Hannibal Season 2, Episode 10
"Naka-choko"
Original airdate: April 25, 2014
Writers: Steve Lightfoot, Kai Yu Wu
Director: Vincenzo Natali
Cast: Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen, Laurence Fishburne, Caroline Dhavernas, Katharine Isabelle
The first season of Hannibal thrived on a fox in the henhouse narrative. Every person tuning into that show knew that Hannibal Lecter was a killer and a cannibal, and so the narrative tension was built not on whether or not he'd wreck everyone's lives, but how he'd do it.
Now, the henhouse is full of foxes, and it all comes down to who will land the final blow.
"Naka-choko" is a departure, an episode that takes us further afield from the show's original vision than we've ever gone before. It's an episode filled with circling predators, all of them hungry, all of them with their own motives. There are so many, and they're each full of such depth, that the biggest question isn't who will be left standing, but what it will cost them to survive at all.
Will Graham is a murderer again. His killing of a Randall Tier at the end of the last episode was an act of self-defense, to be sure, but Will's decision to keep the attack secret from the FBI, telling only Hannibal himself, made it clear that we're not dealing with a typical bout of Will's darkness. The opening sequence of "Naka-choko" makes that even clearer, revealing that Will didn't shoot Randall when he burst through his window, but beat him to death with his bare hands. On the one hand, fair enough, because Randall hurt one of Will's dogs and I am always on the side of avenging dogs. On the other, this is a transgression unlike anything else we've seen Will do so far, and it's only just beginning.
Together, Will and Hannibal deal with Randall's body via an elaborate crime scene, partially skinning him and pasting his face atop a prehistoric skeleton in his own museum, placing him forever alongside the extinct animals he so admired. Will and Hannibal walk the crime scene like typical profilers, sharing their secret while Jack looks on.
Meanwhile, Freddie Lounds is back in the picture, and she's ready to make good on those story rights she secured from Will earlier in the season. This time, though, Will has changed his tune. He labels Frederick Chilton the Chesapeake Ripper, even as Freddie observes that Chilton's own surgical track record — he was so bad at being a medical doctor that he turned to psychiatry to salvage his reputation — doesn't line up with the Ripper's methods. Freddie, always sniffing for a story, grows more suspicious. She's more scavenger than predator, but still, she's onto the scent of something.
Back at his office, Hannibal is probing deeper into the Verger siblings, Mason and Margot, by pushing Margot yet again to go through with her desire to kill her abusive brother, even going so far as to blame her reluctance on love. Margot counters with some very important information: She is completely cut out of the Verger family fortune, so if Mason dies and there is no other male heir, she will be left penniless. Hannibal, ever the eager puppet master, suggests an alternative strategy: If Margot conceives a male heir herself, Mason's hands would be tied.
And speaking of Mason, we finally get some quality time with him this episode in the form of the always magnetic Michael Pitt! In a chilling sequence, Mason leads Margot into a barn on his estate, where he explains that he's been breeding pigs, just as their father did, for a very special purpose. He wants to make man-eaters, pigs so ravenous and open to human flesh that they'll leave no trace of a body. He's obsessed with breeding, and his shock of blonde hair, round glasses, and dramatic furs immediately conjure images of a Nazi eugenicist lurking inside this eccentric heir to a meat-packing fortune. His cruelty is only magnified by his fixations, which now include that idea that he and Margot could possibly have a "Verger baby," a homegrown incestuous child that would secure the family's legacy, if only she would acquiesce.
Mason's threats, complete with the theatrical reveal of his new flock of pet pigs, tee up one of the strangest, most haunting, and flat-out horniest moments ever conceived by this series. Frightened and alone, Margot decides to pay Will another visit with a fresh bottle of whiskey, while back in Baltimore, Alana Bloom is having intimate alone time with Hannibal. He's teaching her to play the theremin, because of course he's a master of the world's eeriest instrument. As part of his latest seduction, Hannibal opines on the instrument's delicacy. You need perfect pitch to play it properly, and a touch so light and delicate that you can literally play the air around the instrument rather than the instrument itself. It's yet another potent metaphor for how Hannibal does things, and Alana promptly falls into bed with him because of it.
But that's not all. At Will's house, Margot manages, through a rather seductive invoking of trauma bonding, to coax Will into bed too, hoping that perhaps he'll give her the pregnancy which saves her from Mason's wrath. As they writhe and sweat, director Vincenzo Natali intercuts between Margot and Will and Hannibal and Alana, swirling Will's mind until he's not in bed with Margot, but with Alana…and Hannibal. Is it fan service? Maybe, but it's also an elegant way of expressing just how entwined all of these lives are, perhaps fatally. Everyone's tangled in the same covers, but not everyone will see the sunrise.
And Freddie Lounds is determined to point this out, for once attempting to do the right thing even as she also chases the story of her dreams. She approaches Alana and, pointing out the dark history of Hannibal's patients either disappearing or turning into killers themselves, suggests that perhaps something's going on with Will and Hannibal that's even bigger than the Chesapeake Ripper. Alana's not exactly receptive, because Freddie's cried wolf in the name of a good story way too many times, but Freddie's undeterred. Hannibal's also not holding anything back, paying a visit to Mason's barn himself, where the Verger heir tries to impress him with prized pigs and thanks him profusely for helping Margot (he's paying for her therapy) while also trying to pry. Hannibal demurs, but does accept Mason's offer of a freshly slaughtered pig to take home. Hannibal soon turns that pig into one of the most delectable-looking meals this show has ever mustered for Will and Alana, but when Alana reveals Freddie's theory to her current boyfriend and her ex-situationship, Hannibal has another meal on his mind.
Sensing that she's onto something because so many people seem willing to wave her off her theory, Freddie decides to go check out Will's property in Virginia, even as Hannibal waits in her apartment, clad in his plastic suit, ready to rip her to shreds. In Will's barn, she finds bits of Randall Tier in the freezer, and when Will stops her to try and explain, she flees, horrified. She has just enough time to place a call to Jack Crawford before he drags her out of the car, but Jack can only hear screams. When he reveals that the call was traced to the area near Will's home, Will only says that she was scheduled to interview him and never showed.
We don't actually get to see what explicitly happens to Freddie, but we do see Will turn up at Hannibal's house later with an offering. It's fresh meat, and Hannibal excitedly launches into date night mode, naming the perfect dish for it and even inviting Will to learn how to make it. As they dine, Hannibal's ultra-refined palate detects something: The meat tastes "frightened." Will asks, "What does frightened taste like?" and the pair even go so far as to joke that the meat is "bitter" over having been killed for their supper.
It's here that we remember something about Will Graham, something that "Naka-choko" has spent much of its runtime brilliantly obscuring. Will is a fisherman, and a good one, adept at selecting the right bait and launching the perfect cast. When he tells Hannibal that the meat he brought is "long pig," is it bait or is it the truth? Hannibal's palate is a difficult thing to deceive, which leaves us wondering how far Will would actually go to catch his white whale. As they eat, Will declares himself beyond good and evil, but even then holds back from absolving Hannibal. Hannibal is "destructive," and therefore evil, but Hannibal offers a counterpoint: The weather is destructive. Fire is destructive. "Acts of God" are destructive, but does that make them evil, and if destruction and evil are automatically linked, what does that mean for Will, who brought this long pig to the table?
"Naka-choko" is, all things considered, one of the quieter Hannibal episodes we've had in a little while, at least in terms of outright gore. We only get one crime scene, and the only murder onscreen happens in a flashback. The violence this time is much more internal, as Hannibal and Will push each other, prodding with surgical precision in an effort to better understand the course they're on. It's a relationship that's not sustainable, which means it has to either evolve or die. By the time Season 2 is over, we'll know which is which.
Next Time: "Kō No Mono"
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