‘Hannibal’ 1×02 — Amuse Bouche
Will Graham is already having difficulties coping with everything. At the end of last week he killed the suspect, Garrett Jacob Hobbs and now while in the shooting range he kept firing thinking it was the suspect again.
The Episode:
Will and Jack go to Garret Jacob Hobbs’ cabin in Chippewa National Forrest, Minnesota to learn more about the man Will recently killed. There are still seven bodies unaccounted for which must be found. The attic is full of antlers, which fully explains the antler velvet on the body they found last week. Abigail Hobbs, the daughter of Garrett the killer, is also a possible suspect despite Will’s insistence that she wasn’t a party to any of it. While looking in the attic they find a curly red hair. Who’s could it be? A redhead is uploading photos of the crime scene to her computer and adding them to her site, tattlecrime.com. I guess that’s our answer, but who is she?
Will Graham is welcomed into his next seminar with a round of applause before being asked by Jack to come solve cases once again and get a psych eval with Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Will claims therapy doesn’t work on him, but ends up in Hannibals office anyway. After signing to say Will is fit for the field, Hannibal and Will get into more candid conversations about orphaning Abigail.
Some kids are going through the woods and come across a field with human arms sticking out with needles in their hands. That’s possibly the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. When they uncover the bodies, there are mushrooms growing through them. I hated mushrooms before and that definitely didn’t make me like them any more. Will starts doing his thing but is interrupted when he sees Hobbs’ body in one of the graves until the actual body in that grave grabs his arm. He’s still alive, but died later on route to the hospital. The redhead, Freddie Lounds (Lara Jean Chorostecki, Antiviral), convinces a detective to tell her about the case by pretending to be one of the boy’s mothers. Later, we learn all the victims died of kidney failure and had sugar water in their catheters. Will realizes all the victims were diabetics and the killer must have access to their medications which he changed to put them in the diabetic comas.
Seeing Hobbs’ again makes Will go back to Hannibal to confront the problem and we discover Lounds is listening on the other side of a door before being welcomed in by Hannibal. She’s interviewing psychiatrists but Hannibal immediately sees through her ruse asking for her purse. He has her delete the recorded conversations then says one of the creepiest lines of the episode: “You’ve been terribly rude Ms Lounds, what’s to be done about that?” as he looks her up and down. It looks like he just wants to eat her, which he probably does, to be honest.
The FBI a little too quickly figure out who the killer is as they bring SWAT in to find the pharmacist Eldon Stammets. He isn’t there, but they rush out to his car which has a woman in the back covered in soil who’s still alive. On Stammets’ computer they find the tattlecrime.com website open to the article about this case and Will’s involvement. They go to Lounds’ apartment to scare her into stopping her reports. She stands up to them, won’t tell her the specific source, although people saw her talking to the cop earlier, and then Jack takes one of her hairs (is that even legal?) threatening to arrest her for obstructing justice if she writes about Will again. As Brian Zeller cuts her ties he whispers that she used him for information. WOAH, now that’s a twist for an extra storyline! Definitely an intriguing arc I hope they keep up with, because I’d love for Aaron Abrams to get some more air time on this show. The next day, she comes out of her apartment to find the cop waiting for her. She tells him that if he’s fired she’ll get him a job at a private security firm, indicating she’s got others fired before, but before he can respond he gets shot by Stammets. Stammets then gets Lounds to tell him everything she knows about Will Graham.
We find Will sleeping in Abigail’s room again. When he wakes up Alana Bloom is reading to Abigail and then her and Will discuss how he saved her life. There’s something about their conversation which makes me think they’ll try to add in a romance between the two later. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but so far it’s cute. When Will gets a call from Jack later about Stammets coming to bury Abigail, he runs back to her room to find her missing. Running around the hospital he finally finds her and shoots Stammets in the arm to stop him before getting a speech about why Stammets has been killing: to connect everyone.
Later, Will is back in Hannibal’s office trying to figure out all of this. Hannibal explains it isn’t Hobbs that is haunting Will, but the fact that it feels good when killing someone so devoid of morals. Although initially denying the “sprig of zest” Hannibal claims he must feel, he later admits to enjoying killing Hobbs.
My Thoughts:
This is the first episode where we’ve seen the title sequence. To be honest, I thought it was lame. I definitely would have preferred a simple title plate and the actors listed on screen afterward during the show.
When Hannibal and Jack sit down for a classy dinner cooked by Hannibal it’s definitely suspicious. They have pork loin (but is it really pork) with a red sauce over top, just to make the minds of the audience go directly to to cannibalism. As Jack discusses meals with his wife and bad ones with his mother, Hannibal delivers my favourite line of the episode: “Well next time bring your wife, I’d love to have you both for dinner.” It’s so normal of a comment, but from Hannibal it’s completely creepy and spectacular. Mads Mikkelsen is doing a wonderful job of Hannibal.
The next episode ‘Potage’ airs on Thursday, April 18 at 10/9c on NBC in America and CityTV in Canada.