Hannibal Season 1, Episode 11
"Rôti"
Original airdate: June 6, 2013
Writer: Steve Lightfoot, Bryan Fuller, Scott Nimerfro
Director: Guillermo Navarro
Cast: Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen, Laurence Fishburne, Caroline Dhavernas, Suzy Eddie Izzard
Last week, Will Graham found himself in a position to save someone lost in their own delusions, and he did it. This week, Will's delusions are out to get him, but will anyone be around to save him?
Hannibal's ratcheting tension over Will's wellbeing has now run for 10 episodes, and the audience has understood for a couple of episodes now exactly what's wrong with him. Will doesn't know, because as part of Hannibal's great game of manipulation, he's been kept in the dark about his own physical health. Hannibal's game board, complex though it is, feels largely laid before us now, but as we wait for him to make his move, a wild card enters the fray.
Dr. Abel Gideon (Suzy Eddie Izzard) is back! Yay! And for all the trouble he's caused so far, it's about to get worse. On his way to court as part of a lawsuit against Dr. Chilton (Raul Esparza) for convincing him he was the Chesapeake Ripper, Gideon stages a bloody escape. By the time the FBI gets to the crime scene, Gideon's long gone, and the organs of the officers tasked with transporting him are strung up in the trees like Christmas ornaments.
Will makes it to the crime scene through a feverish haze, following dark dreams at home in his bed that saw him first drowning, then transmuting into liquid in the rising waters. He's aware enough to deduce that the Chesapeake Ripper would never treat the bodies this way, and to head to Dr. Chilton's office for a conversation about Gideon, and then he's back in a hallucination, building "a thicket of antlers" in his mind, a mind that cannot let go of Garrett Jacob Hobbs.
Back at Hannibal's office, Will has a near-meltdown, crying as he confides "I don't know how to gauge who I am anymore." He's clearly suffering mentally and physically, crying out for help, but unbeknownst to him, it's not the kind of help Hannibal is ready to give just yet. Instead, Hannibal simply assures him: "I will be your gauge."
Will regains his intellectual footing long enough to take in more key information. The team theorizes that Gideon's next targets will be all the therapists who've ever treated him, including and especially Dr. Chilton. He's going after his doctors, because he blames all of them, especially Chilton, for making him lose his sense of self. He's not the Chesapeake Ripper, but he's not Abel Gideon anymore either. He's become another, more lost thing, and it's sent him into a frenzy.
Because Alana happens to be one of Gideon's former therapists, Will heads out to tell her she'll need protection, and while she's already got the news, she's still happy to see him. For the first time since their Difficult Talk about how Will's a living garbage fire and she's deliberately keeping her distance, she seems to enjoy flirting with him, talking about going with him to his house and cozying up with his dogs. In a chilling moment of shop talk, she also asks Will what he thinks would happen if Gideon actually encountered the real Chesapeake Ripper. Will doesn't miss a beat: "The Ripper would kill him."
Meanwhile, with a serial killer on the loose, Freddie Lounds (Lara Jean Chorostecki) is back on the case, when she just happens to get a call from a doctor who'd written a paper on Gideon years earlier. He's a fan, and he wants a collab, and can she meet him at home to chat?
Ever the opportunist, Freddie heads out, only to find Gideon waiting for her. The man she thought she was talking to on the phone is dead, strapped to a chair, his blood draining into bags, his throat cut into a Colombian necktie (look it up). Freddie is once again at the mercy of a killer, but lucky for her, Gideon really does want a collaboration. She tells the world what he wants them to know, and in return she gets exclusives from inside the lair of a killer.
Will and Jack make it to the crime scene and Will decides that this is Gideon "peacocking" for the Ripper, trying to get his attention, trying to set up some kind of encounter. Gideon's only salvation, in his mind, might be facing and even defeating the person who triggered his personality crisis. Meanwhile, TattleCrime goes live with Freddie's story from inside Gideon's hideout, which Hannibal, of course, promptly reads. Gideon confides in Freddie that his next kill will be from the place where the Ripper last taunted Jack Crawford, the abandoned observatory where he found Miriam Lass's severed arm.
Several things happen at once here, and while I don't think it makes this a bad episode, I do think all the moving parts are, for once on Hannibal, starting to grind against each other just a little bit. Another body with a necktie shows up, but this one is missing an arm, leading Will to interpret that this body is not a Gideon victim, but a Ripper victim. The severed arm is meant to point to where Jack found Miriam's arm,. The Ripper is ratting Gideon out to the Feds.
Meanwhile, back at the old observatory, Gideon is, with Freddie watching, delicately removing every nonessential organ he can from Chilton, who's only been given a local anesthetic so he can watch his own surgery. Before the FBI makes it to the scene, though, Jack has to confront Will about how he, quite simply, looks like hell. Will's just honest enough with Jack to keep working, but does also impart a bit of wisdom behind all of his visions in this episode: "I feel fluid, like I'm spilling."
By the time the Feds reach the crime scene, Gideon's gone, leaving Miriam to pump a manual ventilator keeping Chilton alive on the operating table, most of his organs piled in his lap. Jack tells Will to stay in the car, but Will's hallucinations – the Stag is back! – get the better of him, and he treks off into the snow just in time to find Gideon, who's getting into a stolen car. Gun drawn, Will holds him hostage from the back seat, but Will doesn't actually see Gideon. He sees Garrett Jacob Hobbs, dead for weeks now, somehow back in his world. This explains why, instead of alerting Jack, Will forces Gideon/Hobbs to drive to Hannibal's office, because he truly can't tell if the person he's looking at is real or not.
Hannibal, always living for drama among his friends and his enemies alike, tells Will when he arrives that he doesn't see anyone, not Hobbs, not Gideon, no one. Gideon accepts this as a tacit endorsement of his work, which is only helped along when Hannibal gives him directions to Alana's house. Meanwhile, Will's hallucinations finally explode in a full-blown seizure. When he comes to, Hannibal, after letting Gideon leave, makes sure Will didn't actually have a stroke, and tells him to wait while Hannibal himself goes to check on Alana. He also, conveniently, leaves Will's gun in clear view on the dining room table. Hannibal barely has time to fetch his coat before Will is out the door, which is exactly what he wanted. He hangs his coat back up.
This is, again, another shining example of Mads Mikkelsen's ability to render multiple believable emotions at the same time while also rendering a psychopath who often seems like he truly feels very little. Hannibal is so light on his feet, so ready for anything, so good at the chess he's playing that you could blindfold him and he'd still find his way around the board. It's a sight to behold, but "Roti" is not done yet.
Will makes it to Alana's house and finds Gideon already there, not entering, just standing outside and watching. The two men, both sick in their own ways, stand next to each other, and Gideon reflects.
"I don't know if I will ever be myself again," he says, and in hearing him recount all the ways supposed experts have tried to explain himself to himself, it's hard not to think of Izzard's own history as a trans woman who was quite publicly presenting as male for many, many years. There is tremendous vulnerability in this moment that, for me, makes Abel Gideon Izzard's finest performance as an actor. It's such a beautifully nuanced role that could have been so cartoonish.
Inside, Alana hears a gunshot, and sees Will outside with Gideon on the ground next to him. Will is rushed to the hospital with a high fever and an infection, and Alana stays at his bedside. Meanwhile, Hannibal visits Jack to debrief on the situation and, in another master stroke, now says, after Will conveniently shot Gideon, that Will should no longer have access to guns. It's a very good idea, but not for the reasons everyone else is thinking.
Meanwhile, with Will's purpose fulfilled for the moment, Hannibal goes to his own doctor, Bedelia (Gillian Anderson) and expresses, perhaps more deeply than in any other moment so far, what he really wants from Will. "I see his madness and I want to contain it, like an oil spill," he tells her, and even opines that a little madness is beneficial. More importantly, though, Hannibal sees in Will a kindred spirit. Like Will, he's never seen the world the way that others have, and while his fellow serial killers might not be the best company, Will certainly is. He's not a killer like Hannibal, but his perfect empathy means that he, perhaps alone in the world, has the capacity to understand what Lecter is, to help him feel like himself in ways Gideon's never been able to reach. As Bedelia reminds Hannibal that he cannot get personal with a patient, you can see a genuine sense of the romantic in Mikkelsen's eyes when he reacts. He doesn't just like this man. He's not fond of him. He loves him.
And love makes people do crazy things.
Next Time: "Releves"
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