Your regularly scheduled reviewer of Hannibal, Trevor Dawson has flown the coop for the week. Brilliant mind and fellow Gambit reviewer, Samir Roy and I put our heads together to unpack “Su-zakana”.
Samir: So this opening scene! Such a perfect way to talk plainly but obliquely about trying to catch Hannibal. Talking about trying to catch a fish that has lost it’s hunger in the cold. The heat is off, on the surface. Hannibal thrives on the hunt, and thus is not going to be tempted by a simple bait and hook when he thinks the fuzz no longer suspects.
Margaux: But Jack and Will ended up catching trout, the “meat” Will provides for their dinner, so what does that say about the trio’s relationship in the future, or present? Jack talks at the dinner table about the “wounds” they’ve given each other. Man, oh man, Jack you have no idea.
Samir: And Hannibal cooks the trout. I think we all know Hannibal will be wearing that mask eventually. He also confirms that the trout is tastier because it is a hunter that was hard to catch.
Margaux: One thing is for sure, that was one hell of a poetic conversation yet, what will it all amount to? Then, Dear Lord – it’s the Horse C-section. Excuse me, I’ve gotta go hide under some blankets.
Samir: But those stitches were so elegant aesthetically that even Wes Anderson would have been enticed by its geometric precision.
Margaux: Every fucking week, Hannibal manages to outdo itself in levels of gore I’ve never seen on TV before in my life. The crime procedural of the week plot line 100% of the time has me screaming: NO FUCK JESUS PLEASE WHY.
Samir: The gore is so pretty though! Bones used to pride itself on it’s unique murders, the unique state of the corpse. Hannibal consistently turns it into an art, I’ve never seen such disturbing concepts reflected in the deaths themselves. There is a weird conflation of the natural world and the human body- a lot of these murders involve fusing bodies with mushrooms, beehives, trees and flowers. But I love that Hannibal instantly defers to Will and admits that he can’t figure this out on his own. Is drawing Will back into these murder scenes a way to ensure Will will continue to need therapy?
Margaux: Well Hannibal is still giving therapy sessions in general, we finally get to meet Margot Verger sister of Mason Verger (soon to be played by the always terrific Michael Pitt). Margot is seeing Hannibal because she tried to kill her brother, they have a strained relationship if I’ve heard one. But is it weird that I love knowing how Hannibal could possibly say my name?
Samir: Not at all, Margot’s always seem to have problems on tv shows. It must be difficult to have your name. I love her look-she seems ready to eat someone.
Margaux: Hannibal & Alana post bone sesh, talking about their favorite subject – Will. Their sex-having is deeply uncomfortable for me, mainly because this will end poorly for Miss Bloom and I kind of like her. Wish she wasn’t so dumb/blind/self righteous.
Samir: I know, I really love her and the actress who plays her, whom I’ve loved since she was in Fuller’s first failed show, Wonderfalls. I don’t want anything to happen to her! But seriously their love scene reminded me of the birth scene in We Need To Talk About Kevin– clinical, metallic, cold, and fatally doomed to wreck everything. And then having to watch them talk in bed as she curls his thick thatch of chest hair in her fingers.
Margaux: That was too much, in a very bad way. She and Hannibal enable each other’s fixation with Will, which is all fine and dandy, till she gets eaten. Good call on We Need To Talk About Kevin, nailed it (pun intended).
Samir: Hannibal definitely has some homoerotic fixation on keeping Will with him-he defends him I feel for another reason beyond the beautifully laid plans he’s concocting to avoid detection. I found it interesting that he chose this post-coital moment to remind Alana of why Will tried to kill him.
Margaux: I assume that was hyper-intellectual white people’s version of “foreplay”…
Samir: Oh it’s TurDucken! If it’s horse, human, bird, then what do we call it? Just when you think they’ve done it all, the body reveals a live bird inside the corpse, from inside the horse. I suppose this gives credence to the notions of Hannibal and Will that the act of putting the body inside the horse was about giving life rather than taking it away.
Margaux: Love Will’s “getting inside the mind of a killer” sequences, so well done. Beautiful. Epic storytelling in short amount of time.
Samir: Especially now that we know where the metronomic golden light that swishes over his sight comes from! I’ve always appreciated that succinct bit of storytelling, to clearly mark we’re in his altered state-no childish “we want you to be confused about what viewpoint you’re watching this through,” the bullshit crutch so many movies and shows lazily lean on.
Margaux: YUP! I also appreciate lately, they pull no punches in how long it takes them to figure out the whodunit part of the “crime of the week”. Meet Peter Bernardone, looking like a rejected extra out of Girls.
Samir: For reals! His gentility seems genuine, Will was right about him not being the killer; of course he has to be a twisted Dr Doolittle who has literally been kicked in the head by a horse. Casting directors must have this actor on speed dial for every time they get a call for “crazy, mentally unstable yet sympathetic; Norman Bates-type.” Need PTSD? Need wounded, abused adult-child? Call Jeremy Davies. He’s a very good actor, but he is clearly THE biggest go-to guy for sad and crazy since Anthony Perkins died.
Margaux: And he’s wonderful at it, he subtly draws out this unshakable connection that Bernardone is Will in the first season.
Samir: And how about Will getting enough gumption to demand that Hannibal stop lying to him. I’d rather have a sin of omission rather than an outright lie if I were him too.
Margaux: Their therapeutic bro-mance confuses and intrigues me. I can’t tell who’s mouse and who’s the cat, it changes from scene to scene so effing well.
Samir: “I’m much weirder than you will ever be” Margot don’t know who she dealing with! I love that she gets this Dietrich lighting, and that her look is as painstakingly crafted to take advantage of this high contrast visual atmosphere whenever she’s around, as Gillian Anderson’s was. I cannot wait to see how this tug-of-war between wanting to talk about killing being her main reason for seeing a therapist will reach it’s peak once Michael Pitt shows up.
Margaux: But does Hannibal offer outright to kill her brother? Remember the last serial killer who literally tried to dance with Hannibal? He dead.
Samir: Well Pitt always tends to play losers in the end doesn’t he? It sure sounded like he was saying as much to her. Amazing how he can be a good therapist and an efficient murderer in the same stroke.
Oh and can we talk about the hottie social worker psychopath. Hitchcock was right- the murderers and psychopaths usually are the good-looking types who can attract victims.
Margaux: Let’s! Hannibal, Will and Jack watch the interrogation of the Social Worker, who’s very clearly the killer, but is let go due to lack of evidence. Ring any bells?
This Social Worker and Hannibal should hang out, they sound EXACTLY THE SAME. He’s brainwashed Peter and it’s fucking terrifying! Peter has similar symptoms as Will – “seeing things”. This runner story is like relieving the tension of the first season, but worse.
Juxtapose that with the current Will/Hannibal relationship, which they cut to directly afterwards, exponentially more unsettlingly.
Samir: Yes; that music while Hannibal and Will are driving to the crime scene to prevent it before it happens- “Faure’s Requiem.” So creepy, I remember it from the movie Copycat while Sigourney Weaver pores over crime scene photos, in spite of her own mental instability resulting from her work in helping to put away psychopaths who then come back for her. And the talk about their perceptions of each other, Will does still need Hannibal’s therapeutic expertise, but he’s also trying to avoid victimization. I think Will is trying to save himself by saving Doolittle from becoming a murderer, but he’s saying more about himself than the one he wishes to protect. Since he has progressively started to merge with the murderous moose in his visions, he has to save another damaged person from being manipulated into a monster by a stronger personality with more control in the relationship. That’s why it was so refreshing earlier to hear Will taking a bolder stance with Hannibal..
Margaux: You said it better than I ever could, which is why I leave the task of reviewing this show to others. Peter’s child like quality make him so sad and Lenny-like, you wanna hug him. Even when he’s sewing his crazy dickhead of a Social Worker into dead horse.
Samir: See?! Davies is the Anthony Perkins of our day. Hottie social worker’s exploitation of poor deranged head-injury Doolittle earned him this level of payback after he also deliberately let out all of his animals and killed another horse!
Margaux: “I think he deserved to die” – I mean, no judgement, but he does. Homie did killed 16 women…
Here comes the worst ending in the world…
Samir: Definitely, but who am I to judge? I’ll leave that to Dexter. Is it just me, or is there a touch of Equus in all this horse play?
Margaux: I’ll you give that one, either way though, no thanks and no more Bryan Fuller. Stop with the horse play.
Samir: At least he didn’t actually kill the social worker- he just gave him a more graphic rebirthing than one would found at a new age therapist’s office. The possibility to be reborn as a decent human being? Will was definitely more concerned about his own devolvement into murderousness in his concern for Peter. Poor little guy, maybe he can do some work release with a veterinary hospital? There must be some legal consequence for sewing a living human being into the carcass of a horse. So i assume he will be going away somewhere.
Margaux: By the looks of IMDB, there’s another episode to wrap up this Peter/Social Worker-Will/Hannibal plot line. What say you? How many stars?
Samir: I say 4 out of 5. So brilliantly concise and poetic, but it’s saving the wham-bang moment for a future episode I think, and rightly so. Don’t wanna blow the wad too early. “Su-zakana” is the name of the episode, and this dish is literally a palate cleanser of pickled vegetables. The vegetables of this episode are just warming us up.
Margaux: Blow my mind, 4 stars indeed.
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