Hannibal: Takiawase Recap [Spoilers]

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU0G8nfAaOM]

Hannibal: Takiawase (2×04)

Synopsis: Things get serious, we probably lose one of our own, and bees?

Rating: ★★★★☆

I want to give this episode zero stars only because I’m so damn sad after how it ended.  Instead, it gets four starts for answering questions and giving us some hope that maybe things will work out for Will even if that hope is short-lived. Please for get the unintentional pun because I almost just made myself cry. Much in the ambiguous way that Abigail disappeared from our lives another character will sadly slip away from us. Except, you know, ‘slip away’ probably isn’t so much the right phrase as would be ‘torn from us kicking and screaming.’ Ugh, all the feels.

Speaking of Abigail, this episode also starts out pretty sad. We all knew from Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram that Abigail was coming back this season in some shape. They had shown pictures of the actress in wading gear with fishing tackle and after the first episode explained how Will escapes into his mind I think it was pretty obvious she was going to come back as a figment of his imagination. But it’s so sad. Heartbreaking, really. Will and Abigail talk about fishing and baiting this intelligent psychopath and he talks about laying traps and setting out bait. He then tells her that when you’re fly fishing it’s good luck to name your bait after someone who means a lot to you. So with those two sentences in mind, just imagine how heartbreaking it is for will to say that he named his bait Abigail.

The rest of the episode takes on four very distinct subplots: our ‘killer of the week,’ Will and Chilton, Hannibal and Bella, and  lastly Beverley Katz.

The ‘Killer of the Week’

I’m going to start here because I’m less emotionally invested in this part of the episode despite how great it was. While everyone else is dealing with feels elsewhere, Jack and the crime scene guys go out to investigate a body they found that was largely incased in honey comb. The victim’s eyes were gouged out and he had been lobotomized so when he collapsed dead after wandering around aimlessly like a zombie or something the bees were just like, “Hey, why not?” The local cops were supposed to kill the bees but in some of the most character development either of these guys have gotten beyond their borderline slapstick routine half the time, Jimmy Price apparently loves bees.

The bee thing isn’t really out of left field. Both Scott Thompson and Aaron Abrams were bumped up to ‘regular’ cast from just ‘reoccuring’ last season so the show is clearly trying to do their characters justice. I’m totally cool with it, too, because these guys are hysterical and Jimmy Price at least is an important canon character.

So, anyway, they do their little investigation thing and another body turns up. Except this body? It’s not dead. And unlike Jack and the boys the viewer knows the whole story. All they know is that this guy with no eyes and a lobotomy just stood staring at the sun in a park full of kids until his face started burning off. We, on the other hand, know that that what happened was that his doctor – who was seeing him for constant arthritis pain – decided to get a little unorthodox with her pain management procedures. She later explains this all to the crime scene guys when they find her. She did it with the best intentions, according to her. She just wanted to stop their pain.

Jimmy – for some reason – looks totally thrilled the entire time, by the way. Like he’s trying to keep from smiling and sort of failing. They even bond over bees! Though, when she asks him if he tried the honey he denies it and she admits she really couldn’t bring herself to either. But you know what? I bet he totally tried the honey.

A little out of place in the grander scheme of things, the ‘killer of the week’ format works better when it’s some how relevant to the characters and over all plot development. The silo killer, for example, became important. Sadly bee lady did not. And while the story gave a brief reprieve from the rest of the episode it almost seemed a bit distracting. Not that I cared because I love Jimmy and Brian and I want them to have all the screen time.

Will and Chilton

Back in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Will is continuing to serve time for someone else’s crimes. He knows who did it but he still doesn’t know exactly how Hannibal did it. When Beverley looking for evidence elsewhere, Will decides to work with what he has – Chilton. Everyone knows that Will is a ‘topic of interest’ among the psychology community and Chilton has him right under his thumb. Well, sort of. People expect him to have insights anyway and since so far Will has been largely under the care of Hannibal (again, sort of) and ignoring Chilton he doesn’t really have anything for them at all.

It’s actually quite a stunning scene, their first little conversation. Chilton doesn’t buy into the innocent Will theory at all and instead sees him for what he thinks he is: a charming, focused, and ruthless. That’s how Will acts around him, anyway, he says. “The psychopath triumvirate,” he calls it. That’s what Will knows he needs and wants to see and so that’s how Will gets Chilton to work with him.

Will makes him a deal: he’ll talk to Chilton and administer whatever tests he wants in order to become the first and foremost expert on Will Graham’s crazy if he’ll tell Hannibal that Will is now under his care and only his care and not discuss their sessions with him. It’s less of a bait for Chilton, then, than it is for Hannibal. Sociopaths do tend to hate losing control of what is theirs.

If you thought maybe Will would toy with Chilton you’re wrong. He let’s Chilton do what he needs to do which includes using ‘truth inducing’ drugs. There’s a name for it. I don’t remember what it is and it doesn’t really matter. The drugs make Will remember things. Mostly he remembers times he was alone with Hannibal and the things he did to him. He injected him with drugs that made him hallucinate, encouraged his seizures and black outs. Chilton gets what he wants and Will gets what he wants, too: insight into his own troubled, foggy memories. When Will tells Chilton what Hannibal did while under the influence of the drugs even he seems a bit put off by the unorthodox methods Hannibal allegedly used. Which is largely because Chilton can see the evidence that what Will is saying Hannibal did treatement-wise is actually probably true.

Hannibal does, of course, show up to see Will and claims he didn’t get Chilton’s note that their appointment had been cancelled.  Chilton kind of awkwardly tries to explain that he can’t see Will and tells him that his diagnosis of Will is changing. He also tells him why and then accuses Hannibal of manipulating Will as part of his therapy which is exactly what Chilton did with Eddie Izzard’s character, Dr. Gideon. He tells Hannibal that they have to “stick together.” Though, from the look on Hannibal’s face, that’s probably the last thing he wants. Hannibal isn’t the sort of guy that seems like he wants to be in the debt of someone like Chilton.

Later, Will’s journey into his own mind continues as he dreams about the night he came to Hannibal’s house sick and crazed. Except he is not himself – he’s an outside observer. He watches as Hannibal and Dr. Gideon talk, watches himself have a seizure, and puts two and two together based on Gideon and Hannibal’s words to realize that Hannibal isn’t just the intelligent psychopath but also the Chesapeake Ripper. Dun dun dunnnnnnn,

Hannibal and Bella

In other depressing news, Bella is still dying. Jack convinced her to try chemotherapy but it’s not working. She is very much dying. Hannibal is still counseling her but I’m not exactly sure how well it’s working considering how thrilled she seems by the idea of committing suicide instead of suffering her way through the rest of this inevitable decline. He doesn’t really help, either, by telling her that he takes comfort in the idea of death and then glorifying death all philosphically and shit. C’mon, Hannibal. Who are you helping here?

I mean, obviously himself.

Jack would be devestated if Bella died. There’s actually a very cute little scene of them at home with Bella smoking medicinal marijunana (is that even legal in Virginia, Maryland, or DC?) and Jack taking a hit. It’s just funny because she’s using a medical ‘bong’ and remarking that it’s a lot different than the last time she had done it and then asking Jack if he still gets drug tested at work before letting him have it anyway. I was kind of hoping we’d get more cute Jack and Bella before dealing with angst.

Of course, then Bella does decide to try and commit suicide. She goes to Hannibal’s office and injects all of the morphine she had at home so she’d overdose. She tells him she did it there instead of at home so Jack didn’t have to find her and sit with her body. Then she gives him a coin as thanks and sort of drifts off. Hannibal watches for a moment, flips the coin, and then takes action to save her life. In the hospital he returns the coin and she smacks the shit out of him which is impressive considering she just overdosed, she has terminal cancer, and she is bedridden.

But, while she’s pissed off, Jack is undoubtedly indebted to him.

Beverly Katz

Hannibal needs Jack to be on his side because people are meddling still in things they should not be meddling in. Well, Beverly is meddling in things she shouldn’t be meddling in and it’s all thanks to Will. He asks her to re-evaluate the silo killer’s body and look for some hidden clue left behind by the killer who put him in his own mural of bodies. Even though she says they looked over it extensively Will asks for her to look again because the killer left some sort of signature. Subtle but still damning. She agrees but refuses to implicate Hannibal in any way.

She even asks for Hannibal’s help when looking at the body again which is the stupidest thing she could have ever done OMG Beverly why would you even do that!? He even tells her she’s starting to sound like Will Graham.

After investigating the body with Lecter, she returns to the body again after something Zeller says off handedly while looking at another body. She realizes that the stitches keeping the body in the mural were hiding other stitches – stitches sewing up the man’s abdomen after his kidney had been removed.

Ugh, Beverly. Baby. Why? Why didn’t you just figure this out on your own? Why did you let Hannibal know you were doing this?

That’s exactly what Will wants to know, too. She basically told Hannibal that even though she’s not on to him she’s at the very least humoring Will. Which means she could stumble upon the truth sooner than later. If Bedalia was a target, you better believe you are now, too, Beverley. Will begs her to stay away from him after that because he realizes just what kind of danger she’s in. He even tells her that he suspects that Hannibal is the Chesapeake Ripper and that the surgical trophies he’s taken were later eaten.

Which, of course, leads Beverly to investigate even further. Instead of, you know, STAYING AWAY FROM HANNIBAL LECTER. She goes to Hannibal’s house and breaks in to rummage through his kitchen in search of evidence. She finds nothing in the main refrigerator but then she jimmies here way into the back room (where Jack ran for safety in the first episode) where she finds what looks like sealed organs in air tight bags. She’s about to investigate those when she spills a glass of wine Hannibal left out at some point and discovers a secret room beneath the house. We don’t know what she sees down there but it freaks her out. There are chains and stuff in the background so… yeah.

Beverly said it best. Watch last night’s #Hannibal on demand. pic.twitter.com/AK2sVX1vQR

— Hannibal (@NBCHannibal) March 22, 2014

She turns the lights on and then hen she turns around to see Hannibal. Sadly, she waits too long. He turns the lights off again before she can fire and the last thing we hear as the camera returns to the main floor is a couple gunshots and a round piercing the floor before we cut to the next episode preview.

Is there a chance Beverly is still alive?

You never know.

What could she have seen down below the house? Maybe she saw whatever remained of Miriam Lass, Jack’s Clarice Starling-esque trainee that we learned about during the first season who discovered Hannibal’s secret. All we saw him do was make her pass out and when he delivered the arm it was pretty well preserved. What if it wasn’t frozen as suspected but instead she’s a live down there? It’s not Hannibal’s style, I admit, but I’m latching on to whatever hope I can find that maybe Beverly isn’t a corpse some place hidden away where no one will find her. Or, you know, hidden in plain sight on the dinner table.

I thought maybe Beverly, Jack, Jimmy, and Alanna were safe because they all appear in Red Dragon but nope. No one is safe it seems.

Also, can we talk about how much I hate the Hannibal Twitter and Tumblr sometimes? They mock my pain!

NO! THIS IS A COMPLETE #KATZTASTROPHE! pic.twitter.com/yoK0t16nRr

— Hannibal (@NBCHannibal) March 22, 2014

At least next episode Will gets a new friend?

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L66I-iVpwRo]