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Will Graham is slowly losing his grip on reality. He is hearing injured animals in need of rescue and finds himself wandering around empty fields and tearing up his chimney trying to save animals that aren’t there. His decaying mental health puts a crimp in his social life, too. When Dr. Alana Bloom comes by his house for a potential booty call, Will’s crazies get the best of him and spook Alana, who decides to head home instead of continuing their make-out session.
Hannibal Lecter has a new BFF. It’s a man named Tobias and they share a lot of interests like music… and murder. Tobias rose to fame amid the Baltimore murderer community by turning a philharmonic musician into an instrument and playing his trachea like a human cello. Yes, it was gross. Lecter met the man after one of Lecter’s patients tells Lecter that his friend Tobias has been making claims about killing a man. Lecter goes to make a new stabby friend and over dinner they swap stories, admit their crimes, and confess that they wanted to kill each other. Awww, TLA! Tobias confesses that he kind of wants to be caught so he can kill the investigators and then make a break for it. Lecter looks intrigued. Their dinner is interrupted, but Lecter decides to tell Graham that Tobias is the man. When Graham goes to investigate, Tobias kills his police escorts and almost kills Graham.
Before he leaves town, Tobias stops by Lecter’s office to say goodbye. Lecter seizes the opportunity to kill his annoying patient. Turns out that Tobias isn’t just there to say adieu, he wants to kill Lecter. The dynamic duo battles it out before Lecter finally gets the drop on him. Tobias is done in by an elk statue to the head. Now Lecter will have to find a new friend.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Will Graham is doing a little home repair, which seems like an odd pastime for him, but I guess a man needs to fix his vacuum? Table saw? Hair dryer? Whatever it is, he's on the living room floor fixing it with his baker's dozen of rescue dogs watching him when he hears a strange noise. Of course none of his dogs are reacting to the noise, which is suspicious. Graham heads out to the field to his house to investigate without taking his dogs with him, which seems like ridiculous behavior for a dog enthusiast. Anyway, there's nothing there and Graham stares out into the darkness realizing that he still has to walk his dogs.
A striking black man that Hannibal met at the opera last week is giving cello lessons to a young man. The boy inquires about the origin of the cellos strings, "Are they really made from cat guts?" The man laughs, "Not always." And then flashes back to killing a man, removing his intestines and making him into cello strings. Hey show: Gross.
Graham invited Dr. Alana Bloom over to help track the animal he thought he heard in the field. They find nothing, but they do firmly establish that their hang-out was not a date. Although Bloom looks a little disappointed about that and so does Graham.
One of Lecter's patients, who IMDB informs me is named Franklin, although I swear that they have never said his name on the show, really wants to be friends with Lecter and won't take the hint that Lecter doesn't want to be friends, even though Lecter flat out told him as much last week. Can someone buy Franklin a clue? No? How about a Kickstarter campaign for his undoubtedly copious counseling bill? Franklin comes in for his weekly session (dressed similarly to Lecter) and announces that he's been analyzing his friends because that's what Lecter would do if he was their friend or something. Franklin Googled psychopathic personality traits and realized his friend Tobias (the cello teacher) fits most of the criteria. Lecter doesn't seem surprised, because clearly Franklin is attracted to psychopaths. Franklin's not sure what to make of that information. Also, I'm pretty sure that Lecter has some sort of Grindr app for psychopaths.
The Victim Du Jour was killed grotesquely, naturally. He was a musician in the Philharmonic (a profession that only serves to remind me of Dana from Ghostbusters) and was strung up on the stage with a cello handle sticking out of his mouth and his throat shredded into strings. In a show that does not shy away from the gross, this crime scene was pretty puke-inducing with the victim turned into a cello and nothing left to the imagination. They leave Graham alone to do his thing. He recreates the crime in his mind and figures out what body part was opened first and why. Turns out the killer wanted to turn the victim into an instrument and play him. As Graham gets in his head, playing the grotesque instrument, he sees the ghost of Garrett Hobbes in the audience applauding.
Lecter returns to Gillian Anderson to talk about his patient who wants to be his friend. He wants to refer Franklin to a different shrink. She nods and says, "Tell me about your Mulder." Just kidding, but obviously that would be the best. Instead she reminds him that she tried to refer him to someone else and he refused to go. Lecter half-smiles that he is far more tenacious than Franklin. Besides, he liked the fact that she was a psychiatrist who returned to her work after she was attacked by a patient. He waxes eloquent about that before she stops him and reminds him that she is his psychiatrist, but he is not hers.
At the crime lab, the CSI types realize that the killer was shrinking and tanning the victim's vocal chords to recreate the cat-gut sound. Graham realizes that the killer is a skilled musician who is trying out a new instrument. He takes his thoughts and ideas to Lecter, of course, who some arcane trivia about classical music and the origin of stringed instruments. Graham restates that this murder was a performance and Graham is haunted by the music. He thinks that the killer was trying to impress someone else with his skill at the kill. Cut to Franklin, back in Lecter's office. He tells Lecter that his psychopath friend Tobias told him that he wanted to cut someone's throat and play him like a cello. Franklin knows that they found a dead man that matched that fantasy and he wants to know whether he should report it to the police. Lecter digs deep and asks Franklin why he thinks Tobias would tell him that. Franklin thinks about it and realizes that Tobias is telling him so that he will tell Lecter. I guess like recognizes like when it comes to psychopaths? Anyway, Lecter goes to check it out. He stops into Tobias' cello shop for a strange and weighted conversation about cat gut strings, the music that lies between notes and the fact that the symphony is looking for a new trombonist. Then Lecter asks for some strings for his harpsichord and Tobias is more than happy to help.
Graham starts hearing weird noises at home again and his dogs just sit there. Useless. Bloom stops by to see what he's up to, and what he's up to is knocking a hole in his chimney to metaphorically free whatever metaphorical raccoon is stuck in his chimney. Bloom is not impressed, but then they start kissing. They stop kissing so Graham can remind her that's he's not her patient and she can talk herself out of kissing him. She thinks they would be bad for each other. So she leaves. After stopping by in the middle of the night for no reason, realizing he's fully nutso what with the middle-of-the-night chimney excavation and then instigating a make out session. Booty Call Interruptus. But, seriously ladies, if you know a guy's crazy, don't make out with him. Or go ahead but fully commit to it.
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Lecter is hosting a dinner party once again. This time it's a table for two psychopaths. The first topic of conversation? Whether or not Tobias killed the trombonist. He thinks Lecter knows. Lecter thinks he will be caught by the FBI. Tobias is looking forward to that. He wants the FBI to come and then he will kill them all and then disappear into the night. Lecter looks almost impressed, although that is far too sloppy for his personal taste. Tobias then admits that he wanted to kill Lecter, he even went so far as to follow him out late one night on a lonely road. Lecter looks disquieted, because he knows that Tobias saw him murder someone. Tobias promises not to tell, because he needs a friend. Lecter isn't interested in friends, but admits that he was going to kill Tobias, which is psycho-speak for an olive branch, I guess? Anyway, Tobias looks concerned, but Lecter assures him that he would never sully his food with poison. That almost counts for humor right? The doorbell rings before the men can engage in their mutually assured destruction. It's Graham, all in a tizzy over his kiss. When Lecter returns to the dining room with Graham in tow, Tobias is gone. Lecter explains away the disappearing dinner guest as Graham spills his guts, not literally for once on this show, thank gawd. Lecter listens patiently as Graham admits that he knew there was no animal trapped in his chimney and that it was all in his head. He knows that Bloom didn't want to make out with him because he is a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Lecter nods and then tells Graham that his patient knows who the killer is and thinks Graham should investigate. Is Lecter setting Graham up? Or is he setting Tobias up? Both, probably.
Lecter tells Scully that he wants to be friends with Graham. She encourages him, even though Graham is both a colleague and a patient. Cut to Graham and two police officers going to scope out Tobias' cello shop. Tobias looks delighted that they are there and immediately starts throwing out tantalizingly tidbits that are just shy of incriminating. He and Graham talk cat gut, but just when they are getting somewhere Graham thinks he hears a car accident outside or maybe an animal get hit by a car and even though no one else heard anything and even though he knows he is cuckoo and not just for Cocoa Puffs, he still cuts short his murder investigation in order to investigate his auditory hallucinations. When Graham steps out, Tobias springs into action. Graham comes back in to find a dead police officer staining the rug. Graham calls for back up, pulls his weapon and heads into the basement. There he finds a whole lot of guts waiting to be turned into strings. He finds the other officer in a mask of strings, drowned in a tub. As Graham studies the dead officer, Tobias sneaks up on him with a garotte made out of, you guessed it, metal strings. If Tobias was a Marvel super villain he would be called The Cellist. Graham manages to get a shot off, nicking Tobias's ear. Tobias makes a break for it.
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Lecter is finally letting Franklin go as a patient. Franklin is having a hard time accepting the fact that he is getting dumped by his therapist, so Lecter tells him, "You focus too much on your therapist and not enough on your therapy." Franklin thinks it's because Lecter is disappointed that he didn't want to turn Tobias in. That's when Tobias walks in, rudely interrupting the session and bleeding all over Lecter's undoubtedly expensive rug. Tobias announces that he just killed two men and Franklin, being a good friend, tries to talk some sense into him. As Franklin is going on and on about helping Tobias do the right thing and assuring him that everything will work out, Lecter breaks his neck and kills him. Tobias pouts, "I was looking forward to doing that." It's some dark humor, but on this show any humor is LOL-worthy. Then Tobias goes ninja and starts whipping a bunch of steel strings around. He's going after Lecter, which comes as quite the shock to Lecter. They tussle and just when it looks like Lecter might lose, he comes through with a gross-out arm break courtesy of his library ladder (take note, nerds) and then beans him with an elk statue. Interestingly, Lecter doesn't leave fingerprints while killing Tobias. Is he covering his tracks? Or just making sure the police don't have his fingerprints on file? Watching Lecter and Tobias battle was seemingly uncharacteristic, but also fun. In the later Hannibal movies, Lecter was sort of scrappy for a fava-bean eating ascot-wearer, so I guess we are seeing some of that transformation now. Later Lecter tells the FBI that Tobias came to kill Franklin for spilling the beans. Jack Crawford doesn't look like he bought it entirely, but Graham is happy to believe his friend. He seems to enjoy seeing that Lecter is not infallible.
Back at his shrink's office, Lecter tells Scully that he feels responsible for what happened to Franklin. Which, of course, he should because he killed him. But Scully tells Lecter that he can't blame himself. Lecter wants to know if she felt responsible when her patient attacked her. She admits she does, but not for his death. Lecter smirks, "Nor should you."
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