Hannibal: Sorbet Recap

This episode finally shows us more of what we want to see – Hannibal being Hannibal.

Well, it sort of shows us Hannibal being Hannibal. In the sense that people die. People get turned into food. And other people get fed that food in a scene reminiscent of the orchestra board scene in Red Dragon. But we’ll get to that.

The episode starts with Will talking his students through the Baltimore Ripper case and it’s particulars. They talk about the murders and how they generally happen in threes, how organs are always missing, and how the brutalization is generally a consistent, theatrical aspect of the killings. Jack, of course, comes in at the very moment Will starts talking about Miriam Lass. So he gets to go angst in a corner after, I’m sure. I wonder if it’s normal practice for literally all of the lectures to be about current cases. That’s all Will seems to talk about in his classes anyway.

When we shift to Hannibal, he’s at an opera concert or something. He’s watching a woman sing and literally tearing up a bit. Hannibal really does love his music. Luckily for this woman, too, she’s very good at what she does and she doesn’t wind up dinner like the crappy piccolo player in Red Dragon. Awkwardly, while he’s watching this performance, Franklin – the blubbery patient from episode one – is there creepily watching him along with his friend, Tobias. Hannibal tries to ignore him and talks with his opera friends when Franklin comes up and gets all awkwardly clingy and what not. Dude, you are so going to wind up on the dinner table… Which, speaking of dinner, this one lady is so upset with Hannibal for not inviting her and their friends over for dinner any more. He hasn’t in forever. Does no one else realize that he hasn’t invited them over since the last Ripper murders? Do people not understand he’s feeding them people? I know that we as the audience all already know this but still.

Jack, done angsting in the corner, is now having nightmares about the whole Ripper case and all it’s particulars. Particularly the phone calls from the previous episode and Miriam Lass’s arm. Seriously, though. Where has Hannibal been keeping her/her body because that arm didn’t look like it had been decomposing some place for a year. I get that he didn’t want to humiliate her like he did the other victims by displaying them and mutilating them but still. Hannibal. You gotta do something with that arm. Luckily, the disembodied arm calling him is a dream and Jack wakes up to his actual phone ringing. After which he wakes up Will because misery loves company and they go to some crime scene or another.

Zeller is convinced it’s the Ripper. Jack is, too. Obviously. He’s obsessed. But Will isn’t too sure. He doesn’t see a body displayed in a hotel bathroom like an urban legend of organ thieves. He sees the body of a man that someone tried to save, a botched back alley surgery that went wrong. He is also quite aware that Jack doesn’t want to let up on getting him into the field because he wants Will to get just as embroiled in the whole Ripper case as he is so that he can’t stop and go back to his classes until he’s caught the Ripper. Which, once again, is probably a bad idea. Because the feathered buck? It’s not only invading Will’s dreams but also his imagination process. While reconstructing the scene in this case he saw the buck again. Yet another way that we see him slowly losing it. Or I guess not so slowly losing it. It’s pretty obvious.

I mean, the guy is attending therapy sessions with Hannibal “unofficially” on a very regular basis. Though before Will sees Hannibal, Hannibal sees Franklin. Who apparently is now stalking him and following him around as he buys cheese and things. Seriously, though. This dude? He’s going to wind up food. Because Hannibal? He’s a sociopath who likes eating people. Which his own psychiatrist – Gillian Anderson – cannot seem to tell. She sees that he’s been wearing a ‘human suit’ the entire time they have known each other. She is a kind of weird character. I’m not sure what she sees in Hannibal or doesn’t see. She isn’t his friend – she’s his psychiatrist. And he’s been seeing her ever since he decided to give up surgery which I’m assuming is because he needed to know what a real psychiatrist did and also so that he knew he could hide just how crazy he was. But apparently he can’t quite hide it? She’s just like, “Look, you have a very well created version of yourself that you talk to me through and I just hope that what I say gets through to the part of you that needs help.” So. I don’t know.

One of the scenes that leads to one of the best bits later in the episode, though, is with Will in Hannibal’s office talking. And Hannibal says to Will that maybe this organ harvester isn’t really an organ harvester but he’s a cover for the Ripper to go about his own series of murders.

Which is apparently Hannibal realizing that is exactly what he can use this as because it sparks a memory of some insurance guy who pissed him off who he ultimately looks up, kills, brutalizes, steals some organs from, and then poses in parts on a school bus. Because of course he did. Did you know that at one point Hannibal posed a victim in a church pew using his own tongue as a page marker? Yeah. Anyway. The murder super confuses Will and the others because this is the Ripper. But the organ harvester isn’t. Then they think maybe its’ two people working together and that it’s always been two people working together…

Meanwhile Hannibal is quite happy. He’s cooking at home. Hanging with Alana. Sorta bromancing slash romancing her. I mean, he brewed her beer in a wine barrel. Because he loves wine. And she loves beer. She starts talking about things that she tastes in the beer and is like, “What else is that I taste?” And he’s like, “I’ll only answer that yes or no.” IS IT PEOPLE, HANNIBAL? DID YOU FERMENT PEOPLE? I mean, seriously, though. It’s probably people.

Anyway. They talk about Will a bit and how Alana never talks to Hannibal about him because she doesn’t want to know things about him that he doesn’t tell her. She also says that she knew Miriam Lass and helped her with her profiling. Except the week that Miriam was killed Hannibal had her looking at PhD candidates instead. Sneak, Hannibal. He didn’t want to have to kill poor Alana if she got to close I am assuming. Apparently all those candidates thought that Hannibal and Alana were having an affair and when he jokingly asks why the didn’t she answered that he was already having an affair. Which is apparently what people thought his going off in secret to murder people was I am guessing? Hannibal is sort of hinting flirtatiously about her and Will and is kind of gauging where that whole thing is going. Clearly she’s into him because she is really protective of him but I sort of think she realizes that it’s just not going to happen or, if it did, it wouldn’t go well. Still.

Jack meanwhile hallucinates a dead Will whose missing is harm (like Miriam) and it’s super creepy.

That said, Hannibal has the best time of his life in what is like the funniest montage ever. He just starts going through his rolodex looking at business cards of people who were rude to him. He pulls one business card, then he pulls a recipe from his recipe box, and then there’s organs in his kitchen being prepared for dinner. Pulls another card, another recipe, bam. More organs. Back at the FBI they are like “OMG WHERE ARE ALL THESE ORGANS GOING!?” Because some of the stuff that Hannibal is taking to eat are organs you don’t usually harvest for illegal transplants. So they keep going with the theory of there being two killers and such but no one seems to be able to figure out why or what’s going on. Even though Zeller actually makes a joke about the intestines of one person being missing meaning that the Ripper is making sausage. AFTER WHICH WE GET A SCENE OF HANNIBAL MAKING SAUSAGE. (Will, hate to say it, your dogs? They ate people, too. So did you. So did everyone.)

Hannibal just seems so happy. There is one time, though, he doesn’t seem happy. Will misses his appointment. Franklin was in with him being creepery and stalkery and then after that he had Will scheduled. It’s pretty clear that he enjoys talking with Will and probably enjoys dicking around with him. And tardiness is rude and Hannibal? Doesn’t like rudeness. He looks in the waiting room, checks his watch, checks his date book… then he apparently drives the like hour and a half from Baltimore to the FBI building where he finds Will hallucinating while sort of  asleep with his eyes open. Imaging himself and Abigail – with Will playing the part of Garrett Jacob Hobbs – chilling around the dead girls body on the  stag head. Then Hannibal wakes him up and he’s just, you know, clearly messed up.

But then they get to have some fun looking at crime scene photos from the Ripper murders while Will makes disturbing comments about stopping sleeping all together and things that should worry  psychiatrist. Beverly Katz figures out how the organ harvester is moving bodies – he’s using an ambulance. They figured out that he was probably some kind of medical professional and EMT/Paramedic fits. So they track down the ambulance with Hannibal tagging along because why not invite some random civilian along? It’s a good thing they do, though. Because when they catch up with the guy in his ambulance he’s got his hand in someone’s body trying to cut out his kidney and Hannibal is the only one that can keep this guy from dying. You go, Hannibal!

Also, can someone please tell Jack he’s not Morpheus? Every time he goes out into the field he’s wearing this dark black trench coat and toting around this big ass shot gun. C’mon, man. Laurence. Give it up.

Our last little bit of Hannibal for this week is a very happy Hannibal preparing a big dinner party for all of his friends with all the organs from all the people killed over the past week or so while pretending it was this other guy. He’s hired some people to help him cook and prepare and he’s got all these people over. Will actually comes over, too, but doesn’t stay for dinner. He brings Hannibal a bottle of wine as thanks for inviting him but he decides not to stay and be awkward social company. Which is good for him because these people are about to chow down on like six people or something. Including Alana. Oh, Alana…

Next week, things are going to get intense, though.

Hannibal has a serial killer-off with some other guy and Will and Alana might figure out just how far they are willing to go…

Seriously, though. It looks like it’ll be awesome. I’m hoping the viewership on the show will go up next week because while I LOVED this weeks’ montage of Hannibal picking people to kill and then preparing their organs for his fancy dinner it was still a pretty low key episode for most people. I think most people want to see more action and more killing and stuff. So, next week hopefully will have a bit more violent fan service.

And either way we should find out the fate of the show in the next week. I’m praying for a renewal here because seriously. This show. My feelings. Will. (Though if the show doesn’t get renewed maybe Will’s dogs will survive.)