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Dark visions. Night sweats. Lurid dreams. Bloodied victims rising in the air on invisible wires. Welcome to the world of visionary-verging-on-nut job criminal profiler and ersatz FBI agent William Graham, as played by the adorable Hugh Dancy. Graham is brought out of pseudo retirement as a professor at the behest of Laurence Fishburne’s FBI agent and behavioral scientist, Jack Crawford. Graham’s help is needed to help track a particularly janked-up serial killer who is murdering a string of similar looking young women in uniquely horrifying ways. (Antlers? Antlers!)
We join the investigation when the murderer -- who strikes the savant Graham as “merciful” in his sociopathy -- kills a young woman and then returns her to her bedroom at her parents’ house. While Graham is called in to advise the FBI as an expert, he is stumped by the killer’s moves and motives. Additional help is needed in the form of Dr. Hannibal Lecter (played by the always creepy Mads Mikkelsen). Crawford recruits Lecter against Graham’s wishes, because while Graham thinks he has it all under control, Crawford wants all hands on deck. Plus, since this show is a prequel to the Thomas Harris books on which Silence of the Lambs is based, no one knows yet that Lecter is both a cannibal and a killer in his own right.
At another barf-inducing crime scene, Graham, who has the sixth sense that all TV profilers have, diagnoses the mysterious killer as an intelligent psychopath who probably has a daughter who looks like the victims. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Lecter is cooking up someone’s or something’s lungs.
At Crawford’s behest they team up (breakfast meeting, natch) and head out like a creeptastic Scooby Gang to find the killer and hopefully prevent another murder. They soon stumble on a likely candidate who is, in fact, the right guy. This is proven when Graham and Lecter show up at his house and he brutally attacks his family in front of them. While Lecter, the still-closeted sociopath, remains cool and calm, Graham hyperventilates, is quickly finds himself covered in blood and shooting to kill. At the end of the show, Lecter and Graham sit in the victim’s hospital room, clearly a team.
Come back tomorrow for the full recap of Hannibal
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!William Graham (Hugh Dancy) stands staring. He doesn't blink but just stands there silently communing with the scene before bursting into a house and narrating his actions as he brutally murders some white guy who has the bad luck to walk down the stairs. There's blood spatter and then Graham notices a woman panicking in the corner trying to hit the alarm. He shoots her in the neck. It's gruesome to watch, but Graham isn't a killer -- he's an FBI profiler with the usual battery of gifts that FBI profilers have in such shows. If this was, say, Psych the camera would zoom in on each item that captures the über-detective's attention. But this isn't Psych; it's a prequel to the first three Hannibal Lecter novels (and a sequel of sorts to the fourth, Hannibal Rising) and it's slick and bloody, so instead we get a first-person shooter sequence as Graham goes inside the murderer's head. Kinda makes you long for Sean and Gus.
Graham quickly assesses the scene and makes a few prescient observations and insane leaps of logic, like obviously the killer tapped his victims' phone and got their alarm code, but he's obviously right about everything. Which is why he uses the case study in his class, which I assume is Gross Out 101? Graham is a professor, so when special agent Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne), head of the FBI's Behavioral Science Division, wants to track him down he heads to his class. In the first minute of their meeting, Crawford flat out asks the savant where he falls on the autism spectrum, which sounds like a lousy pick up line that we should all go try immediately. Graham, being "closer to Asperger's than autistic" doesn't seem to mind the question though and is willing to listen when Crawford pitches him on advising the FBI on a series of abductions that they are convinced are murders, except that they don't have any bodies. Yet! Something to look forward to, right? The killer has already taken seven women (he calls them "girls" but whatever) who are all of the same height and weight and general look. He has just taken another and the FBI needs Graham's help.
Crawford and Graham head to the latest victim's house and Graham quickly realizes that the girl is already dead and the killer has replaced her body in her childhood bedroom. Graham stands over the body and reenacts the murder in his head before understanding that the killer was trying to apologize or may have felt bad about what he did. Then -- before we go too far down the path of thinking Graham is all creeper and no charm -- we get to see him rescue a dog and bring him home to his large menagerie of pups. He likes puppies, so he can't be all bad... right show? The murders also haunt Graham, causing night sweats and nightmares, so while he can clearly get into the killer's head, the killer can get into his too.
Later, Crawford confronts Graham about the murderer, convinced that Graham is holding something back about the killer, but Graham isn't sure what he knows yet. He's never seen a sociopath like this and isn't even certain that he is a sociopath. Graham thinks he loves the girls he takes and tries to show them some janked up kind of mercy. Elsewhere, the FBI's CSI stand-in finds a tiny metal shard on the dead woman's nightgown. Elsewhere again, Crawford is questioning one of Graham's coworkers who is pseudo-spying on him for the FBI. She considers Graham a friend and wants to keep an eye on him, but also wants to make sure he stays safe and that working with the FBI doesn't drive him too far over the edge. Cut to an autopsy room where Graham makes several barf-inducing realizations: The killer hung the dead woman on a pair of antlers and the killer is eating his victims' organs. The killer returned the last girl because she was defective for his purposes meaning she had liver cancer.
At the mention of eating organs, noted gourmand Hannibal Lecter appears on screen. He's played by Mads Mikkelsen who I only know as the one-eyed mute from the film Valhalla Rising which IFC plays all the damn time. Anyway, he's suitably creepy to play Lecter and/or the boogeyman under any kid's bed. Crawford conscripts him to the FBI's team on the strength of a paper Lecter wrote, which we can assume was called The Joys of Cannibalism. Graham is insulted by the new addition to the team, especially because it seems that Crawford has brought Lecter in to psychoanalyze Graham. Of course, Lecter is more interested in sinking his teeth into the cannibal case (see what I did there? Yeah, sorry.) He volunteers to help and when a new body shows up naked and impaled on some deer antlers in a field, it's clear that the killer is escalating and they are going to need all the help they can get... even if it's from the über-creepy Lecter. As Graham studies the body he quickly decides that this is the work of a sophisticated psychopathic copycat who will probably never kill that way again. As Graham denounces the sloppy staged sadistic crime scene, it's heavily implied that Lecter was the killer as we see him cooking up what looks like a human liver and savoring the meal. Hey show: Gross. Graham suggests letting Lecter draw up a profile of the copycat killer, but he has an idea about their serial killer. Namely, that the killer has a daughter who looks like the victims and is about to leave home and the killer can't handle impending empty nest syndrome.
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The day Crawford is called away and Lecter and Graham are left to their own devices to investigate the case. Also, Lecter cooks Graham breakfast so can we get an EWWWW? On the strength of the metal shard and the "specific type of pipe, specific type of pipe coating," the dynamic duo head to a construction site that used that type of pipe. It's a wild goose chase, but it's also the only clue they have, so they are going with it. Graham uses his magical abilities to pick out the employment records of a Garrett Jacob Hobbes who worked as a pipe threader on the site. Since he left no address and only a phone number, he's naturally a suspect. While Graham is distracted outside, Lecter calls Hobbes and anonymously warns him that, "They know." Must be some kind of psychopathic bro code.
Graham and Lecter pull up at Hobbes' house just as Hobbes' slits his wife's throat and shoves her out on the porch. Graham rushes to help the woman, but when he realizes it is too late he draws his weapon and rushes into the house covered in blood. Hobbes stands in the kitchen with a giant knife at his daughter's throat. When Graham aims, Hobbes slits her throat too. Graham shoots him and then rushes to the daughter's aid. Before Hobbes expires he hisses at Graham, "Is he here?" Which obviously Graham doesn't understand. Lecter arrives just as Hobbes dies and after surveying the scene, seems to make the calculated decision to help save the daughter's life. She survives thanks to his intervention.
Later, Crawford goes to check on Graham at his university, but he's not there. Instead he is at the hospital watching over the daughter as she sleeps. He's surprised to see that Lecter beat him there, sleeping in the chair to the victim's bed, and is almost tenderly holding the young woman's hand.
Come back week, because I have no idea what the heck this show is going to do, but it's slick and fabulous and more than little gross.
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