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Jack Crawford (Lawrence Fishburne) and FBI agent William Graham (still Hugh Dancy) are still on the Garrett Jacob Hobbes' case, even though he's super dead. So they drive up to the Chippewa National Forest to Hobbes' creeptastic antler-filled cabin, where Graham uses his spidey sense to find a human hair hidden in the antlers. Clearly, this does not mean that Hobbes is a poor housekeeper, but instead that Hobbes either had an accomplice or there is a copycat killer out there that they must stop.
Crawford wants Graham to get therapy from Lecter, which with our knowledge of Lecter is pretty insulting. Graham tells Lecter that Crawford thinks Hobbes' daughter helped him kill those girls. Lecter thinks it is possible.
Young boys going on a "Stand By Me" sort of hike through the woods find a little mushroom garden, with a lot of human hands sticking out of the ground. The bodies (nine of them) are dug out and it's not pretty – decaying bodies with lots of mushrooms growing out of them. Surely Lecter is already writing out recipe cards. It's the work of the copycat.
Graham hallucinates that Hobbes is lying in one of those graves and he decides to tell Lecter. Lecter psychoanalyzes Graham and they discuss copycat theories. They are being listened to outside Lecter's office by Miss Kimmel, who we just saw was a bystander to the mushroom garden, and who has just set up an appointment with Lecter as a possible therapist for her. Lecter easily figures out she is a "tabloid journalist."
Meanwhile Graham and his team think the new copycat killer might be a doctor of sorts because of how the mushroom victims died. They might be right as the scene is a girl picking up her prescription and a creeper pharmacist asking her, "Is that your correct address?" Then, he switches her prescription on her. The pieces are all put together quickly and SWAT team circles the pharmacy, but the pharmacist escapes thanks to a blog post by the pesky tabloid journalist. (Damn you bloggers!) When they break into his car there is a girl covered in dirt in the trunk, but luckily she is alive and really in need of a bath. The pharmacist is still MIA, but they know his name, address and make and model of his car.
The journalist knows too much information not to have inside information about the case. While talking to the detective who is giving her all the gory details, the pharmacist sneaks up and shoots the cop, covering the journalist in blood spatter. Without even letting her have a bath, he demands information about Graham. The journalist alerts Crawford that the pharmacist is looking for Graham and that he wants to help Graham "connect with Abigail Hobbes" (who is still in the hospital after her serial killer dad Ginzu'd her last episode). How is he going to help? By burying her. Graham rushes to Abigail's hospital room, but it's too late. She is gone. Luckily Graham is still armed and shoots the pharmacist before he can escape the hospital. Graham goes back to Lecter for a little more therapy.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!William Graham is a lousy shot. Except in his very active imagination when he's shooting the zombified version of last week's model of serial killer, Garret Jacob Hobbes. Despite the fact that Hobbes' case is closed, what with him being dead and all, but Jack Crawford brings Graham to Hobbes' cabin so he can analyze the space and learn from it for the case they get where some guy is propping up dead girls on deer antlers after eating their organs. The attic in the cabin is filled with antlers. Antlers and one solitary hair, which, of course, Graham immediately spots. Elsewhere a blogger puts the finishing touches on a story about Hobbes, complete with exclusive photos of Hobbes' antlered lair. Also the blogger is naked, because why not. Who doesn't prefer to blog naked? Heck I'm naked right now*. (* I am lying.)
Crawford wants Graham to get therapy from Lecter, which, with our knowledge of Future Lecter is pretty insulting actually. Crawford and the woman who is Graham's friend ...ugh, BRB, looking up her name on IMDB, since they never say it. Okay, her name is Dr. Alana Bloom and she is simultaneously Graham's friend and Crawford's ersatz spy. Bloom points out that Graham just killed someone and maybe he should get some therapy to talk about his feelings. Graham relents, because if he didn't this show would be pretty strange. So Graham goes to see Lecter, who simply rubber stamps Graham's forms so he can go back to working in the field. Their therapy session is definitely no Tony Soprano and Dr. Melfi relationship. Instead Graham studies Lecter's bookcase (no copies of How to Serve Man?) on one level, while Lecter offers opinions from another level. Graham tells Lecter that Crawford thinks Hobbes' daughter helped him kill those girls. Lecter thinks it is possible, even though it makes Graham feel funny in his tummy.
A group of young boys are hiking through the woods instead of watching television like decent folk. Deep in the forest (which looks just like the set of Grimm) they find a little mushroom garden and - proving that they are not botanists - a plant that they think is marijuana, but is actually a human hand. In fact there are a lot of human hands sticking out of the ground with what look like IV tubes. It's basically a scene out of Motel Hell, but less funny. Crawford conscripts Graham for the case, because when someone is burying people alive (nine of them), sticking them in shallow graves and giving them air and food to keep them alive, it is a special kind of psycho that needs Graham's special skill set. Once the decaying bodies are pulled out, Graham studies the dead. And then one grabs him. Yep, one was somehow still alive. Instead of celebrating the miracle, Graham is morose (or more morose than usual) because he was once again envisioning Hobbes, a fact that sends him right back to Lecter. He isn't sure he's ready to be back in the field.
Meanwhile, the naked blogger put on clothes in order to crash the crime scene. She grills a local cop about Graham and then follows him to Lecter's. She records their conversation before pretending to be a patient. Lecter, of course, immediately smells the stink of a blogger upon her and she buckles under the pressure and confesses.
The FBI team have figured out that the victims all died of kidney failure brought on by diabetes. The killer is inducing diabetic comas in his victims by switching their medications and using their sweetened blood to feed him mushrooms. Graham deduces he must be a doctor or a pharmacist. Cut to a pharmacist filling a prescription for a diabetic woman. The FBI tracks him down quickly because he keeps kidnapping people from his workplace. Unfortunately the pharmacist escapes leaving a mostly dead girl covered in dirt in the trunk of his car. She is alive and well and really in need of a bath, but luckily not a mushroom farm yet. The FBI consoles themselves with the fact that while the pharmacist is still MIA, they know his name, address and have his car.
Inside the pharmacy the FBI finds a new reason to console themselves: turns out that the pharmacist/fungus farmer happened across the blogger's website and discovered that the FBI was on to him and his agricultural project. The blogger's article focuses on Graham and claims that the FBI is using one psycho to track another. Graham looks stung. I guess he doesn't read the comments on the internet very often. Crawford realizes that the only way the journalist knew so much about the case was if she had an informant inside the FBI. He goes to pay her a visit and while manacled to the bed she claims that she gleaned her facts from the local PD. Crawford doesn't seem to believe it, but can't prove otherwise. He can prove, though, that the reporter broke into Hobbes' cabin in the woods. He plucks a hair from her head and promises to arrest her for obstruction of justice for contaminating his crime scene if she doesn't lay off reporting about the case and especially Graham. She agrees, because she has to. After Crawford leaves the room, the FBI's CSI coroner guy leans over to cut the blogger's plastic handcuffs off and whispers, "You used me!" Of course she did you, chucklehead.
Graham is sleeping in the still-unconscious Abigail Hobbes' hospital room, but he is woken by Dr. Bloom, who is reading to Abigail. She wants to talk about the hurtful article, but Graham changes the subject. So she wants to talk about Abigail and he claims that he feels good.
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The blogger is confronted by the local police officer she more or less framed as the leak. He's mad because he knows he didn't give her any of the information in the article, but he was suspended for talking. She snottily tells him that Jack Crawford will make sure he is fired and offers job placement assistance in the private sector. He quickly realizes that she has gotten a lot of cops fired over the years. As she lists off the benefits of private sector employment, the pharmacist walks up and shoots the cop in the head, covering the blogger in blood. The pharmacist tells her he read her article and wants to know everything she knows about Graham. On the plus side, someone read her article! Pageviews! The pharmacist apparently takes off, because the scene is the cops and FBI cordoning off the crime scene. The blogger alerts Crawford that the pharmacist is looking for Graham. He wants to find him to connect with him, like a fungus. He also wants to help Graham "connect with Abigail Hobbes" by burying her. Cut to the pharmacist at the hospital changing into scrubs. Crawford calls Graham who is still at the hospital. He rushes to Abigail's hospital room, but it's too late. She is gone. Graham runs around the hospital eventually finding him in a hallway pushing Abigail on a gurney. He shoots him in the arm, stopping him. The pharmacist seems more upset about the fact that Graham doesn't connect with him than the gaping bullet wound in his shoulder.
After yet another shooting, Graham goes back to Lecter for a little more therapy. Lecter tells him (and us) that the reason Graham is there is because he feels guilty about the fact that killing Hobbes felt good. He wants to believe that the reason he feels good is for saving Abigail. The truth it seems is TBD.
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