Hannibal: Mukozuke Rewatch

April 3, 2015 9:08 AM - Season 2, Episode 5

Freddie Lounds finds Beverly's sectioned corpse; Will meets the copycat killer and orders him to kill Hannibal. Gideon overhears this and gives Alana the chance to save Will from becoming a murderer.

Beverly's death made so many people mad, but I thought her send off here was well-done. I didn't re-listen to the DVD commentary, but my recollection is that discussion of the fan reaction to her death dominates the commentary and is kind of a bummer to listen to.

However, the episode itself outside that context, I really liked both then and now. It feels like the first time they wholly ditch any procedural anything this season and nail it.

One thing I've always wondered and wonder again now is if Hannibal's little face mask meal was inspired by pictures of Will or not. I have to think they were, but my confidence in that thought sometimes wavers. The meal isn't described super specifically beyond it being kidney something or other. Speaking of which...

The script. One thing I did note is that while the sink is not given a name, the shot that gave rise to a couple of my favorite silly fan GIFs is directly there on the page.

There's no Cleolinda recaps from here on out as, unfortunately, other projects/concerns took up the time it took her to put them together.

posted by sparkletone (31 comments total)

Janice Poon talks a bit about the pastry mask in her food blog post for the episode.
posted by Stacey at 11:26 AM on April 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

So many red dragon callbacks(forwards?), check out the glint on those swimming goggles, visual nod to the mirrors Dolarhyde puts in victim's eyes.

There was some discussion I remember if siccing the copycat on Hannibal was part of Le a grand Seduction and I don't think so, based on what we see of Will when he's alone - he's really really wants Haniibal dead by any means necessary after being forced to endure Bev's crime scene ( that long slow unbuckling of his restrains always gets me) it's just that Hannibal decided to take this as a love letter and a sign that his Vampire transformation scheme is working on Will.

I also think Jack was in on it from the start, the instant Will got out of jail, but I'd have to Rewatch to figure out when it was plausible he joined Team Hannigram.

I mentioned this at the time, but I like how awful everyone looks upon hearing the bad news about Bev. Pretty much everyone looks utterly shattered, even Freddie ...even FREDDIE warns Jack not to look.

I hope we see more of the Copycat, he's got good abs acting ability in such a handful of scenes, he somehow manages to look greasy while in a pool, and I always thought his vanishing from the story was to set him up as a reveal later, sitting in the Lecter role as a mad man in a cage, another version of Lecter for the show (it's not just a motif, he's literally been creating little copies of himself for years! And he gets upset when they take credit for his kills! Vanity Hannibal, vanity will be your downfall.)
posted by The Whelk at 11:32 AM on April 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

Janice Poon talks a bit about the pastry mask in her food blog post for the episode.

I like this post more for the anecdote about Mads nailing the egg trick no problem. She does touch on the mask but doesn't quite answer my question which is more about in-universe reasons than the external ones. It's one of the more memorable dishes on the show though, I think, for all sorts of reasons.
posted by sparkletone at 11:33 AM on April 3, 2015

Yeah the face mask pastry literally has Bev on the brain, so to speak.

(While I don't think trying to kill Hannibal was part of Will's Grand Seduction plot I do think killing Beverly, and the way he displayed her publicly, was an deliberate attempt to gode Will to action. Like an experiment, or a 'If you really loved me you'd try to kill me if I killed your friend!' Logic pretzel he's always wandering into cause on this show sex is murder and murder is sex.)
posted by The Whelk at 11:35 AM on April 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

While I don't think trying to kill Hannibal was part of Will's Grand Seduction plot

I don't either. This is what he could think of to do from the position he was in. He takes Gideon's description of Hannibal to heart ("If you want him, you'll have to kill him") and decides that he's right, so he uses what he can. The seduction to me is born of two things: Gaining his freedom and the failure of his attempt here. If you want something done right, you'll have to do it yourself, etc, etc.

Side note: Eddie Izzard's delivery of that little "he's the devil" monologue is among my favorite moments of his appearances on the show (his snake-y conversation with Hannibal for Chilton's benefit is also a fantastically played scene). Nothing will top what is to come for Mr. Gideon, but the speech here always stuck with me as some of the cooler dialogue on the show. I should go look up some time if that description is pilfered from somewhere in Harris' books.
posted by sparkletone at 11:44 AM on April 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

I always thought that we don't get an emotional reaction out of Alana during the Emotional Reaction Montage, but actually, in the Breaking The News scene she gives a sidelong glance at Jack that is just filled with microdread. The sideways glances are Alana's characteristic tell and on rewatch I've been stunned at some of the moments when they appear. Since she's spent a lot of time in his kitchen, maybe she even knows he has a flash freezer.

You can connect the dots between that scene and Alana hopping in the sack with Hannibal in Futamono, and then talking about how funerals make you want sex. It always gets glossed over, with the help of Hannibal who changes the subject to be about Will, but both of them will have attended Beverly's funeral between the two episodes. It's a literal funeral she's referring to: going to Bev's funeral made her want to fuck Hannibal.

Will's gone dark, Alana hasn't. Go figure!

I'm deciding more and more that CD is one of the best actresses onscreen right now. OMG the DETAIL!!!!!!!
posted by tel3path at 11:51 AM on April 3, 2015

Izzard is really great in this role - he's properly run it in by season 2. I'm so glad we'll see him again in s3.
posted by tel3path at 11:52 AM on April 3, 2015

Izzard really turned the Sing-songy Hopkins Lecter voice into something of his own this season.


(Is anyone imitating the Manhunter movie Lecter - like very direct and rapid fire and dismissive?)
posted by The Whelk at 11:55 AM on April 3, 2015

No, and I think that the Brian Cox version of Lecter is very underrated.

At the time, it was fashionable to say Manhunter was better than SoTL. I wouldn't want to choose between them, and I think it's incredibly beautiful despite being really really 80s.
posted by tel3path at 12:09 PM on April 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

Presumably THIS Will Graham will never say "Daddy-O"
posted by The Whelk at 12:13 PM on April 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

Honestly yes about the cool dialogue. I know Gideon's supposed to be a cut-rate version of the real thing but he's so incredibly witty here.

You really start to care about the character for himself over these episodes, not for who else he represents.

Poor Gideon is such a pathetic figure. I feel so incredibly bad for him all the way through, and given that he's a priori a killer I doubt there's anything he could do to make me feel any less sorry for him.
posted by tel3path at 12:55 PM on April 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

And... to me, it's obvious that the kidney pie crust is inspired by the mask. I don't know how anyone could think it wasn't.

Is it the timeline? Consider maybe that Hannibal has an arrangement for Freddie to send him exclusives since S1E2? Either that, or he watched the scene from a distance.
posted by tel3path at 1:35 PM on April 3, 2015

Consider maybe that Hannibal has an arrangement for Freddie to send him exclusives since S1E2? Either that, or he watched the scene from a distance.

I think I frequently forget about/miss the shot of Hannibal on his iPad reading Will's interview, hence the uncertainty. Once you slot that in, it's obviously inspired because it's got the pictures Freddie took of Will at the crime scene all over it.
posted by sparkletone at 6:07 PM on April 3, 2015

I think that whole thing retconned the food port. For a lot of people.

I think it's also subversive to show someone dying a hero's death and failing.
posted by tel3path at 11:19 PM on April 3, 2015

Food porn

SwiftKey don't be the new autocorrect

I thought you were different
posted by tel3path at 11:20 PM on April 3, 2015

it's just that Hannibal decided to take this as a love letter and a sign that his Vampire transformation scheme is working on Will.

Well, he wasn't wrong exactly
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:21 PM on April 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think my the basic purpose was both to isolate Will and show him how alone he really was, otherwise the theater wouldn't have happened.

That this can happen and still nobody connects the dots, Jack drags Will in in the most humiliating circumstances possible and demands an professional opinion he doesn't want, it's the same thing all over again. Alana offers professional platitudes that recommend apathy and compliance while rubbing Will's face in his powerlessness, it's the same thing all over again.

The only one who isn't planning to carry on exactly as he was is Will, the others may not always like the status quo but they are committed to it, and would have defended it with their last breath.which would have come sooner than they thought.
posted by tel3path at 11:31 PM on April 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

Will's a revolutionary, so by definition he has to break rules and work outside the system to be effective. I think Jack was unhappily Co.fortable with a status quo of endlessly trying to catch a Ripper you never catch and it was having someone turn up alive that made him start to think outside the usual infinite cops and robbers loop.

Alana sees Hannibal crucified and supposedly her mind can't be expected to get past that image. But she also sees him hanged like Judas with Jack being the only thing going holding him up. I know why Jack and Alana ran to save Hannibal personally instead of calling the cops. For practical purposes having a cop and a doctor looking for a close personal associate who was in trouble should be the most effective, not to mention there must have been foots oldies we didn't see. Also it is to show that image of Jack being the only thing holding get Hannibal up, and also showing that apathy and compliance aren't good enough for Alana when it comes to a life she actually values. It shows her that she has to take action and pick a side and, in her own way, she does.
posted by tel3path at 11:49 PM on April 3, 2015

both of them will have attended Beverly's funeral between the two episodes

Am I right in thinking that we only see one funeral in the entire series, and that turns out to be a fake funeral for someone who isn't actually dead? That has to be deliberate, doesn't it? Seeing as how funerals and their oratory are such a convenient rhetorical device.
posted by Grangousier at 4:05 AM on April 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yes, you are right.
posted by tel3path at 5:06 AM on April 4, 2015

hit send too soon. Abigail's funeral is mentioned, and that she had three mourners. It is also mentioned that Bev will be buried with full honors. Both are examples of cruel irony, but again only one contained an actual dead person.

I think Freddie's funeral was important because it was important to have a grave for the dead to rise up out of. There's a whole thing about the dead rising up on the day of reckoning. There's also a thing about premature burial, I think; doctors burying their mistakes; nothing hidden that won't be revealed; return of the repressed; that sort of thing.

I guess all there was to bury at Abigail's funeral - not a memorial service, because the deceased has to be present for it to be a funeral - was the ear. I think it's pretty astounding that nobody asked the question of what could have happened to the rest of the body, they just assumed Will ate or otherwise used the entire rest of the body. Gee, we shoulda taken some stool samples.

After Miriam Lass returns you would think more people would be questioning the fact of Abigail's death. I can understand why Will doesn't - it's not the despair that gets you, it's the hope, and the pressure would have pushed him over the edge. But why did nobody else wonder about it?
posted by tel3path at 5:17 AM on April 4, 2015

And I remember this time last year when we were like "well, this means Hannigram sinks like a brick."

we thought we were wrong once in 1989, but we were right all along
posted by tel3path at 3:24 PM on April 4, 2015

it's just that Hannibal decided to take this as a love letter and a sign that his Vampire transformation scheme is working on Will.

Well, he wasn't wrong exactly

Here's something I don't think gets enough attention. Pretty much from this episode onward Will has to confront his emotional arc from season one - the fact that he killed GJH and knows he's, at the very least, physically capable of murder and this tears him up inside. Now, not only does he have to successfully pretend to enjoy killing to woo Hannibal (and do so in a way that looks like Hannibal is breaking down his defenses and might turn on him, I mean that's the kind of crazy dance with death that gives Hannibal heart eyes cause otherwise his life all ...Franklyn and his ilk. It's super screwed up Romance tropes all the way down.) he ALSO has to do this by employing the same X-Men Empath Skills that where just used to explain why he might be a serial-killer.

It's using all of Hannibal's tools against him, the deliberate manipulation of reality to ensnare someone and make them think it was their choice all along. No wonder he ends up growing stag horns or tearing himself out of a ravenstag - the most heartbreaking moment in the season is Will saying "Do you have a shadow?"
posted by The Whelk at 10:36 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

It gets attention, but always in the frame of "Will has gone dark and will be morally equivalent to Hannibal by the end of the season". That's victim blaming wrapped up in a kind of not-thought-out, faux pacifism and it really troubles me.
posted by tel3path at 10:51 AM on April 5, 2015

Man, I really loved Beverly and I was sad to see her go. But if you're going to kick the bucket in this show that's the way you do it: proactively try to take Hannibal out and then go down, guns blazing.
posted by brundlefly at 12:54 PM on April 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

Beverly was too good for this world.
posted by tel3path at 3:32 PM on April 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

THE LONG AWAITED CLEOLINDA RECAp/REWATCH
posted by The Whelk at 1:17 PM on April 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

The degree to which I'm finding I missed the all caps "PREVIOUSLY ON EMPATH AND CANNIBAL" is surprising(-ish).
posted by sparkletone at 8:34 PM on April 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

"Also, Hettienne Park revealed that she asked if Beverly could kick Hannibal in the balls on her way out, and nothing we saw precluded that from having happened. I'm just saying."

LOL. I'd completely forgotten about this. HEADCANON ACCEPTED.
posted by sparkletone at 8:38 PM on April 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

ALSO: I didn't notice just how MUCH Tucker is on screen in the background as Nurse Brown. Once you go back he's like in every possible scene he could be in.

Also, how Will mimics the person he's talking to-- like you see it obvious and a lot when he's using EMPATH POWERS or when he's using them against Hannibal, but also how much happens in small doses.

Also, clearly putting what I think some fans aren't getting - too everyone else at this point, all of Will's lowest lows and moral falls from grace look like "well that just confirms everything nasty we thought out him!" Guy can't win.
posted by The Whelk at 10:12 PM on April 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Interesting makeup thing: when Alana "casually" drops by to speak to Will, you can clearly see they've put false eyelashes on her. Never noticed them doing that before.

What does it mean? nobody knows.

(the eyelashes are people)
posted by tel3path at 2:48 AM on June 1, 2015