Hannibal Season 1, Episode 7
"Sorbet"
Original airdate: May 9, 2013
Writer: Jesse Alexander, Bryan Fuller
Director: James Foley
Cast: Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen, Laurence Fishburne, Caroline Dhavernas, Gillian Anderson
Now that Jack Crawford has renewed his hunt for the Chesapeake Ripper, he is particularly unwilling to stop. Last week's episode focused largely on the arc of Hannibal as a killer and his willingness to psychologically manipulate and dismantle his "friends" at the FBI. This week, we get to see the aftermath of that dismantling, as Jack attacks the problem head on, bull-in-a-china-shop style.
First, though, we must take a quick trip to the opera. Hannibal, always the cultured one, is taking in a show, and we see a side of Lecter we've never seen before. He gets lost in the aria, carried away by the singer and her voice, but it's not just staid aesthetic appreciation. He has tears in his eyes. This is a rare moment when Lecter's cool exterior opens just enough to allow us a glimpse of some warmth, a warmth that's quickly snuffed out by the arrival of his tedious patient, Franklyn (Dan Fogler), who we met early in the series as a patient Lecter seems barely able to tolerate.
But this time they're not meeting at Hannibal's office. At a cocktail reception following the performance, Franklyn approaches Hannibal while he's in the midst of entertaining some wealthy, powerful friends. Hannibal is clearly overcome with annoyance, barely able to contain a simmering anger, and Franklyn makes it worse by telling everyone he's Hannibal's patient, something the doctor was quite clearly hoping to keep quiet. After the fireworks of "Entree," "Sorbet" ups the ante by not just showing us Hannibal gearing up for a fresh set of kills, but revealing his particular method of victim selection. He, as with virtually every incarnation of the character, deplores rudeness, and this moment is so expertly scripted that for a moment we, too, wish poor Franklyn was dead.
Franklyn will have to wait his turn, though, because Jack and the team just found a body in a hotel bathtub (another The Shining homage!) that Jack hopes is a fresh Ripper victim. If it is, it means his gambit with Abel Gideon and Freddie Lounds worked, but Will's barely glanced at the crime scene before concluding that this is not a ripper victim. This kill has the look of an accident, while the Ripper is a "consistently theatrical" killer who'd rather put on a show than simply draw blood and bolt.
Jack's frustrated, but even this wound up he's able to try and give Will at least the illusion of some control over how he investigates. Will's not fooled. He knows Jack's been thoroughly rattled by the return of Miriam Lass's disappearance in his life, and he knows that Jack will do everything in his power to close the case, even if it means steamrolling right through the rule of law. Angry and scared that Will might be right, Jack asks his profiler how he sees the Ripper, and Will gives one of his best speeches on the show.
"I see him as one of those pitiful things sometimes born in hospitals," he says. "They feed it, keep it warm, but they don't put it on the machines. They let it die. But he doesn't die. He looks normal. And nobody can tell what he is."
Nobody, of course, but those of us watching, which is part of the delicious fun of this particular stretch of episodes in Hannibal. Jack and Will stay in the dark, but "Sorbet" in particular seems determined to shed more and more light on Hannibal's inner life. In a regular session with Franklyn, Hannibal tries to set boundaries, only for his patient to steam right over them while rambling on about his parasocial relationship with Michael Jackson. It's rare that we see Hannibal so profoundly uncomfortable, so ready to crawl right out of his skin, but still, he resists killing one of his patients.
Instead, Hannibal takes a trip to his own therapist, and we meet one of Hannibal's best guest stars. Gillian Anderson arrives as Dr. Bedelia du Maurier, a retired psychiatrist who nevertheless still sees Hannibal, simply because she finds him interesting. She also understands him better than anyone, better even than Will. In a very revealing bit of their conversation, she deduces that Hannibal wears a "very well-tailored person suit," or, at least, a "human veil." Hannibal, against all odds, doesn't snap back, but tries to defend himself. He talks about his friends, then makes the mistake of calling Bedelia one of his friends. Just as Hannibal did with Franklyn, she puts him in his place, and makes it clear their relationship is a professional one, even if they do share the occasional glass of wine.
This, coupled with Hannibal's insecurity over how much press his would be copycat killer was getting last episode, is a tremendous insight into the ego of this man, and how it's not only possible, but quite easy to wound him with the right approach. Mikkelsen plays it with extraordinary subtlety, never losing that sense that Hannibal could strike like a snake at any moment in one of these scenes. Yet he holds back, lets the emotion impact him. Meanwhile, Will's back at the lab explaining to students that the Chesapeake Ripper sees the humans he is killing not as people, but as pigs. It's a stirring, remarkably deft juxtaposition.
Now, because Hannibal is extremely extra despite his cool demeanor, he has to go and do two things at once: Take out his anger and prove that he's kind of a big deal and people know him. To do the former, he gets out his rolodex, which happens to be filled with the business cards of people who've been rude to him over time, from a doctor to a rare books dealer. To do the latter, he harvests the organs of these victims – five in all – and stocks his freezer for what will go down in history as a legendary dinner party. With his larder full of human parts and his mind full of wonderful new memories, Hannibal returns to his element: The kitchen. He prepares everything from crumbled "lambs" brains to a "pig" heart wrapped in pancetta and roasted, then invites all of his wealthy friends over for what's bound to be one of the social events of the season in Baltimore. It's the perfect way to boost his ego, put him back on top of the entire grand game.
And to prove it, Hannibal begins pulling at the strands which bond Alana and Will, inviting Alana over while he's preparing for dinner to, essentially, being courting her. She's clearly always had at least an admiration for him, and now he's just shy of lovebombing her, revealing that he's brewed her a private stock of beer and asking her why they didn't sleep together when she was a grad student and he was her advisor. We're naturally inclined to believe it's devious on Hannibal's part, because we've seen how he operates, but the way Mikkelsen and Dhavernas play the scene also conveys genuine chemistry, second only to Mikkelsen's chemistry with Dancy as Will. Hannibal is a show designed to constantly pull you in more than one emotional direction, and to do it so effectively that you won't realize you're rooting for a monster until it's too late. This is yet another brilliant piece of that expanding puzzle.
But Hannibal also has a date with Will, who misses his latest appointment with Lecter. Concerned, rather than simply calling, Lecter goes looking for his boyfriend — I mean colleague — and finds him still at his desk at the academy, staring off into space. He's hallucinating a father-daughter meeting with Abigail Hobbs, but it's the hallucinating part that's really important here. Hannibal's already sensed something interesting happening in Will's brain, and now it seems to be in full bloom.
When he snaps Will out of it, Hannibal probes further into the Ripper investigation, and even gets Will to show him the crime scene photos. There are always at least two motives operating in Hannibal's head at any given time, and one of them here is to see how close Will might be to catching him. Hannibal, leading Will a bit by suggesting the Ripper's victims are killed for their "undignified behavior," also learns that his tricks to piss off Jack Crawford are still working. Meanwhile, the rest of the team deduces that the killer Jack hoped would be the Ripper is actually just someone performing black market surgeries that keep going wrong, which only makes things worse for Jack's already fragile mind.
Hannibal invites Will to dinner, but Will just stops by early to drop off a bottle of wine, and ask Hannibal why he gave up practicing medicine. Hannibal's answer is that too many patients died on his watch, and he could not handle that, so he gave it up. It's quite a revealing bit of information, but it does not instantly point to an easy solution. Was Hannibal really uneasy with the idea of killing someone who didn't deserve it, who'd come to him for help? Did those bodies actually stack up in his mind palace until they threatened to collapse? Or was it simply a matter of ego, and he hated the idea that his command over death did not extend to an equal command over life. Or perhaps it's none of those things. Perhaps he realized that he enjoyed deliberately letting the occasional rude patient slip, and if he kept it up, someone would eventually catch on.
Here's the great thing about this show: It is easy to believe all three, maybe even all three all at once. That's the level of depth, complexity, and fertile imaginative ground already laid out in this series, even less than 10 episodes. It will only get more complex from here.
Next Time: "Fromage"
