Hannibal Season 3, Episode 6
"Dolce"
Original airdate: July 9, 2015
Writers: Don Mancini, Bryan Fuller, Steve Lightfoot
Director: Vincenzo Natali
Cast: Hugh Dancy, Laurence Fishburne, Caroline Dhavernas, Gillian Anderson
Much earlier in Hannibal Season 3, Bedelia du Maurier observed something interesting about Hannibal's behavior in Europe, something that set up everything we're now witnessing. Hannibal was not simply committing crimes for the fun of it, and he certainly wasn't doing it out of carelessness. He was, she surmised, "drawing" his old friends to him from across an ocean, setting lures to bring them into his world once again.
Bedelia also reached another conclusion: Hannibal would be caught, and he could no longer escape that eventuality.
"Dolce" is an effort to confront Bedelia's prophecies, an exploration of what Hannibal does this time when he's cornered, wounded, and painted with a target. Fleeing back to the home he shares with Bedelia, Hannibal bathes, packs, and prepares to flee the city where he first became a man, while Bedelia confides that she is staying behind to cover her tracks in her own way, something Hannibal promises to support if he's ever questioned. But Hannibal doesn't seem to be in any great hurry. "I see my end in my beginning," he says, looking out his window at the Palazzo Vecchio and the streets that birthed the Renaissance. He knows a confrontation is coming, and just like in Baltimore, he is cultivating it.
Meanwhile, back at the museum, Jack and Will reunite. Hannibal has slipped through their extrajudicial fingers once again, and Will's clearly frustrated about that, but not because Hannibal simply got away. He's frustrated with Jack because, for all his bluster and strength, Jack couldn't kill Hannibal.
"Maybe I need you to," Jack says, by way of explanation. He also explains his reasons for refusing to call in backup, for avoiding sharing what he knows with the FBI back in America or the Italian police. Dear, departed Inspector Pazzi had the benefit of an alliance with Jack, and he used it to try and cash in with Mason Verger. Now he's dead, but the price on Hannibal's head is well-known. Any cop on the hunt could be corrupted by the promise of riches, acting "outside the lawn and alone." Instead, Will and Jack will operate "outside the law and alone," and attempt to finish off Hannibal on their own once again.
But not everyone has given up the chance at bringing in Hannibal alive. Shortly after he leaves his apartment in Florence, Chiyoh turns up and meets Bedelia, who quickly deduces that they are alike in their relationship to Hannibal. Chiyoh, who got here by pushing Will Graham off a train, confides that she wants to "cage" Hannibal, not kill him, leaving Bedelia to wonder if Chiyoh, not Will, is Hannibal's "biggest mistake." Chiyoh departs to continue her hunt, while Bedelia settles in for a hefty dose of drugs to transport her into the proper mindspace for interrogation. When Jack and Will arrive at her door, she insists she is "Lydia Fell," and Hannibal is her husband "Roman Fell." It's a drug-induced hallucination, but Will and Jack are certain they see the cracks, and so is a fresh Italian Inspector (Giorgio Lupano) who shows up to continue the investigation.
Back in America, Alana's got her own game going, urging Mason and Margot to bribe not just one cop in Italy, but an entire department, sparing no expense to locate and apprehend Hannibal. Mason, whose physician Cordell (Glenn Fleshler) is already taking great delight in preparing to cook and eat Hannibal when he's finally caught, is hungry for an end to his hunt. Margot, meanwhile, is still eager to have a child, and secures Mason's promise that he will help her to have a baby even after he removed her uterus against her will. Retiring to her bedroom to sleep with Alana, Margot shares her secret, and asks for Alana's help. Alana, meanwhile, shares a secret of her own: Any information that Mason's money buys, she will pass on to the FBI. By the end, they'll be free of both Hannibal and Mason, and if they can harvest Mason's sperm, they'll have an heir to the Verger fortune ready-made.
It's worth pausing here to look at the bigger picture painted by all of those individual brush strokes, because we're once again in a classic Hannibal scenario we've now run up against several times in the show's run. Every antagonist in Hannibal Lecter's life is, if not allied, then at least united in their goal of putting him down, one way or another. Everyone, even evil assholes like Mason, feels that this man should be off the streets, and yet individual motivations cloud that sense of purpose. When Jack asks Will if he secretly harbors a desire to run away with Hannibal, Will responds "part of me will always want to." Alana's efforts to play both Hannibal and Mason as self-absorbed fools is noble in its way, but distances her from Mason's vast resources which could, at last, put Dr. Lecter in the ground. Even Chiyoh, who seems to understand Hannibal in ways that even Will and Bedelia do not, is walking her own path. We are primed, because we've been here before, to expect Hannibal to slip away again.
And yet, that's not quite what happens. Will, following his own suspicions, finds Hannibal in front of Botticelli's Primavera yet again, sketching it out and adding Will and Bedelia's faces into the composition. We know, and the show wants us to know, that Hannibal would not be here in Will's line of sight if he didn't wish to be, and we also know that Will would never do something as disrespectful as shooting Hannibal in the back of the head. Instead, he sits, and Hannibal offers one of the most romantic sentiments in the entire show: "If I saw you every day forever, Will, I would remember this time."
"We're conjoined," Will says during their conversation, one of the most poetic break-up scenes ever written. "I wonder whether either of us can survive separation."
And then, a glorious tension, as the two men leave the gallery. Will they escape together? Will Hannibal get the drop on Will again? The ingredients are there for either, but with an added twist: Chiyoh, watching from the rooftops with her hunting rifle. When Will pulls a knife, finally ready to kill the man who's ruled his life for so long, Chiyoh instead puts a bullet in Will's shoulder. She wants Hannibal caged, not killed. Back at the apartment, Bedelia, finally alone with the Italian inspector, deduces that he's also in Mason Verger's pocket. A trap has been sprung.
Actually, multiple traps have been sprung. Will comes to in an unfamiliar apartment, where Hannibal tends to his bullet wound, then drugs him and ties him to a chair. Jack, in pursuit, shows up just in time for Hannibal to sever one of his Achilles tendons, drug him, and tie him to the opposite chair. In yet another scene recalling Thomas Harris's Hannibal novel and its film adaptation, Hannibal plans to saw open Will's head, scoop out his brains, and feed them to both Will and Jack. The saw bites into Will's forehead, and Jack screams, only for the scene to fragment and fall apart.
Because there's still one more trap to be sprung.
We fade back in on Will and Hannibal, bound and gagged, hanging upside down on hooks in a meat truck. They're greeted by, of course, Mason Verger, who's finally realized his dream of reeling in his prized pig, Hannibal Lecter. Honestly, this ending would feel completely jarring and inappropriate on any other show, and it still feels at least a little bit clumsy here, but the pure operatic fury of Hannibal as a series saves it. Our Italian adventure is over. We're back home, and Hannibal and Will are twin meat slabs waiting to be cooked. How will our boys get out of this one?!
Next Time: "Digestivo"
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