Episode Report Card LuluBates: A | 6 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Just Like Santa Claus
By LuluBates | Season 1 | Episode 4 | Aired on 04.25.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.A killer is on the loose. Again! This one, though, is extra gross with his desire to flail his victims and turn them into angels who can watch over him. Obviously the FBI is on the case, because the local police took one look at the staged Nativity-like crime scene and barfed on their shoes. Like decent folk. Luckily the FBI has no such compunction. They show up and start poking around the crime scene, poking at the killer's puke (which he helpfully left on the clock radio) and profiling the murderer. Unfortunately, our hero Will Graham is a bit off his game as he has been sleepwalking and getting headaches. Luckily he has Dr. Hannibal Lecter to help him get to the root of the issues. Lecter blames Jack Crawford for taking advantage of Will, but Will isn't convinced and thinks that Lecter is trying to drive a wedge between the two old friends. He's probably right.
Speaking of Crawford, he’s having a bad week. Turns out his wife, Bella (played by Firefly's Gina Torres), is seeing someone …a therapist! She starts going to Lecter, because of his amiable professional manner? Who knows why she chose Lecter, but she needs to talk to someone who is not her husband, because she has terminal cancer and wants to prepare for death without ever telling her husband. However, because everyone on this show is prescient, Jack eventually realizes that his wife has cancer and they talk about their feelings.
Speaking of cancer, the FBI realizes that the killer has a brain tumor, which is making him loco. He is scared of death ant that’s why he is creating his own guardian angels to watch over him. Another victim turns up and at the crime scene they find the unexpected present of the killer’s man bits. Will deduces that this precious gift means the killer is turning himself into an angel and preparing for death. The FBI quickly figures out that the killer's angels are far from angels and, in fact, are felons. Somehow the killer is able to discern who is naughty and who is nice and is choosing his victims based on what he believes is God's will. The FBI starts putting the pieces together and pinpoints the killer. They talk to the suspect's wife who tells Will and Jack about a childhood farm. Sure enough the killer is there, but he's managed to string himself up and is dead before the FBI can catch him.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!William Graham is having a bad dream. Well, one can only assume it's a dream although on this show, who knows. Anyway, he is walking down a road in his underwear with an elk breathing down his neck. He is woken up by cops who are trying to figure out if he is a sleepwalker or in a drug-fueled fugue. Both, maybe? They take the groggy and confused William home and he slaps on some pants and heads straight to Hannibal Lecter for a debriefing on his sleepwalking episode. He apologizes for the early hour, but Hannibal assures him that while office hours are for patients, his kitchen is always open for friends. Luckily, William only wants coffee right now, so we don't have to sit through another gratuitous is-it-or-isn't-it scene of meat eating. Lecter doesn't think that Will has spontaneously started sleepwalking, but rather is suffering from PTSD from being back in the field too soon after shooting Garret Jacob Hobbes dead. Then they talk about Jack Crawford. Lecter thinks it's all Jack Crawford's fault. Will, however, isn't buying it. Jack is his friend. Lecter goes full Alfred E. Neuman with a "What, Me Worry?" face.
Meanwhile some creepy white dude in a motel is envisioning a nice couple with flaming heads and starts filling a bucket of ice. Yep, it's their next case. Jack and Will show up on the scene and Jack warns him that he needs to brace himself for this one because it's extra gross. Will walks in the room and gulps. The killer has set up the nice Mr. and Mrs. as angels with the skin from their back splayed as wings. Jack may not barf, but I will. Will thinks the guy was transforming or elevating the victims by making them into extras from the "Bodies" exhibition. When the CSI chick realizes that the killer slept on the bed to with his angels watching over him, Will decides to give it a whirl, too. It goes about as well as you would think.
While viewers may have lost their appetites, Jack has not. He and his wife, Bella (played by Firefly's Gina Torres a.k.a. Mrs. Laurence Fishburne) are dining at Lecter's house when she balks at eating foie gras, not because it's gross, but because it's unethical. Hannibal assures her that he employs an ethical butcher, because he is opposed to animal cruelty. Isn't that nice? PETA would be so proud to have Lecter on their team, I'm sure.
Over at the lab, Will divines that the killer is afraid of dying in his sleep and is making angels to watch over him. The clue as to what he is afraid from lies in the barf the killer left on the nightstand like the world's worst turndown service. The drugs present in the puke indicate that the guy has a brain tumor. That's why he's afraid and that's why he needs angels to watch over him in his sleep.