Welcome to the second season of Hannibal. We start, of course, with Hannibal Lecter cutting into some meat in slow motion. Jack Crawford's face appears in the reflection of the knife and their eyes meet. As Hannibal sets the knife down, his face replaces Jack's in the reflection. Jack pulls out a pistol, but Hannibal throws his knife across the room and hits him in the gun hand. They fight! The gun gets kicked under the refrigerator. Punch! Neck hold! Pepper mill to the face! And so forth! Jack has a knife, but Hannibal has a towel and he disarms Jack with this neat wrap-around move. He follows that up with a refrigerator door to the face, but Jack is back up! Now Hannibal has a knife. Jack wraps his tie around his fist so he can punch like a boxer. He catches the knife. Punch! Reverse suplex! Punch to the back of the head! Choke with a tie! Hannibal's white shirt is all bloody as he starts to lose consciousness. This is a lot of recapping for a scene that I don't even believe is really happening. Hannibal stabs some broken glass into Jack's neck and Jack hides in the wine closet.
Then the screen cuts to black and there's a caption that says "Twelve Weeks Earlier." So I guess that scene really did happen. Or at least, will happen in twelve weeks of show time. So that's something to watch for.
Hannibal slices some fish and washes bits of meat. But this is present-time meat, not future-time meat. He's serving Jack Kaiseki, which Wikipedia informs me is a traditional multi-course Japanese dinner. It's also the name of this episode. Jack claims he feels guilty about eating it, and we get a gratuitous shot of the wine pouring. I guess it's not really gratuitous in a show that's so much about food porn, but it's awfully showy. The fish is flounder, if you're keeping track. Hannibal says he last prepared this meal for his aunt on the occasion of a loss, which brings them to the subject of Will Graham. Jack says Will's death is on him, Hannibal thinks it's on both of them. But he hasn't even been found guilty yet, so they seem a little premature to me. Will is openly blaming Hannibal for everything he's accused of doing, which is only making him sound crazier. Jack is going to investigate Hannibal in order to clear him of all those murders he actually did, which seems like it will take about twelve weeks to resolve completely.
Will is standing in the middle of a wide stream, fishing. He casts in slow motion. There's a lot of slow motion in this show, isn't there? He sees a stag on the shore. This guy sees more stags than Harry Potter fighting a whole flock of Dementors. That's an awesome joke and you know it. But Will is actually in a tiny cage. Dr. Frederick Chilton is talking to him, but we can't hear him because Will is still imagining fishing. As he fades back into reality, Chilton asks, "How does that make you feel?" That's a boring question. Will would like to talk to Dr. Lecter. Then he closes his eyes and we go back to the stream. A person with antlers rises out of the water. I feel bad for Will for being framed for multiple murders, but he could also probably get some benefit out of some treatment.
Jack and Dr. Alana Bloom are being questioned by a high-ranking FBI lady. Dr. Bloom filed a report saying that Jack was warned that it might be a bad idea to keep bringing Will Graham around on investigations. He knew that Dr. Bloom would file the report and didn't even advise against it. The FBI person is concerned because the report is an official allegation of misconduct. Dr. Bloom thought she was only alleging a lapse in judgment, but that's the same thing in the eyes of the FBI. Because of her report, there will be an internal examination. There wasn't going to be one anyway? I would think an FBI agent (or whatever Will's status officially was) being a serial killer is something you'd want to look at. But people want to cover this up, which sounds challenging. Dr. Bloom will not recant her report, so things are going to get ugly for Jack. Which is not entirely inappropriate, in my opinion. Even though Will didn't actually kill those people, I still think he probably should have stopped going into the field at some point.
Rockville, Maryland. Two maintenance workers are hip-deep in a river because there's something wrong with some beaver dams. It smells bad. They dig around and a dead body surfaces. Oh my! The skin on its face comes off and it is gross. So I guess we'll be having non-Hannibal serial killers this season, which makes this a good time for me to complain about the names this show gives to its serial killers. "The Minnesota Shrike" only makes sense if you're trying to distinguish him from the Shrikes in Georgia and Arizona. And "The Chesapeake Ripper" is just boring. I would like them to mix it up a little. They don't all have to be "Place-name Thing."
Remember when I commented on all the slow-motion shots? They're kind of balanced off by the time-lapse establishing shots. This shot of the outside of Dr. Gillian Anderson's place is sped up for no real reason. It's hard to even notice it. Hannibal sits with her, and I suppose I have to learn her character's name now. It's Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier, although she's clearly Gillian Anderson. It's nice that she has a job where she doesn't have to worry about getting alien cancer all the time. Hannibal would like to see Will and examine the way he thinks, although Dr. Du Maurier (it seems weird to call her Bedelia, although hardly anybody calls Dr. Lecter "Hannibal") disapproves. She feels that Will intends to manipulate Hannibal and vice versa. Hannibal misses Will. He claims to just be intrigued, but he's clearly obsessed. He claims that Will is interesting to him because "he sees his own mentality as grotesque, but useful."
The Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. We're probably going to have a lot of scenes here, and I'm reluctant to keep calling it by its full name. I also don't like BSHCI or the first nickname which occurs to me, which is "Arkham Asylum." We'll work through this together. Will is sitting quietly in a darkened cell. He looks up to see hooves. But then it's really Dr. Lecter. Apparently the thoughts he hears in his head no longer sound like his own voice. Now it sounds like Hannibal. That's unusual! Will makes the subtext text by explaining, "I can't get you out of my head." He does not consider Hannibal his friend, regardless of what Hannibal says. Will claims he has clarity about Hannibal. In my opinion, he seems to be annoyed about being driven crazy over the course of the last season. Although he also had that brain problem, which nobody but Hannibal knows about. Will threatens a reckoning, which is not the kind of thing you want to say when you're trying to convince people that you're not a crazy murderer.
A lavish close-up of a swab being taken of Hannibal's cheek. Beverly Katz (do you like how I looked up everyone's first and last names?) also has Hannibal's suits, because everything is being processed to see if he might have been involved in any of those murders that Will says he did. She assures him that it's just a formality and that nobody aside from Will expects to find anything. Hannibal points out that she might be responsible for the evidence that convicts Will. But she found so much evidence that there was no need to intuit. She seems to blame Hannibal for not protecting Will from himself, which is pretty close to the truth. She assures Hannibal that he's not a suspect. In fact, she says, "You're the new Will Graham." Hey, maybe Dr. Du Maurier will gaslight Hannibal in this season, and then we can just keep going up a chain of evil psychiatrists.
Hannibal enters the crime scene of the beaver-dam murders. Jack's on a bridge as bodies are brought up. He'd like a psychological profile. Four bodies have been found, but there's at least one more down there. The bodies were coated in resin, but they're not perfectly preserved. Hannibal suggests that they might have been injected with silicone, which is something that's done to make resin-coated models of fish. Everyone agrees that their killer is making human models, and that the bodies they've found were the rejected ones that got thrown in the river.
Back to Dr. Du Maurier's. Hannibal signs something that will allow her to discuss him with Jack, which she doesn't want to do. Hannibal says he got to be the new Will Graham today, seeing a crime scene as he imagines Will saw it. She wants to know why he'd invite scrutiny? He answers, "I'm being as open and honest as I know how." She's unhappy about having to lie for him if Jack asks certain questions. She warns him, "Jack Crawford doesn't know what you're capable of." His answer, of course, is, "Neither do you."
Hey, it's those dogs that Will had! I'm glad to see that they're doing well. The scene of them playing in the field with Dr. Bloom is intercut with her visiting Will. She says most of the dogs are adjusting, although the one named Winston sometimes runs away to his old home. Will tells Bloom he doesn't have representation because he keeps firing the FBI lawyers. She thinks he has automatism, meaning that he was unconscious when he committed murders. He wants to remember how it was done to him, where "it" is "whatever it was that was done to him." She seems concerned that he could just remember doing the murders, which would take away his legal argument. She thinks this Will is incapable of the murders. In his office, Dr. Chilton is listening. I don't think this counts as spying, because after all, it is his hospital. Will says, "I hear Hannibal's voice in the well of my mind." He even hears words that Hannibal never said to him, which he feels is evidence of repressed memories. So he wants to go through memory recovery.
There's a cool metronome, all lit up like a light saber. It's very reminiscent of the re-creation effect from last season, although it's blue, not orange. Dr. Bloom has Will close his eyes. But now he can't see the cool metronome! We see Will's imagination, in which Dr. Bloom is naked. Why not, right? She's also got a weird lighting effect. Her imagined body kisses him and envelops him in ink.
Then, fully immersed in hypnosis, Will sees a full banquet table lade with rotting food and an octopus and crows. You know, that sort of thing. And there's the human with the antlers. There's an ear on his plate. He wakes up and stops the metronome. Dr. Bloom asks, "Will, what did you see?"
Hannibal brings Dr. Chilton some fancy food. He notes, "It's rare that I cook a meatless meal." I feel like half of what Hannibal says is just so that people will get the joke later. Dr. Chilton lost a kidney, so he can't have meat. He complains about Will not talking to him, although Hannibal thinks he'll be a challenge for Dr. Bloom, as well. Chilton is so pleased about having a lucid mass murderer who's got training in psychiatry, because it should yield fascinating results. He tells Hannibal about the recovered memory session, although he's skeptical. And he should be! Will's telling everyone that Hannibal is a monster, which means that Hannibal can respond, "Well, in that case, you're dining with a psychopathic murderer, Frederick."
A subway car full of people. A young black man has his hand on one of those poles you hold onto to keep from falling over, but he moves it when someone else caresses his hand. And if that weren't weird enough (which it is), the offscreen man says, "You have nice skin."
Washington DC at night. A car alarm goes off, so the guy with the nice skin comes outside and shuts it off. There's a plastic bag hanging out of the trunk. When he opens it, someone comes up behind him and the scene ends. I'm sure nothing super-gross happens, though. Don't worry about it.
Oh, wait. There's a montage of creepy images. Someone's cooking up some heroin and injecting it into someone else. And they're sewing up eyelids and spraying down with resin. That's kind of gross, I guess.
To the lab! When I wasn't recapping the show, I could get away with knowing them as "Scott Thompson" and "Not Scott Thompson," but I probably have to be more professional about things now. For my own reference, the one played by Scott Thompson is Dr. Jimmy Price, and the other one is Brian Zeller. They're working on the bodies from the beaver dam. The skin is hard, because they're coated with resin. Brian says all these victims disappeared from their homes with their vehicles. And they were found with lots of heroin in their systems. Their killer wants the bodies to look alive. There are also empty eyelets, so the bodies were mounted or presented or something. They wonder how many bodies their killer kept. The step in the investigation is to look for people who disappeared with their vehicles.
Dr. Katz is at the hospital to meet with Will. She's going behind Jack's back and has brought a file for Will to look at. It's nice that he still gets to work on cases even though the department thinks he's a serial killer. She shows him pictures of the six bodies that were found in the river, plus DMV pictures of other people who went missing in similar ways in the three neighboring states. Will considers them. Flip. Flip. Flip. Arrange. Arrange. Once he has them laid out nicely, he announces that it's a color palette.
An orderly, walking through the halls of the hospital. He brings a tray of food to Will. On this show, boring food the greatest insult. Will eats it with plastic utensils. He sees (or remembers seeing) Hannibal looming over him with a tube he slides down Will's throat. We see the tube's POV. Is Hannibal making foie gras out of Will? Hannibal sticks an ear into the tube and pokes it down into Will's stomach before he removes the tube. With the flashback over, Will starts coughing up his food and sees the ear on the tray. And then it's gone.
Jack enters the house where Will used to live. He takes off his silly sunglasses that look like Laurence Fishburne he kept them from the Matrix set and turns around. Winston the Dog is on the front porch. Jack tells Winston, "I suppose you blame me too, huh?" Later, Dr. Bloom comes in and joins the party while Jack and Winston are chilling on the bed. Winston seems like a good dog. He's very cheerful. The humans discuss the Will situation. Jack accepts that his judgment needed to be questioned, and that her report will help in Will's defense. But Will wants to blame Hannibal, which they don't think will be an effective defense. The plan seems to be to try to get Will to remember what he did so that he can accept it.
Will keeps fishing in his dreams. Or hallucinations or visions or whatever they are. Jack is on the shore. Hi, Jack! He's also outside Will's cell, so Jack has to return to reality. Although the hospital looks pretty depressing, so I think he ability to wish himself into a stream is a positive. Jack claims he's here to remind himself who Will was. Will says he was almost certain that Hannibal did this to him, but he had no evidence, not even a memory. But now he's recovered a memory, so he's sure he's on the right track. Jack says they've investigated Hannibal thoroughly and found nothing. Very early in the conversation, Jack snaps that he can't hear Will's stories about Hannibal anymore. Hey, you're the one who came to bother him, pal. In a brazen attempt to get into the episode promos, Will tells him, "I am not the intelligent psychopath you're looking for." Jack says, "Goodbye," which is not nearly as promo-ready. Will says Jack will eventually believe him. In, say, twelve weeks?
Hannibal looks at an empty chair in his office. His office looks great. This whole show looks great. Have you noticed how great this show looks? It's so...symmetrical.
A complete change of scene shows us some grain silos. I think. They might be some other kind of silo. They're giant round buildings on a farm, anyway.
The latest victim (the guy with nice skin) wakes up with his hand stuck to his face and his body all shellacked. This does not seem to please him. Also, he's surrounded by naked bodies. The face to him makes him scream. We pull out to see that he's sort of in the fetal position. And then we pull back farther to see lots more bodies around him. The bodies fill in the bottom of the silo in a complete circle. Was this guy the last piece? It seems weird to end with the guy in the middle, but I guess I've never had to fill a silo with preserved dead bodies.