In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
Up on the rooftop, click, click, click, down thru the chimney with Good Saint… oh god that’s not Santa Claus at all. That’s a cold-blooded crazy-eyed murderer who jumps through the hole in the rooftop, hides under a bed and grabs a woman by her ankles, drags her underneath and slices her face into a horrific smile that would make the Joker jealous. When the FBI team is called in, Will Graham accidentally contaminates the crime scene by getting way way way into the killer’s mind, more or less recreating the crime. As Graham washes off the blood, Crawford tells him that he needs to hold it together. If this job is too much for him, he can leave.
Graham doubts his mental health and decides to go talk to Hannibal Lecter about it. He knows he is crazy, but he’s not this crazy. Lecter suggests a neurologist and they go to get Graham a MRI. The doctors quickly realize that Graham has encephalitis, and that's making him hallucinate and lose time. They also realize that they are total unethical A-holes who have no intention of telling Graham his test results because it’s more educational and better for the common good if they study him and record the results. As Graham’s symptoms escalate, he goes back to the crime scene and finds the killer hanging out. After Graham peels the skin off her arm accidentally (also: BARF) the FBI realizes that she is not just mentally ill, but is also physically sick. After the killer shows up at Graham’s house, they are able to grab her and put her in the hospital.
Speaking of hospitals, the neurologist may have had a moment of conscience, because he called Graham back to the hospital for a repeat MRI. Unfortunately, he was brutally murdered (and left with a giant smile) before he could give Graham the good news that he was physically ill, not mentally ill. Who murdered him? Two guesses.
Come back later for the full recap.
Think you've got game? Prove it! Check out Games Without Pity, our new area featuring trivia, puzzle, card, strategy, action and word games -- all free to play and guaranteed to help pass the time until your show starts.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!In the perfect horror movie set up, a girl walks into her isolated home deep in the woods with no neighbors within sight. Why does she live there all alone? Because she likes to get murdered. It's really the only reason I can think of. She doesn't look quite old enough to be a homeowner... plus, she has a parakeet, which no grown woman has as a pet except in movies where they are about to be murdered and/or have a gas leak caused by a major corporation. She is a mystery, this one.
After she tucks herself into her twin bed (maybe she's a nun?) a drip in the ceiling catches her attention. There's no way this is going to end well. She grabs a flashlight and heads to the attic. The good news is that the drip isn't blood. The bad news is that there's a huge hole in her roof and mysterious footprints across the rooftop. She doesn't see those, but I'm guessing it's not Santa. She patches the hole, goes back to bed and notices some wet footprints. She tracks them to her bedroom and then gets dragged under her own bed and is dispatched in a sprinkler of blood. Hope you weren't planning on sleeping tonight, single ladies! Eh, just hook up at a bar and blame this show.
Will Graham is having a hard time coping with the fact that the innocent little Abigail Hobbes killed a man. Hannibal Lecter, to whom he is speaking, points out that he killed a man, too. Graham can't help but note that Lecter also killed someone. They are all even-steven on the murder front. Except that Lecter is a sociopath who has killed a mazillion people (guesstimate) and Abigail helped her dad kill a bunch of lovely lookalike ladies, so Graham is looking pretty mentally stable with his lowly body count of one. He's going to have to work on upping that if he wants to maintain his street cred with this crew. Then Lecter asks whether Graham is still losing time, and has him draw a clock face. The clock that Graham hands him is totally janky with all the numbers clumped in one half. He doesn't notice, but Lecter does.
Graham wakes up covered in blood with a fishing knife in his hand and a girl with an extra-wide smile dying underneath him. He runs panicked out of the room and finds the entire FBI crew waiting for him. He's investigating the woman's Santa Claus murder, but got extra involved in recreating the crime and ended up corrupting the entire crime scene with his historical reenactment. Jack Crawford is not impressed. He looks Graham up and down and you can just see the "SMDH" thought bubble form over his head. After Graham cleans up, Crawford warns him that he has never seen him this shaken and he doesn't want to see it again. The woman bled to death in a grisly crime, which the camera has no problem zooming in on a bunch. Graham explains that she was dragged under the bed. The killer knew her and was trying to peel a mask off her face. Remember that scene in Beetlejuice where Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis want to scare the beejeezus out of the family and pull their faces way apart? This is like that, but really freaking disgusting and not at all funny. The killer also scratched out all the faces of her in the family pictures, which is television shorthand for "completely crazycakes." Well, that and the supremely gruesome murder.
Later, Graham was so shaken by his episode that he has a repeat visit with Lecter. He saw himself committing the crime. He was shocked when it turned out he hadn't done it. More disturbing for him though is that, as he tells Lecter, he knows what kind of crazy he is and that this isn't it. He suggests a blood clot or tumor or something. Lecter recommends a neurologist, but wants Graham prepared to face the fact that this might be mental illness. Don't worry, Graham, if it is mental illness, you can ask Carrie Mathison from Homeland for some pointers.
They go to the neurologist (who is played by John Benjamin Hickey, who also plays Sean on The Big C), who laughs that Lecter is the sanest person he knows. Graham is going to have an MRI. When he's in the machine, Lecter tells the neurologist that he thinks it's encephalitis because he smelled encephalitis. Yes, smelled it. How else would Hannibal Lecter diagnosis things? Can we also chat about how hard it is to imagine Mads Mikkelsen doing anything in real life? Does he buy groceries? Does he do yoga? Does he drive a Toyota? Who knows!
Anyway, the neurologist agrees that Graham's symptoms of headaches, spatial distortion and disorientation are all the classic signs of the illness. However, instead of giving Graham the diagnosis and coming up a treatment, they both think it would be super cool to study the effects of the disease on Graham's brain. Meanwhile, Graham goes into the MRI and immediately starts hallucinating about the most recent victim and then all of the victims.
After the MRI, the doctors study the results and, sure enough, he has encephalitis. Do they tell him that? Nope. They tell him nothing is wrong and that he's just mentally ill. Basically, they are a bag of dicks that really need to be punched. Graham looks green around the gills as he processes the fact that since there is nothing physically wrong with him, his issues are all mental.
Lecter helpfully immediately tells Crawford that Graham is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Crawford looks saddened, but not shocked. Proving Lecter's point, Graham breaks into the crime scene. He's in bad shape mentally. He wanders into the remaining pool of blood, looks at his watch, notes the time aloud to himself and then spots a creepy face peering out from under the bed. It's unclear to both viewers and to Graham as to whether or not he's hallucinating. Either way: total nightmare material. Seriously, I am never sleeping again. The person jumps and throws the bed at him. He grabs her (guessing!) arm and the skin pulls off, which is, of course, TOTALLY GROSS.
1 2 3 4
Graham awakes standing in a wood. He has lost a few hours. He is panicking and shouting after the killer, "You're alive!" like he's some kind of inspirational speaker or Successory writer. Instead of Lecter or Crawford or Dr. Bloom, Graham calls Beverly Katz, the CSI chick, and brings her to the crime scene. She asks what we are all wondering, "Why did you call me?" Graham confesses that he wasn't sure if it was real. They realize that the murderer has some weird disease that causes rotting skin, hence the lack of blood at the crime scene, even though the victim fought back as hard as she could. It could be leprosy or staph or something. Graham mutters something about the killer not being able to see faces. She came back to the crime scene to convince herself that she didn't do it. Katz asks him, "Is that why you came back?" Graham is like, whatever, I didn't kill her. Katz shrugs.
Cut to Lecter's office, where Graham is once again visiting. Lecter continues the ruse that nothing is wrong with Graham and suggests they continue looking for a cause. Graham asks Lecter if he would ever publish anything about him. Lecter looks sheepish for a moment, but tells Graham that if he did, it would definitely be abstracted and more or less anonymous. Graham shudders and sighs and asks Lecter to only publish posthumously. Lecter asks, after his death or Graham's? Graham shrugs, whichever comes first. Lecter changes the subject to the killer. He suggests a mental diagnosis for the killer: Cotard's Syndrome, where a patient believes he or she is a walking corpse, and somehow lacks the ability to recognize faces. It fits!
Oh great. The creepy killer girl with decomposing skin and yellow eyes is outside Graham's house. Too bad he doesn't have 12 dogs to bark at a creeptastic stalker killer lurking outside his windows. Oh wait he does. Dumb dogs, is that how you show your gratitude to your rescuer?
Crawford and Graham are explaining to a woman that they found tissue samples at the crime scene that matched her daughter, a girl with marked mental illness. As it turns out her crazy, violent daughter was best friends with the victim... well, they were best friends until it was too dangerous for the girl to go to school anymore or have friends. As the mother lists the symptoms of her daughter's illness, Graham and Crawford start to look shifty because the girl had the same symptoms as Graham. The doctors who treated her had no answers. The woman starts to cry as Graham looks increasingly uncomfortable. When she says something about doctors "managing expectations," it resonates with Graham, who later heads into Crawford's office to confront him. Crawford wants to know why Graham is still on the job, since everyone knows it is really, really bad for him. Crawford thinks it gives him some kind of sense of stability, which is fine, but he doesn't want Graham to go over the edge for the sake of the job. Graham mostly agrees with that, but seems to think it might be too late.
1 2 3 4
The neurologist comes to dinner at Lecter's house to discuss their plan to ruin Graham's medical health for their own edification and greater societal good. Lecter, of course, has an entire leg of jamon sitting on the dining room table and he is slicing off slivers of meat. Like with everything else on this show it is simultaneously beautiful and gross. The neurologist wants to know how far they will let this ruse with Graham go on. Lecter reminds the guy (and himself, probably) that Graham is his friend and he will put a stop to things when necessary. The neurologist tells Lecter that Graham wants more tests, but Lecter thinks that now that they know it's encephalitis it will be even easier to lie to him. Dick!
Cut to Graham back at the hospital. The neurologist puts him back in the MRI machine. Is he going to tell Graham the truth? We will never know. Graham goes into the MRI and when the scan is over, the doctor is missing. Graham goes to look for him and instead finds a bloody door handle. He has enough wherewithal to not contaminate the crime scene, and opens the door carefully. The doctor has been killed. While it's easy to suspect Lecter, the doctor's face was slashed into the big gross grin that was the hallmark of the other killer. Still could be Lecter, though.
Graham calls in the FBI. The murder weapon has the same diseased or damaged tissue as the one they found at the other crime scene. The team and Crawford don't get it. Why would the killer be after Graham? Is there a connection between the two victims? Graham remembers that he told the killer that she was alive and maybe she hadn't heard that in a while.
Graham wakes up to his dogs growling in his general direction (except for the one little Chihuahua who is shaking his tail like crazy 'cause he's a great watchdog). He takes the hint and finds the killer under his bed. All I can say about all this under-the-bed nonsense is that my mattress is going on the floor for probably the rest of my life. Graham jumps to the floor, looks her straight in the face and tells her that she is alive and that she is not alone. He reminds her of who she is and asks her to think about that instead of, say, killing him with a knife. That works. They touch hands and she is both captured and saved.
Turns out she is indeed suffering from Cotard's Syndrome. They expect a full mental and physical recovery. Crawford wants to know if she'll remember what she did and saw. Lecter says, "For her sake, I certainly hope not." It's the perfect example of a double entendre once the camera cuts to her walking in to the neurologist's office and finding Lecter brutally murdering the guy. Lecter finishes up, hands her the scissors and walks out leaving her covered in blood with the murder weapon. He's such a good doctor.
1 2 3 4