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Will Graham is recovering in the hospital and is delighted to have Georgia, the young killer who was hiding under his bed, in the room to him. They strike up a conversation when he goes to visit her in her oxygen tube where she is making a decent recovery from Cotard’s Syndrome. When Graham mentions her recovery to Hannibal Lecter, he takes matters into his own hands and helps her self-immolate with the help of a comb and some static electricity. Whatever it takes to make sure she never remembers that she saw him kill Dr. Sutcliffe, right?
As Graham recovers from his fever, he starts to put some pieces together about the rash of killings surrounding him. He realizes that Georgia was killed by the same person who killed Sutcliffe and whoever killed them probably killed everyone else in this show, save for the ones that Garrett Jacob Hobbs killed. Jack Crawford thinks this theory is insane, but admits that it’s crazy enough to possibly be true… unless Graham is completely nuts. He does a little digging and his crack FBI team finds evidence that links Abigail Hobbs to at least a few of her father’s victims. Crawford goes to confront her at the asylum where she lives and discovers that Graham has taken her out of the facility. Crawford thinks Graham is covering for Abigail’s crimes, and is determined to catch her.
Graham makes the potentially fatal error of confiding his theories of the crimes to Lecter. When Lecter realizes how close Graham is to fingering him as the killer, Lecter has no choice but to act. As Graham takes Abigail back to Minnesota to try and recreate the copycat killer’s crimes and potentially lure him out, his symptoms return. Meanwhile, Lecter tells Crawford that Graham has been losing time and is disassociating. He thinks Graham did it and even plays a recording where Graham admits to feeling guilt about one of the victims. Crawford seems convinced. Then Lecter flies to Minnesota and finds Abigail. He admits that he is the copycat killer and is setting Graham up to take the fall. Then he confesses that he might have to kill her, too. Graham wakes up in Virginia having no idea how he got there, where Abigail is or what a jerk Lecter is shaping up to be.
A bunch of other stuff happened, too, so come back later for the full recap!
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Will Graham is recovering from his fever in the hospital. He has a nice door neighbor in the shape of Georgia Madchen, the woman who hid underneath his bed and tried to kill him and definitely killed her former best friend. Graham relates to her, though, because they are both suffering from mental illness that is affecting their behavior to psychotic extremes. Their minds are warped by reasons beyond their control and that's enough to at least strike up a conversation while they are both in the hospital. So he goes to visit her in the giant Habitrail oxygen tube in which she is recuperating. When Georgia mentions that she almost remembers killing her friend, but doesn't want to, Graham asks, "You dream about killing anyone else?" She admits that she dreams that he killed Dr. Sutcliffe, but confesses that she couldn't see his face. Graham looks displeased.
Speaking of killers, Will wakes up to find Hannibal Lecter in his hospital room. He's made him chicken soup, with creepy black chicken of course because like that bumper sticker everyone had in college, "Why be Normal?" Graham wants to know if Lecter told Jack Crawford about his mental state and how he is hallucinating and losing time. Lecter, however, wants to know what Georgia is remembering. Graham assures him that she doesn't want to remember anything. It seems pretty clear that Lecter will make sure of that.
Cut to Georgia waking up in her oxygen tube with a start. She looks around, sees nothing, but finds a comb. Being bored she picks it up and runs it through her hair. A small static spark ignites the oxygen and she goes up in flame. Remember that scene in Ghostbusters where [spoiler alert] the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man goes up in flames and is half melting and flailing around? It's like that by way grosser. Death by static electricity is a bitch, apparently.
Graham wanders the halls of the hospital and is apparently on the clock because he heads to Georgia's room where Crawford and the team are working. The team tells him that the hospital thinks something in the machine shorted out and Georgia wasn't wearing her grounding bracelet, which presumably is meant to prevent static charges from building up and killing you like the worst static shock ever. I mean, thank god my brothers didn't know that was even a possibility when we were growing up. Anyway, the team hypothesizes that maybe it was suicide by static shock. Graham, who is in his jammies, doesn't buy it. He assures that that she wasn't suicidal, she was sick. He knows this because he talked to her. Crawford reminds him that she was facing murder charges and tried to kill him and that he compromised the case against her by chit-chatting with her. Graham rolls his eyes and points out that she's, like, super toaster caked and the case against her really doesn't matter anymore.
Abigail Hobbes is still working on her biography with the annoying blogger, who is still not dead. I realize that at some point I will have to accept that she has a permanent role on this show, but not yet! For some reason Abigail is willing to put up with the blogger and all of her pointed questions and knowing glances and sage assessments, but only to a point. When the blogger starts digging into the death of Nick Boyle a.k.a. the guy Abigail skewered, Abigail starts to look a little put out. The blogger knows that Poor Dead Nick didn't kill Abigail's friend because the blogger knows things and she can tell Nick isn't a killer just by looking at him. She does, however, think that Graham is a murderer, just, you know, 'cause. Those are her top-notch journalism skills in action! If she's so smart, can she tell that Abigail hates her right now? Who knows!
Speaking of Graham, he is asleep in his bed, so we can assume he's having a nightmare. Oh and then the ghost of the dead girl is haunting him and she's got the creepy motions of the ghost in The Grudge. This is great! Perfect thing to watch before bed. In his nightmares Georgia looks like an extra in The Ring again. She says something to him and then antlers pierce her skin and she bursts into flames. I guess Graham's unconscious knows that she was killed by the copycat killer. He wakes up in a sweat-drenched hospital bed.
Graham talks to Crawford about the new suspicions that his subconscious dredged up. He tells Crawford that he thinks Georgia was murdered by the copycat killer, as was Dr. Sutcliffe. She told him that there was someone else in the room when Sutcliffe died, but she couldn't see his face due to her Cotard's Syndrome. Graham is fighting for her legacy -- he knows she didn't kill herself. Jack is intrigued, but highly suspicious when Graham pulls Sutcliffe's body out of cold storage and starts putting pieces together. Er... not physically for once. He thinks that the copycat killer has killed everyone since Garrett Jacob Hobbs death, including the people in DC. Crawford thinks the copycat killer is Abigail, but Graham has other ideas.
Crawford makes the unfortunate choice to go talk to Lecter about it. He doesn't understand if Graham is still sick or mentally ill or just trying to protect Abigail Hobbs. Lecter, of course, wants everyone to think it's mental illness, but Crawford is smart enough to suggest that perhaps Graham isn't so much crazy as crazy-smart.
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Cut to Crawford knocking on Dr. Scully's door. He has a few questions about one of her patients. Crawford doesn't have a court order or anything, but he wants to chat anyway. He wants to talk about Lecter's relationship with Graham, but Dr. Scully won't budge on the whole doctor-patient-confidentiality thing, so Crawford asks about her, instead. He knows she was attacked by a patient who was referred to her by Lecter. She tells him that the man choked on his own tongue before he could finish his assault. Lucky, right? Lucky but suspicious.
Cut back to the FBI HQ where Crawford is a man on a mission. He lets loose his team to track every single movement of Garrett Jacob Hobbs. He wants to find the copycat killer, pronto. He thinks it is Abigail and he thinks Graham is protecting her and he wants to put a stop to it.
Graham needs Abigail's help to prove his theory of the crime. So they bond over killing people. "Did you feel like you did something wrong when you killed my dad?" Abigail asks. Graham says he felt terrified and then powerful. Abigail wishes she had killed him, for killing her mom, for making her part of it. Graham tells her that he thinks she can catch the copycat killer, but he needs her help.
Scully tells Lecter that Crawford stopped by. Lecter smirks. He knows Crawford suspects that Abigail was involved in her father's crimes and that Graham is protecting her. Scully tells Lecter that Crawford asked about her attack and admits that she lied to him offering only half-truths and not giving him the full picture of how her patient came to choke on his own tongue while attacking her. Lecter appreciates the fact that she covered for him, but wonders why she is questioning him for doing the same for Graham. She shrugs and tells him to stop covering for Graham. She tells him he shouldn't be friends with Graham anymore because he and Will are "disconnected from the concept" of friendship. All credit to Mads Mikkelsen for making Lecter looks simultaneously sad and happy to have an opportunity to have Graham take the rap for everything.
Graham is telling Lecter everything he knows about the copycat killer. Graham finally realizes that the copycat killer wasn't trying to set up Georgia for the murder of Dr. Sutcliffe; he was trying to set him up. Lecter's thought bubble clearly reads, "DING DING DING!" but he simply tells Graham, "I can't have you pulling Abigail into your delusion." Graham shakes him off. He knows this is real. As Graham storms out of the office, Lecter looks a little queasy and exhausted like he knows what he has to do, but really doesn't want to.
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Crawford's team has pieced together the fact that Abigail and her father probably worked together. Crawford goes to question her, but only finds the annoying blogger who demands answers she is not entitled to such as "Did Abigail Hobbes kill Nick Boyle? What is Graham trying to hide?" Then the blogger almost gleefully tells Crawford that Graham snuck Abigail out of the hospital. Crawford is not happy about that.
Crawford goes to talk to Lecter and demands answers about Graham. Crawford is doing a lot of demanding during this episode. Lecter seizes the moment and throws Graham under the bus. He tells Crawford that Graham is losing time and dissociating. He claims he never mentioned it before because he wasn't sure whether it was mental illness or job stress causing the issues. Lecter then nefariously plays Crawford a recording where Graham explains that he felt guilty at a crime scene. Lecter just waits for Crawford to put the pieces together that Graham was the last to see Dr. Sutcliffe and Georgia. And now he has Hobbs' daughter and Lecter points out that Hobbs intended to kill her. He then says, "I'm so sorry, Jack." Crawford shakes his head and walks out not wanting to believe that Graham killed everyone, but seemingly resigned to it.
Graham and Abigail take a flight (first class even!) back to Minnesota for a quick trip to Hobbs' hunting cabin, which is still filled with bloody antlers. Graham is sweating again as he wonders about the copycat killer. Abigail admits that she was the lure for her father and that Crawford's suspicions about her are correct. She is surprised that Lecter didn't tell him. The truth triggers a gruesome hallucination where Graham shoves Abigail into the antlers. Graham's brain is imploding and it quickly comes to the point where they suspect each other of being the copycat killer. Graham wakes up on an empty plane back in Virginia. He's confused. It's hard to know what has happened, what's real. The editing was masterful, but also super confusing. We may never know what was real and what was a hallucination. Things aren't looking good for Abigail or Graham right now, though.
Cut to Abigail at her family home. Lecter is waiting for her. She hugs him and tells him that she left Graham at the cabin because he was creeping her out. Lecter tells her that Crawford knows the truth about her and breaks the news that they will arrest her when they find her and Graham, too. Abigail seems troubled that people will start to suspect Graham is the copycat, but the more Lecter talks, the more it all starts to click for her: Lecter is the copycat right now. As terror dawns on her, she asks Lecter why he would call and warn her father that Graham and the Feds were coming. "I was curious what would happen," he responds with an amoral shrug. He was curious when he killed her friend and he was curious what would happen with her after she killed Nick. She wants to know how many people he killed. He admits that it is many more than her father. She asks if he is going to kill her and he just says, "I'm so sorry, Abigail. I'm sorry I couldn't protect you in this life." We don't see what happens, but we can figure it out.
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