Hannibal Season 2, Episode 4
"Takiawase"
Original airdate: March 21, 2014
Writers: Scott Nimerfro, Bryan Fuller
Director: David Semel
Cast: Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen, Laurence Fishburne, Hettienne Park, Gina Torres, Raul Esparza
Content Warning: This recap includes discussions of suicide and end-of-life directives.
One of Hannibal's greatest strengths as a series is the ability of its writing staff to distill every part of a narrative, from supporting characters to crime scenes to casual asides, down to its essential parts over the course of 45 minutes. When it's at its best, this is a show that feeds every ounce of meaning into its story mechanisms and leaves every scene humming with life. Now that the physical stakes for Season 2 are set, "Takiawase" has arrived to set the emotional stakes on an even deeper level, delivering one of the season's absolute best episodes.
It begins with Will Graham fishing in the peaceful palace of his mind, the place he goes when he needs to quiet everything else. But this time, he's not alone in the stream. Abigail Hobbs (Kacey Rohl) is there too, happy and healthy and alive in his mind, learning how to fish from her surrogate father. Will seems happy too, even as it becomes clearer that they're not talking about catching fish, but about catching Hannibal. Will tells this imaginary version of Abigail, the daughter he never had but desperately wanted, that it's good luck when casting out your fishing line to name your bait after someone you cherish. Then he admits that, in his quest to lure in and catch Hannibal, he's named his bait "Abigail." It's always been a personal battle for Will, but now it's personal in new ways, and Will's ready to make moves.
His first move comes when Beverly (Park) stops by to let him know he was right about their human muralist killer, that he did indeed end up sewn into his own masterpiece as the final corpse in a massive, sightless mosaic eye. Naturally, this brings up the question of who helped the killer get into the mural in the first place, and though Beverly pleads with him to not bring it up, Will insists that this unseen helper was Hannibal. But instead of shoving his theory down Beverly's throat, he offers up a challenge: Look for a hidden "clever detail" that will point the way to the killer, even if you can't believe it's Hannibal. Next, when Dr. Chilton (Esparza) arrives to see him again, Will makes him an offer he can't refuse: Cut off contact with Hannibal, tell Dr. Lecter nothing about their conversations, and Will will be in his "exclusive care," submitting to every test, every question, every therapy. Chilton, egomaniac that he is, absolutely can't resist.
Back at the FBI offices, there's a new, very interesting problem: Someone found a body cradled around the trunks of a tree, transformed into a human beehive. Upon closer investigation, the team realizes that the man's eyes were removed, along with part of his brain, creating hollows hospitable to the bees. This was deliberate, and that means there's a new killer out there.
While the feds dig into their sticky new case, Hannibal's got a surprising patient in the form of Bella Crawford (Gina Torres). Her cancer is still progressing, slowly draining her energy and pulling the hair from her head because Jack talked her into chemo. She's come to Hannibal to talk about the things she can't talk about with Jack, namely that she would like to end her own life on her own terms.
"The cancer is an occupying force," she says. "I want to surrender while I still have my dignity."
She confides that it makes her feel "alive" to know that this is still a choice she could make, before her illness robs her of physical control of her body and any shred of agency she has left. Hannibal, who confides in Bella that he's also thrilled by the idea that death could come for him at any moment, doesn't dismiss the idea or try to talk her down. Instead he talks philosophy, musing on the death of Socrates and how he saw his state-ordered suicide as "a cure." As he so often does, Hannibal wants to see what his patient will do next if pushed, and Bella parts with a lot to think about.
Hannibal's next stop is the crime lab, where Beverly opens up the morgue drawer containing the muralist killer and asks for his help. She wants to see how he'll react when she presents Will's theory that there's some kind of hidden detail on the corpse, and of course, he immediately clocks that she's gone to see Will. Beverly even admits it, though she doesn't say she's investigating Hannibal specifically, and you can see the fear in her eyes as she lays out a version of the truth, while Lecter prods her to continue her line of investigation. Like Will, he's playing fisherman in this moment, with himself as the bait. Beverly is in deep trouble, and she seems, deep down, to know it.
While Hannibal lays down his own bait, Chilton goes fishing in Will's mind, giving him a "narcoanalytic" interview that'll hopefully help him to answer truthfully, and even dredge up things he's not willing to admit to himself. Will, of course, consents to this, because he hopes that the drugs will help dig up details of Hannibal's crimes, and it turns out he's not wrong. While Chilton drones on with his question, Will goes somewhere else, back to that fateful night when he stood in Hannibal's dining room and had a seizure while Hannibal and Dr. Abel Gideon (Suzy Eddie Izzard) discussed the Chesapeake Ripper. He remembers the entire conversation for the first time, and he also remembers a light, flashing at intervals in Hannibal's library, inducing his seizures, forcing him into periods of lost time and memories. When Chilton learns of this, he confronts Hannibal about his unorthodox methods, which they'd previously discussed, and cuts off Hannibal's contact with Will. He gets a predictably icy response from Lecter, which is our first sign in a while that Will might finally be gaining ground in this fight.
At the Crawford home, Bella and Jack get high together (it's prescription for her pain management) and she tries to lay the groundwork for her suicide plan. Bella explains that, because she watched her mother die begging for the pain to stop, she'd like to end things before she reaches that stage, and even frames it in terms of love for Jack, something she doesn't want him to see as his final memory of her. She even reveals she's add a Do Not Resuscitate order to her end-of-life medical directives. Jack, predictably, shrugs all of this off, and tells her that he'll always remember her as that beautiful woman he met in Italy. Bella knows that the occupying force looms over their home, but Jack would rather keep fighting, however passively he tries to express that.
From here, we finally get some insight into our beehive killer (guest star Amanda Plummer), an acupuncturist and alternative healer who's working with a patient that just can't take it anymore. This old man aches, he struggles, he can't even form a positive attitude about the care he's given. So this time, after packing him full of acupuncture needle and recommending a bee venom treatment, she lobotomizes him, carves out his eyes, and leaves him out in a field to, presumably, die. Instead, he's found by a group of kids, covered in bee stings and eyeless, and turned over to the Feds. It's a fate worse than death, but it's also an important clue, and the revelation that the killer is hiding her paralytic acupuncture needles beneath bee stings sends Beverly in search of a new clue with the muralist. Realizing that the second killer would have hidden his own work in the same way, she cuts into the sutures on the body and finds more sutures beneath, concealing the killer's trophy collection. He not only took the muralist's foot; he also took his kidney, just like the copycat killer whose crimes put Will behind bars…and just like the Chesapeake Ripper.
Shaken by her discovery, Beverly takes it to Will, who makes the Chesapeake Ripper link and, finally, connects the most diabolical of dots. The Ripper, a.k.a. Hannibal, takes organs from his victims as trophies because he's eating them, just like Garrett Jacob Hobbs did. That means that Will, and everyone in Hannibal's inner circle, has no doubt consumed human flesh at some point. Beverly also reveals that she'd consulted with Hannibal on the discovery in the first place, which terrifies Will. He urges her to stay as far away as possible from Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal is now, at least in Will's mind, completely out in the open, the occupying force in his life, in the life of the FBI, in Beverly's head as well. Will can't, won't surrender, but he also knows that everyone around him is now in danger.
Meanwhile, Jack gets a lesson in his own wife's state of mind when he heads out to arrest the beehive killer, a woman named Katherine Pims. She calmly greets the Feds at her door and, after just a few moments, confesses to her crimes, but not to murder. She didn't actually kill those men. She simply removed parts of them and left them to die, to become part of the fabric of nature alongside her bees. She's a healer. She couldn't cure them, but she could "quiet" their minds, make them free.
"I protected these people from hopelessness, and that's beautiful," she says calmly, admitting at the same time that she couldn't bring herself to try the honey made inside the corpses because that seemed "too morbid." Jack, whose own wife is on the verge of giving into hopelessness, listens intently, afraid to admit that some part of him understands. For Katherine, the bees are also an occupying force, but one that symbolizes healing, freedom, sweet release.
While Jack ponders this, Bella turns up at Hannibal's office again and reveals that she's not just still committed to her suicide plan, but she's already gone through with it. As a fatal morphine overdose takes hold of her, she explains that she didn't want to die at home because that would mean Jack would find her, and while that means he'll never get to say goodbye, it also means he'll never have to suffer through the immediate aftermath of her death. She fades away, and when she falls unconscious, Hannibal ponders for a moment, staring at her silent body. Then, he flips a coin, the living incarnation of Death playing games of chance with human life. The coin tells him to go to his cabinet, pull out some adrenaline, and revive Bella. She begs him to stop, but he's already preparing to take her to the hospital. She wanted to die on her own terms, but Hannibal wants her to die in a way that's more acceptable to Jack. He can't have another corpse on his doorstep with the FBI closing in. When she wakes up at the hospital later, her first act is to caress a devastated Jack's face. Her second is to slap Hannibal. The occupying force remains.
With Jack gone and Hannibal at the hospital with him, Beverly decides to ignore Will's advice and descend into the lion's den. She breaks into Hannibal's house, picks the lock to his wine cellar, and finds, wouldn't you know it, a human kidney in his freezer. She also accidentally spills some wine on the floor, which points the way to a much deeper basement beneath the house, one full of chains and plastic sheets. It's an abattoir, and just as Beverly begins to realize what she's got herself into, Hannibal appears behind her. She draws her gun, he hits the lights, and a battle begins. For months now, Hannibal's been the occupying force inside the FBI, and now we get to see what happens when he has to repel an invader. What's Beverly's fate? Find out next week!
Next Time: "Mukōzuke"
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