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Eddie Izzard reprises his role as Dr. Abel Gideon, noted crazy person. While the FBI once suspected Gideon was a serial killer known as the Chesapeake Ripper, Lecter (the real Ripper) made it clear that Gideon was just a poseur with a disappointingly low body count. Once Lecter proved his point, Gideon decided to sue the pants off of Dr. Chilton, the head of the psych hospital who may have given him the impression that he was, in fact, the Ripper. En route to the court house, Gideon breaks out and ups his body count significantly first with some unfortunate prison guards followed by a few of his doctors. He lures the annoying blogger to the scene of one of his crimes, because she probably has a contract that requires a certain amount of screen time. As Gideon is slicing and dicing Dr. Chilton, Lecter gets annoyed and leaves a gruesome clue for the FBI leading them straight to Gideon's lair.
Meanwhile Will Graham's encephalitis is escalating causing massive night sweats, shivers and shakes and a lot of hallucinations. Graham's waking nightmares have gotten so bad that when Graham corners Gideon, he thinks he has corned another serial killer, the very dead Garrett Jacob Hobbs. Graham takes the killer to Lecter's in the hopes that Lecter will verify his identity. Obviously Lecter won't play nice, basically causing Graham to have a seizure. Then Lecter tells Gideon where to find Dr. Alana Bloom, who is on Gideon's hit list. Graham comes to and grabs the gun that Lecter has helpfully left out for him. He heads out to save his lady friend, managing to kill Gideon before collapsing under the weight of his own illness.
A bunch of other stuff happened, too, so come back later for the full weecap!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Remember a few weeks ago when Eddie Izzard played Dr. Abel Gideon, the formerly mild-mannered transplant surgeon who killed his wife and her family during the holidays? The Dr. Gideon who everyone suspected was also the serial killer known as the Chesapeake Ripper who killed a nurse in grandiose style and caused the real Ripper (namely, Hannibal Lecter) to come out of retirement to prevent a lesser murderer from sullying his good serial killing name? Well, Gideon is back and Eddie Izzard and his weird American accent are back. Anyway, over a lovely dinner of "Indian curry" made from "lamb" but is really only god knows what (and probably disapproves of) Lecter skillfully gets the doctor to admit that he has been using "psychic driving" to convince Gideon that he was the Chesapeake Ripper, when he really was just a guy who killed his wife. It's something that Dr. Bloom and Will Graham had accused Chilton of doing with Gideon, which he had denied, but it is definitely something that Lecter is doing to Graham. Lecter assures him that this is a judgment-free zone and that he should just deny everything. Lecter tells Chilton that he was trying too hard with his whole convincing Gideon he was the Ripper thing, adding that the subject must not be aware of any influence. Cut to Will Graham, who we now know is suffering from encephalitis that is untreated thanks to Lecter. He is having some serious nightmares involving that gross-out human totem pole and melting of the polar ice caps and night sweats bad enough to wake his dogs.
Over at the psychiatric hospital, Gideon is suing Dr. Chilton for convincing him that he was the Ripper using the "psychic driving" technique. They swap witty but unnecessary repartee like: "You told me you were the Chesapeake Ripper," to which Gideon retorts, "You told me I was the Chesapeake Ripper!" When Gideon is being transported to court, he manages to kill the guards after doling out helpful relationship advice to the guards like, "Don't divorce your wife, kill her! It's so much easier." Gideon is then free to exact his extra-legal revenge against psychiatrists.
Cut to Graham standing by an emptied out armored car covered with bloodstains and no sign of Dr. Gideon or the guards. Graham recreates the massacre in his mind and realizes that Gideon killed three men with one hand tied behind his back, more or less. Graham snaps out of his trance and Crawford asks him if he thinks that Gideon still thinks he's the Ripper. Graham thinks Gideon is torn about it. Speaking of "torn," Gideon removed the guards organs and strung them up like super-goth Christmas ornaments. Graham notes that the Ripper would not have left the organs behind, but is probably trying to get the real Ripper's attention. The Ripper is heading back to Baltimore.
Graham and Dr. Bloom come to talk to Dr. Chilton, because clearly this is all his fault. Plus, with Gideon on the lam, Chilton doesn't have to go to court. The two doctors throw blame at each other, while Graham has a mental meltdown. The last thing that Gideon told Chilton was that he planned on telling everyone that he was the Ripper. Lecter is not going to like that one bit.
As Crawford debriefs his team, Graham continues having a mental meltdown envisioning a room crowded with Garrett Jacob Hobbs' antlers and Crawford screaming at him. Obviously he has to go talk to his "friend" Lecter about this waking nightmare. He tells Lecter that he doesn't feel like himself, he feels crazy and he really doesn't like it. Lecter calmly assesses Graham's symptoms without blinking and showing no sign of guilt about how his withholding of knowledge is affecting his "friend." He's a stone-cold jerk.
As the CSI team tells Graham all the gory details (organs removed post-mortem! Scrambled brains!) Graham slips into a state again. Graham realizes that Gideon left the brains scrambled, because that's what he thinks the psychologists did to him. Crawford wants all the psychologists and psychiatrists and therapists and analysts and PhD candidates who have ever talked to Gideon to have an armed guard until Gideon is caught. Graham realizes that this list will include Bloom. He goes to tell her the news about the armed guard and Bloom responds by uncharacteristically playing a tease, telling Graham that she hoped protective custody would include cozying up with his dogs in front of a space heater. Graham blinks a few times like he's trying to access his "normal human behavior" desktop folder and the "flirtation" subfolder. He finally figures it out and then tells her that she doesn't need protective custody for that.
The red-headed blogger gets a call from a "Dr. Carruthers" who wants a writing partner for a paper he's working on about Gideon. Television writers must have been so stoked about the advent of hands-free car phones so it would be easier to have phone calls that the audience could listen in on. Anyway, obviously the clueless blogger is in. I really hope she dies soon. She goes to meet "Dr. Carruthers," and, of course, it's actually Gideon who has given the unlucky Dr. Carruthers a Columbian necktie, a phrase I had heard but never seen illustrated before. Basically you cut a guy's neck open and pull his tongue out the hole. Izzard plays the scene perfectly, disgustingly fiddling with the still-moving tongue and making sure it looks like a well-starched tie. Instead of running away while Gideon is distracted, the blogger stands there like a dope. Anything for a story, right?
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The CSI team, Crawford and Graham find the body. Gideon has drained all the blood out of Carruthers and packed it up for the Red Cross. Awww, he cares! The body's hand is resting on a remote control that points to a computer all queued up for a Tattle Crime Blog article that the team quickly realizes means Gideon's has the blogger. Unfortunately, Gideon hasn't killed the blogger yet. Instead he has her in the observatory where the Ripper reunited Crawford with the severed arm of his trainee. He wants her help in luring the real Ripper out of hiding. He knows that the real Ripper (Lecter) is a big fan of her work. He has her write up a bait article and sure enough Lecter responds. Weirdly soon, the FBI finds a body with the identical Columbian necktie and drained blood that were the hallmarks of Dr. Carruthers' death. Everything is the same except the new corpse is missing one arm. At first the team thinks it is Gideon's work, but Graham figures out that it's the real Ripper and he is giving them a clue as to where the big faker can be found. Graham asks Crawford where the last time he saw a severed arm was and Crawford figures it out. They head to the observatory.
Meanwhile, Gideon has somehow captured Chilton and strapped him to an operating table in the observatory. He gave him a local anesthetic instead of general and is doing surgery while Chilton and the blogger watch. The blogger's not tied to anything and Gideon is pretty busy, but she just stands there and watches while Gideon slices into Chilton and removes a few organs. I hope the blogger gets charged with aiding and abetting. Or at least wees her pants.
Crawford notices that Graham is doing poorly and tells him that their work will damage his immune system if he lets it. He advises Graham to let it all go, which Graham admits he finds hard to do. Crawford leaves Graham in the car when they raid the observatory. What? He cracked a window. Crawford heads inside and finds the blogger squeezing a ventilator and keeping Chilton barely alive while he holds his own organs. Gideon watches from a distance and then steps into a car to drive off. Graham is waiting for him with a gun pointed at him. Gideon notes that Graham looks like crap, which he does, all sweaty and shivering and pasty. Gideon seems disappointed that Graham isn't the Ripper, but still goes where Graham tells him to go. Turns out that Graham is seeing Garrett Jacob Hobbs, but he knows on some level that it's impossible. So he drives him to Lecter's house for confirmation. Lecter asks Graham who he sees and he admits he sees Garrett Jacob Hobbs, but he wants to know who Lecter sees and Lecter (dick that he is) tells him that there's no one there at all and that he is hallucinating wildly. For his part Gideon is pretty amused by Lecter's antics, but the insistence that Graham is hallucinating is too much for his fragile mental state. He has a mild seizure, which seems to trouble Gideon more than it does Lecter. Lecter asks Gideon, "Are you the man who claimed to be the Chesapeake Ripper?" Gideon replies, "Are you the Ripper?" Instead of answering, Lecter just sighs that it's awful to have your identity stolen. Lecter offers to tell Gideon where to find Dr. Bloom, a move so dastardly that even Gideon looks impressed.
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Graham comes out of his stupor to find Lecter giving him a stroke test. The good news is that he didn't have a stroke, the bad news is, you know, everything else. Lecter tells him that he had a seizure, has a fever and was hallucinating. Lecter claims he is calling Crawford to collect him and then heading out to help find Gideon, but really he is leaving a trap for Graham. Graham sees the gun and the car keys that Lecter left on the table. He grabs them and runs and a minute later Lecter returns, takes off his coat and, presumably goes back to fricasseeing some poor bloke's pancreas.
Graham heads to Bloom's house to protect her from Gideon. He finds Gideon just standing outside Bloom's house, just watching her and having a debate about whether he should bother trying to kill her like the Ripper or just give it up. Graham sees Hobbs again and just shoots him dead. Bloom hears the shot, looks out the window just in time to see Graham collapse in the snow to Gideon's body.
Cut to Crawford and Lecter having a chat. Graham is in the hospital with a 105 fever and an infection. Crawford sees it as proof that Graham is going to be a-okay, because even with a temperature he can still bring down a killer. Lecter disagrees and recommends that he suspend Graham's license to carry a firearm with a giant thought bubble forming over Lecter's head that reads "All the easier to eat you with my dear." Luckily, for now Crawford disagrees and wants Graham armed and ready.
Lecter heads over to Scully's house for a little fake therapy of his own. He looks torn up as he talks about Graham. He tells Scully that he sees Graham and wants to contain his madness. He avers that he sees Graham as an opportunity for friendship with the subtext being that they could be friends if only Lecter could make him fully crazy with his psychic driving skills. Scully reminds him that as Graham's doctor, if he wants to take a step forward towards friendship, he must force himself to take a step back. Like, maybe frame Graham for a bunch of murders or something.
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