "You're Franklyn's therapist--Dr. Lecter," Tobias says, remembering him from that awkward as hell introduction at the opera. "Your strings are all gut," Lecter observes, walking around the shop. "I also carry steel and polymer strings, if you prefer," says Tobias, but Lecter replies, "I prefer gut." (This better be in the Supercut of Cannibal Puns, y'all.) "Harps strung with gut still make music after two thousand years," Lecter says, plucking at a cello on display. What Tobias was playing, "was it an original composition?" "Something I've been writing. You compose?" "I discover," says Lecter. "Can't impose traditional composition on an instrument that's inherently free-form." Which would be...? "The theremin. It can generate any pitch throughout its range--even those between conventional notes." You know, now that they mention it, I kind of remember this being a thing in the book Hannibal? As if Thomas Harris sat down and said, "What is the weirdest, eeriest instrument I could possibly think of?" SIR, YOU SUCCEEDED. "And so can a violin, or a trombone," says Tobias, not coincidentally, which leads into a (barely) coded conversation about how they are "comfortable playing between conventional notes" and it was just so terrible, the orchestra getting improved by murder like that. "At least the brass section," snarks Tobias. "What brings you here looking for gut?" "My harpsichord needs new strings." I was going to say, of course Hannibal Lecter has a fucking harpsichord, of course he does, but y'all, HE HAS A THEREMIN. I don't know why anything should surprise us at this point. "It's making an awful noise" (why, is it people?). "Perhaps you could help."
The Nobark Home for Mellow Chillaxing Strays. Will's working at his desk on a fishing fly--something so delicate that it must occupy your brain in a very relaxing fashion, I imagine. But then he looks up--there's scratching and digging and squeaking sounds coming from the general direction of the fireplace. Around which All the Dogs happen to be chilling in their beds, which they would not possibly be doing if anything were actually in there. (Over here, House of Bark freaks out when they hear something in someone else's chimney.) But Will climbs up to the mantelpiece anyway, and in his experience of reality, certainly, there's some really squirrelly chittering sounds in there.
Aaaand now here's a big hole in the wall over the fireplace. "What kind of animal was it?" asks Alana, who apparently dropped by on a whim. "It might've been a raccoon," says Will, hammer still in hand. "Might've been?" "Well, by the time I knocked a hole in the chimney, it had climbed out the top..." Yeah, it... sure, yeah. What's she doing here, anyway? "I thought I'd come over, make some noise, shoo away any predators at your door. It looks like you're making plenty of noise all by yourself." Will then changes the subject: "You've avoided being in a room alone with me essentially since I met you. You were smooth about it." "Evidently not smooth enough," she says, perhaps thinking of the three different people with whom she's discussed Not Being In A Room Alone With Will, including Will himself, because she liiii~iiiikes him. "And now you're making house calls?" Alana: "Just a drive-by on my way home." ( Well, her car is good for stalking.) "Since you're not my patient." "No. I'm not," says Will, and goes in for the kiss yaaaay!!
@HettiennePark: My Mom: Blah, blah, blah Me: Shhhhh!!!! They're making out!!! #HANNIBAL #DOITALREADY
@LaraJeanC: @HettiennePark @BryanFuller more make outs please.
Heh. Beverly and Miss Freddie ship it.
"I'm confused," whispers Alana, pulling away. ALANA! DO YOU NEED ME TO DRAW YOU A DIAGRAM!! "You have to stop thinking so much," says Will, not to mention thinking too much about thinking too much instead of thinking about kissing. "The way that I am in relationships-- not that this is a relationship--it's just a kiss," Alana ramble-flounders (flambles?), "... a great kiss... but I... the way that I am isn't compatible with the way that--" Will, bitterly: "The way I am." "I wouldn't be good for you--you wouldn't be good for me, and I wouldn't be able to stop analyzing, because I have this professional curiosity about you and--" Will, however, has an unprofessional curiosity about her tongue (moar kissings), but she pulls away again, albeit reluctantly. "I am not your patient," he insists. I mean, unless Alana wants to play doctor; I'm sure he'd be up for that. "If I were my patient," she says, "my advice to me would be: don't do this. I have to follow my own advice." Noooo, Alana, kissings require you. :( "Goodnight, Will." And Will is left to make sad puppy faces at the hole in the chimney.
Chez Lecter, where Tobias has been invited over for real talk and paella. (Well, the crab probably isn't people--oh, wait: SAUSAGE.)
@BryanFuller: #HANNIBAL is playing Mendelssohn's MIDSUMMER'S NIGHT'S DREAM - Intermezzo during his dinner with #TOBIASBUDGE
as the snow falls outside, which is kind of an interesting "summer in the middle of winter" theme the dessert picks up on as well. (Apparently the Intermezzo itself "expresses one’s crazed search for a bewitched lover"? Hm... that serenade.) Lecter, ever the locavore, leads off with a white wine, "a late harvest Vidal from Linden. The Virginia wine revolution is upon us." Wait, what? Tobias: "Oh, Virginia. I thought it was French." No, but it's probably people. "I apologize for being so blunt, Tobias, but I have to ask. Did you kill that trombonist?" A head tilt and a smile: "Do you really have to ask?" Tobias even confirms that all that "just kidding" talk was a message he intended Franklyn to repeat. "The murder is being investigated by the FBI," Lecter tells him. "They're going to find you." "Let them." Wait, he wants to get caught? "I want them to try. They may investigate me because I own a string shop. They'll send men to investigate, and I'll kill them. Then I'll find Franklyn and kill him. Then I would disappear." "Don't kill Franklyn," says Lecter--not like omg no, please don't kill him, but more like I CALLED DIBS Ugh, don't waste your time. "I've been looking forward to it. Actually," Tobias says, leaning in confidentially, "I was going to kill you." Lecter smiles: "Of course you were. I'm lean. Lean animals yield the toughest gut." (Hilarity aside, the previous episode seemed to imply that Tobias was super jealous because he was into Franklyn but Franklyn was, instead, staring at Lecter with stars in his eyes like Tobias wasn't even sitting right there, hello. Lecter, who was like OH MY GOD, TAKE HIM, YOU CAN HAVE HIM. I don't really know how to interpret Tobias there now.) "What stopped you from wanting to kill me? Or have you stopped?"
"I stopped after I followed you one night. Out of town. To a lonely road. To a bus yard." Ohhhh noooo. Remember Andrew Caldwell, Independent Medical Examiner, sitting beside himself on a school bus? Now you've got Lecter's attention. He points out that it is perhaps reckless of Tobias to play the I Know What You Did Last Episode card in the first hand, but Tobias replies, "I'm not going to tell anyone what I saw you do--and do well. I could use a friend. Someone who can understand me. Who thinks like I do and can see the world and the people in it the way I do." "I know exactly how you feel," says the Sad Cannibal. "But I don't want to be your friend." Well, then... why did you invite him over for dinner and not cook him? "It wasn't just to restring your harpsichord." "I was going to kill you," says Lecter, adding, "I didn't poison you, Tobias. I wouldn't do that to the food." 1) Seriously, the food has already suffered enough. 2) LOL HANNIBAL. Wait, who's that at the door?
"WELL I KISSED ALANA BLOOM," announces Will, barging in. Blessedly, Tobias has slipped out through the French doors into the snow. "You have a guest?" "A colleague. You just missed him. An urgent call of some sort. He had to leave suddenly. This benefits you," says Lecter, "because I have dessert for two." And so, no sooner than I said "I want to see more desserts" in last week's comments, we get--I don't even know what this is, what is this? Some kind of shortcake? You'd have to tell me what it is before I can tell you how it's probably people. (Short people?) Wait, no! It's bread pudding! With pomegranate-mango sauce and tropical fruit, because fancy cannibal is fancy. (Ah, suet, you say? Pudding is people.)
Okay, Will, dish. "She said she wouldn't be good for me, and I wouldn't be good for her." "I don't disagree," says Lecter. "She would feel an obligation to her field of study to observe you, and you would resent her for it." "I know!" says Will, which leaves Lecter "wondering, then, why you kissed her, and felt compelled to drive an hour in the snow to tell me about it." Well, when you have a woman in common, you want to share everything, I guess. "I wanted to kiss her since I met her--she's very kissable," says Will. Jellus yet? Actually... kind of not? Lecter merely points out that Will waited a long time (apparently forgetting that making a move would require Will to socialize), "which suggests you were kissing her for a reason, in addition to wanting to." Yeah... Will admits broke through the wall because he heard something in the chimney: "Alana showed up, she looked at me... I... maybe her face changed. I don't know. But... she knew." "What did she know, Will?" "There was no animal in the chimney. It was only... in my head." (As akathorne dubbed them: the brain raccoons.) "I sleepwalk... I get headaches. I am... hearing things," says Will, and then he whispers pitifully, "I feel unstable." Ahhhh: "That's why you kissed her. A clutch for balance. You said yourself what you do is not good for you." Will: "Well, unfortunately, I am good for it." "Are you still hearing this killer's serenade behind your eyes?" A wry laugh: "Well, it's our song." Now Lecter looks a little concerned. Almost like, "But... we don't have a song. :( " After a moment's thought--perhaps remembering how nice it was to be the Best at Helping last episode?--Lecter says, "I hesitate telling you this, as it borders on a violation of doctor-patient confidentiality... a patient told me today he suspects a friend of his may be involved with the murder at the symphony." Will rubs his eyes, looking more overwhelmed than, you know, glad his case is going somewhere, as Lecter goes on to suggest, "Perhaps you should interview him."
OKAY, STOP. I HAVE QUESTIONS. NAMELY what are you doing?! I can't tell what Lecter's primary impulse here is--get rid of Tobias by sending Will after him, or get rid of Will (JELLUS) by sending him to Tobias? Because, while I know he can't really tell Will everything, if he really wanted to get rid of Tobias for sure, he would just tell Will that Franklyn said Tobias was super incredible dangerous and also Will should probably be prepared to shoot the fuck out of him, since Will is so good at that. Perhaps you should interview him. No big. It'll be fine *shrug* suggests that he wants Will to be unprepared for shit getting real. And yet... he seems surprisingly chill about the whole Alana thing? But then Lecter always seems able to produce "appropriate" emotional reactions, like sympathy or regret, even when we know he did it and he'd do it again. Who even knows.
Of course, there's a third possibility, courtesy of Dr. Bedelia. "For the first time in a long while, I see the possibility of friendship," he tells her at his next therapy session. "I met a man... much like myself. Same hobbies, same worldviews... but I'm not interested in being his friend. I'm curious about him, and that got me curious about friendship." God, he really does talk like some alien creature in a person suit. This thing you huu-mans call "friendship," is it quality? "Whose friendship are you considering?" she asks. Lecter replies, "Oddly enough, a colleague and a patient, not unlike how I'm a colleague and a patient of yours." Ah, Will Graham, she says--they've talked about him before. "He's nothing like me," says Lecter. "We see the world in different ways, yet he can assume my point of view." "By profiling the criminally insane," Bedelia says with a dry (knowing?) smile. "As good a demonstration as any. I find it reassuring," says Lecter, perhaps thinking of that time he said Will was " the mongoose I want under the house when the snakes slither by." At the time, it was sort of like, wait, what are you worried about? That... was before Tobias. "It's nice when someone sees us, Hannibal," she says. "Or has the ability to see us." (And of course, Will is going to see him someday. See?) "It requires trust. Trust is difficult for you." Lecter: "You've helped me to better understand what I want in a friendship... and what I don't." "Someone worthy of your friendship," Bedelia says: "You spend a lot of time building walls, Hannibal. It's natural to want to see if someone is... clever enough to climb over them." He seems struck by the idea, which--I'm sorry, that just really sounds like a Takes One to Know One kind of insight right there. I think she knows--she knows something, she is something. And also, she's given us the third idea--that Lecter wants to send Will into a trap not to get rid of him, but in hopes that he's good enough to get out of it.
At Chordophone Strings, Will (who at least had the good sense to bring two uniformed officers with him) arrives just as Tobias is showing out the student we saw before. "We're investigating the death of Douglas Wilson. He was--" "The trombonist," says Tobias, who openly admits that he was aware of a fellow musician in a small town like Baltimore (Baltimore is a small town?). "I hear someone cut his throat and tried to play it with a bow," he adds, a little too avidly. Man, you really are trying to get something started here, aren't you? "Why do you say try?" Will asks warily. Well, "the strings have to be treated. You can't just open somebody up and draw a bow across their innards and expect to produce a sound." GOOD GOD, TOBIAS. Will snarls, "The vocal chords were chemically treated, similar to how catgut string is treated. WE KEPT THOSE DETAILS OUT OF THE PRESS," lurching through the shop somewhere between AND THUS YOU GIVE YOURSELF AWAY!! and MY BRAIN IS EXPLODING. But Tobias denies that he manufactures catgut strings at all: "Mine are imported from Italy. The best catgut is," says Tobias, handing Will a hooped bundle of them. "More authentic?" retorts Will. Yes, says Tobias: "A richer, darker sound. Allows music to say what words can't." But suddenly Will hears "(tires screeching) (crash) (shrieking and moaning) (car horn honking)"--like a car hitting a whimpering animal. DOG RESCUE IMPULSE ACTIVATE! And as Will tears outside, Tobias gives some long pointy thing--@MartianBethany says it's an endpin?--an enterprising look.
Out in the street, Will can still hear "(animal moaning) (animal shrieking) (animal shrieking)" but there's nothing out of the ordinary to be seen, except for the ambulance that nearly hits him. He slams down another handful of aspirin before going back inside: "Sorry about that," he says... to an empty shop. Ohhhh shit. "Officers...?" he calls, reaching for his gun. (Dude, how did Tobias take both of them down in an actual minute with no noise? He really is a match for Lecter.) And you know, all of Will's symptoms sound a lot like a brain tumor. Believe me, my grandmother had one (she's fine now), and the only difference was that she hallucinated ghosts and intruders and cheating neighbors and... raccoons in the basement, actually (and then I heard the ghosts myself. But that's a story for another time) and empathed a lot fewer murders. However, whatever's going on with Will seems more purposeful than a tumor, as the brain raccoons stepped in at just the right moment to save his ass. So I'm not sure if a real-world medical condition is being foreshadowed here or a unique fictional one. Like, I'm kind of starting to imagine them as little Disney sidekicks romping around tunefully inside his head? Whatever it is, it apparently impairs Will's judgment to the point where he thinks he needs to go pointing his gun AROUND THE EMPTY HOUSE BY HIMSELF WITHOUT CALLING FOR BACKUP. The first thing he finds is one of the cops lying in a pool of blood with the endpin through his neck, and this guy's the lucky one. Okay, at least now Will calls in, as quietly as he can: "I need ERT at Chordophone Strings, downtown Baltimore. Officer down--" And then he hears noises deeper in the house and decides that THIS IS THE APPROPRIATE CHOICE FOR THIS MOMENT IN LIFE:
WILL
OMG WILL
TRUST ME THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO FOR OFFICER GUY
HE'S IN A HELL BASEMENT NOW
GET OUT OF THE HOUSE
GET OUT OF THE HOUUUUSE
Gahhhh, is it just part of the building code that basements have to be bone-marrow terrifying? Oh, look, there's dank stone dungeon walls and nice jars of full of creepy things and creepy things are preserved intestines and there's a table full of freaky tools and washed intestines hanging out to dry like ropes and dripping sounds behind an operating room screen and GET OUT GET OUT GET OUUUUUT the other officer is face down in a tank of something with bloody cello strings garroted around his face THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO FOR THIS GUY, WILL, TOBIAS IS BEHIND YOU TOBIAS IS BEHIND YOU
@BryanFuller: We talked a lot about John Lithgow and #BLOWOUT when referring to #TOBIASBUDGE's weapon of choice. #HANNIBAL pic.twitter.com/RG6b3NIhJX
Fortunately, Will has His Hands at the Level of His Eyes and is able to prevent the Phantom of the Orchestra from choking his face off--he even manages to fire a surprisingly well-aimed shot back over his shoulder. Unfortunately, the gunshot blast temporarily deafens Will with an awful whining shriek on the soundtrack, and while he manages to stagger after the fleeing Tobias, he is only able to attempt to shoot the fuck out of him.
Over at The Best Office Ever, "Nine. Nine times," says Franklyn, holding up as many fingers. "I can count on two hands the number of times I've been dumped by a psychiatrist." "I'm sorry, Franklyn, but I think you should see another doctor." "You're giving me a referral? YOU WERE A REFERRAL!!" "I am also a part of the problem," says Lecter (Franklyn, listen to the man, or you gonna get et). "You focus too much on your therapist, and not enough on your therapy." "You lost respect for me because I wouldn't report Tobias, didn't you?" Honey, that's the least of your--
"Report Tobias for what?" Aw, shit, y'all. "I came to say goodbye, Franklyn," says Tobias, surprisingly calm for a guy with half his ear blown off and blood running down his neck. Like, a neat round bullet hole and everything. "I just killed two men. The police came to question me about the murder," he announces, to which Lecter, fearing for Will's life, reacts vehemently (a blink and a wince). "Okay... you have to give yourself up right now," Franklyn starts yammering in a panic. "This plane is going down. Let it have a controlled descent. We can get you back up in the air again. There's rehabilitation for everyone." God bless, Franklyn, but what the fuck are you talking about? Lecter, who is quietly sidling around behind him: "Franklyn, I want you to leave now--" "STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE, FRANKLYN." And I'm thinking, the way Tobias has his coat folded so stiffly over his arm, he's probably hiding a gun that he's going to suddenly shoot Franklyn with, so I am sitting there waiting for this to happen through all of Franklyn's naive, heroic, clueless speech: "You've done a horrible thing, and... I know... that you wish to God that you didn't. But you did. And there's nothing you can do to change that. Only thing you can change is your future. Right? You're probably scared. You probably feel like you're all alone." "I'm not alone," says Tobias, shooting Lecter a Significant Look. "That's right," Franklyn says eagerly, "you're not alone. Nothing has happened in our relationship that you and I can't--" And then Lecter steps forward and snaps Franklyn's head around like a bottle cap. YOU! YOU KILLED FRANKLYN! YOU JUST DID THAT! WHAT WAS THAT?!?
(Well, his therapy was going nowhere, I guess.)
"I was looking forward to that," Tobias says.
"I saved you the trouble," says Lecter.
You know, I was pissed when NBC revealed that there would be a fight (AND UH THAT TOBIAS WAS A SERIAL KILLER WHO WANTED TO KILL LECTER) in last week's previews, because I love a good surprise, and can you imagine how awesome it would have been to not see this coming at all? I understand now why they did that: because there is more than enough ass-kicking surprise left to go around. You wouldn't think that a cello teacher and a psychiatrist would absolutely wreck some shit, but you would be wrong. Tobias starts off whirling his cello string like a bola or what the hell and snapping it like a whip and even Lecter's like what the fuck is this and gets kicked in (appropriately enough) the gut and shoves the Cannibal Library Paradise ladder at him and then Tobias garrotes Lecter's fancy patterned shirt cuff AND NOW YOU DONE IT and there is shoving and punching and Lecter BREAKS A GLASS TABLE OVER TOBIAS' HEAD (NO! YOU GUYS! STOP! DON'T HURT THE OFFICE!) and apparently the bone arena of one's skull is also good for head-butting? WHAT IS EVEN GOING ON and then Lecter throws Tobias against his desk and just STRAIGHT-UP FLYING-SQUIRREL TACKLES HIM but Tobias has grabbed Chekhov's Letter Opener and there is wrestling and tiny office dagger swashing and finally he stabs Lecter OH! right in the ham leg but I guess the pen is mightier than the letter opener because Lecter fends him off by stabbing in him the arm with one and y'all they are STILL face-punching and kick-wrestling each other around the office. I am serious, this scene lasts a full actual two minutes and either these two actors are really, really good at stage fighting, or they are beating the ABSOLUTE FUCK out of each other. And you know who I'm rooting for? Let's be entirely clear about this: Hannibal Lecter is the absolute worst. BUT HE IS OUR ABSOLUTE WORST, GODDAMMIT. GET TOBIAS! GET HIM!!!
@BryanFuller: MADS MIKKELSEN REHEARSES THE FIGHT #HANNIBAL pic.twitter.com/YyqCXafDxH
(You're welcome.)
For a moment it looks like Lecter is on the ropes, as it were, when Tobias throws him back against the ladder, but he finally catches Tobias' arm through the rungs and BREAKS IT ALL THE WAY BACK, DAMN, and bless Tobias' heart, he is still trying to fling his arm in a fightwards direction when Lecter finally just punches him in the throat. I adore that he then pulls out his silk handkerchief to pick up the (incredibly heavy) Dire Ravenstag statue, I guess not wanting to get symbolism all over his hands or something, and when he's done, carefully tips over the stand and folds the handkerchief back up into his pocket. Because: FINISHING MOVE: STAGNATION.
@DireRavenstag: Good. That statue was a poor representation of my magnificence anyway.
(So now do we have our first onscreen cannibal fatality? I'm ever so slightly disappointed it didn't involve chewing someone's face off, just on general principle, but the Investigators Three probably would have noticed that. The sheer quantity of beatdown makes up for it.)
And as he staggers through the wreckage of his office,
@BryanFuller: #HANNIBAL plays Bach Goldberg Variations - the Aria Movement on his harpsichord
or plinks out the opening notes, anyway, since it's not only his personal musical motif but also possibly a final fuck you grace note aimed at the String Maker, I don't know.
Sometime later, a stern Crawford arrives to take charge of the scene, and I swear to you, Lecter anxiously watches the doorway until Will finally walks through as well, then makes an audible little gasp of relief. (Meanwhile, Will is staring at the carnage with a what the haaaale expression.) "I was worried you were dead," says Lecter, because this thing the huu-mans call friendship really is quality. AWWW, YOU GUYS. C'mon, hug it out. Crawford, on the other hand, is... perturbed. "Tobias Budge killed two Baltimore Police officers... nearly killed an FBI special agent... and after all of that... his first stop is here, at your office." Look, Tobias just magically knew that Franklyn, to whom he described a uniquely creative murder before he committed it, would be in session with Lecter at the same time Tobias was forced to launch Project Kill Everyone. What could possibly sound sketchy about that, Crawford?
"Your patient... is that who Budge was serenading?" asks Will. "I don't know," Lecter LIES LIKE A LYING LIAR. "Franklyn knew more than he was telling me... he told Mr. Budge that he didn't have to kill anymore. And then he broke Franklyn's neck, and then... he attacked me." Crawford: "You killed him?" "You're damn straight I fucking tenderized him Yes," whispers Lecter. Could Franklyn have been helping Tobias? Lecter replies with seeming ruefulness, "I thought this was a simple matter of poor choice in friends." "This doesn't feel simple to me," Crawford says grimly.
Will sits down on the desk and sighs while Lecter continues nursing his leg wound. "I feel like I've... dragged you into my world," he says, because he doesn't knoooow, you guys. "I got here on my own," says Lecter. "But I appreciate the company." They smile at each other. And then, somewhere, a hurt/comfort fic breaks out.
Maison Du Maurier. It turns out that Lecter has taken a few days off from work (I'm sure just getting the office patched up took a while), but he's returning now. "It's strange, thinking about going back to daily practice," he says. "Patients will sit where Franklyn died. I will sit where I almost died, and I will offer therapy." Y'all, I kind of think he's more disturbed that this happened in his sanctum--not that it happened per se, because God knows he's wanted to twist Franklyn's head off since always. "It's easy to understand why you retired after you were attacked. Will you ever feel comfortable returning to psychiatric work?" "This is psychiatric work," says Bedelia, a bit archly. Lecter: "One patient isn't a practice." He leans in: "I can't help feeling responsible for what happened to Franklyn." Okay, I think we all have to call absolute bullshit on this. He sounds pretty sincere, because he's really good at that, but I can't figure out if he's just like, "That's a thing the real-person human-people say, right?" or if he's saying "Franklyn" because he can't say "Will." For whatever reason he did send Will after Tobias--does he now feel guilty that he nearly got his only friend killed?
"Every person has an intrinsic responsibility for their own life, Hannibal. No one else can take on that responsibility. Not even you," she tells him. And it's true, really, that it's Will's job to catch a guy like Tobias, and turning in Tobias was the right thing for Lecter to do, although maybe he could have told Will a bit more than "Go talk to him," damn. "Did you take responsibility when you were attacked by your patient?" he asks. "Yes," she says. "But I don't take responsibility for his death." Y'all, Bedelia totally killed this guy. ( Remember the 1945 Bedelia? I am convinced this is relevant.) Lecter replies, "Nor should you," and the episode ends on a Significant Expression. As a few of y'all suggested on Twitter... maybe she shouldn't feel responsible because her ~protective patient~ killed him. Hell, maybe she knows he did. Maybe they both know whatever either one of them did--and that's why she couldn't refuse to keep him on as a patient? Either way, I am calling Shenanigans, Exact Nature To Be Determined.
@MrAaronAbrams: Thanks everyone for watching and forgoing any good sleeps you might have enjoyed this eve. Night terrors are more exciting anyway.
@HettiennePark: My Mom - final thought: Everybody Crazy.
...
@BryanFuller: Yes. RT @leia_hall: In Aperitif, when Hannibal mentions his secretary leaving for the UK, is that a euphemism for "I had her for dinner?"
WE KNEW IT.
NEXT WEEK: Son, you got the brain raccoons.
(Continue: 1x09: "Trou Normand")