Hannibal, Season 2 – “Mukozuke”

No, Hannibal won’t be on the run, not for awhile yet. And no, as I asked last week, Beverly won’t go missing. Instead, her dead body will be displayed in the most glorious of fashions, a way in which only this show can do.

Hannibal certainly takes pride in how he presents his victims, both their bodies and as a main course, but is there a correlation between the elaborateness of the presentations and how much he respected the victim as an individual? For example, the judge display a couple episodes ago, was elaborate, but it was also public and pretty blunt. Hannibal clearly took his time with Beverly, requiring her body to be frozen before slicing her up into strips of bacon. And he also made sure to place her in a less public place, giving Freddie Lounds a heads up so as to get the mess cleaned up before a spectacle was made of Beverly.

“Mukozuke” opened with a contrast between Will Graham’s breakfast and the breakfast Hannibal was serving Jack Crawford and himself. Representing the spoils of war, because Hannibal and Graham are at war, one would suspect that Hannibal is winning. However, given the disadvantage from which Graham is operating, and the success that he’s having, he clearly has the upperhand, but his options are getting scarce. Given this fact and that he has an “admirer,” calling in the journalist with questionable ethics, Freddie Lounds, makes perfect sense.

Who was happy to finally see Graham in the infamous Silence of the Lambs mask and restraints? Everyone, have a round of shots.

Graham was put into such a medieval apparatus in order to transport him to the observatory where Beverly was displayed. Once on the scene, Crawford released Graham and left him alone with Beverly, allowing Graham to do his recreation thing:

I strangle her, looking her in the eye, she knows me and i know her.
I freeze her, and slice her.
I will leave no evidence, but she found something, she found me.

When Crawford returns, he states (but it’s more of a question), “It’s the Chesapeake Ripper.” Graham is elusive when Crawford asks directly to know who the Ripper is, telling Crawford that Beverly was “looking for a connection between the copycat and the Ripper… she found something.” In the end, Crawford needs to make his own connections. It might seem crazy that Graham wouldn’t out Hannibal as the Ripper, but he already knows that people won’t believe that, which is why they have to make that conclusion for themselves.

Dr. Abel Gideon made an important return this week, meeting with Graham, Hannibal, and Dr. Bloom. For the immediate episode, the meeting with Bloom was most important. From it, she learned that Graham had plans to kill Hannibal, which led to her and Crawford’s finding and saving Hannibal from the orderly.

Previously, acting as the orderly’s “little birdie” just as Hannibal was Gideon’s little birdie when he was sent to kill Bloom at her house, Graham sent the orderly to kill Hannibal. In his meeting with the orderly, who was responding to Graham’s disguised request to meet with him via Freddie’s website, we learned that the orderly was responsible for killing the bailiff, but not the judge.

Miscellaneous observations:

-What was the symbolism when Graham dreamed that antlers were growing out of his back, not long after hallucinating the Hannibal-buck as he recreated Beverly’s crime scene? Is he thinking that he’s becoming that entity?
-Is the abundant reference to nature (the buck, the little birdies, the hawks teaming up) meant to mirror the violence in man? Or is it a contrast of the peaceful with man’s violence?
-Graham lets Dr. Chilton know that he knows Chilton talked to Hannibal about him since asking Chilton not to do so. What’s the purpose of this? What is Graham’s plan with Chilton?
-Will Hannibal’s next victim be Freddie Lounds since her contact with Graham led to his near demise?
-It was interesting that Graham sees Hannibal as this buck-like creature and then the orderly uses a tranquilizer dart on Hannibal to capture him and set him up in the kill room.
-Since Jimmy and Brian discovered that the kidney inside Beverly belonged to James Gray (the muralist), where will her kidney show up? (If you saw the teaser to next week’s episode, you might have some ideas.)

Rock Hard \m/