Hannibal - Recap: Skinning the Copycat

Episode 12, “Relevés,” contained many of said moments. There are also instances where, say, a woman is engulfed inside a glass furnace of an inferno, I “lose time” for a few minutes, and then am forced to rewind that subsequent following scene. Of course, when push comes to shove, this is a show about a very smart psychopath, and that lays my burning brain to rest.Remember Georgia, the girl with Cotard’s Syndrome? If that doesn’t ring a bell, remember the girl with the walking-dead disease that rendered her unable to recognize faces or even whether or not she was, well, alive? She returned this week, and she was looking well on her way to recovery, surprisingly enough. Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), who was still hospitalized for that nasty fever from the episode prior, would visit Georgia in her chamber, a small glass tank with special filtered oxygen to help her heal. Georgia found herself in a strange predicament, in that she didn’t necessarily want to remember the murder she’d committed. She also advised Will to prepare for the worst. As someone who’d spent years undergoing treatments for a mental health issue, she reminded him that there often is no true cure. Oftentimes, you just end up labeled “wrong.” Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen), meanwhile, was concerned with Georgia’s seemingly successful recovery, mainly because Georgia had seen someone murder Dr. Sutcliffe. Georgia, of course, was a deteriorating mental state that cloaked the man's face. That murderer was, of course, Hannibal. Thus, yet again, Lecter was forced to kill an innocent (I use that term loosely) to cover his own tracks as the Chesapeake Ripper. Poor Georgia thought someone had left her a gift in a small plastic comb, but a few strokes through her hair static-sparked the high oxygen content to ignite, burning her alive. This is Hannibal, so we were forced to watch every second of it.

Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) was convinced the girl had committed suicide to avoid her impending charges. Will, however, noted that one does not simply off themselves via the incredibly horrific method of setting oneself on fire. Will, who’d confided in this girl as though they were attending group therapy, knew her well enough to know that she was sick without being suicidal. As a woman who’d been misunderstood her entire life, Will would insure that she was not remembered wrongly in her death. After much back and forth bickering between Crawford and Will, the team managed to uncover a small bit of plastic from the scene. Georgia’s hair had been fused to it, tipping off Will to the murder weapon.

Will had been growing exceedingly stronger since the previous episode. Episode 12 saw a mostly healthy Will Graham, vibrant and quick-witted, as opposed to the delirious and delusional Will we’ve grown increasingly accustomed to. It took Graham no time at all to deduce that this was another copycat killer situation. Dr. Sutcliffe had been murdered in a similar way to that in which Georgia had mistakenly killed her best friend, but the method was more extreme. Eventually, Will was able to reason that this copycat killer was indeed the same man who’d copied Garret Jacob Hobbs during the first few episodes of the season. He’d killed Georgia, clearly, to save himself. The connection to the seemingly unrelated string of crimes? Will Graham.

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Meanwhile, Freddie Lounds (Lara Jean Chorostecki) continued to meet with Abigail Hobbs (Kacey Rohl) to plot out their book. More importantly, I want to note that I actually enjoyed Freddie Lounds this week. I always love and appreciate her as an awesome villainess of sorts, and on a show about psychopaths that sure is a hard title to earn. This week, though, I appreciated her quick assessment of Abigail Hobbs, and her unflinching ability to pick apart the murders of Nicholas Boyle and Marissa. I, for one, knew that she was aware of Abigail’s tendencies from the moment they started the conversation, and I appreciated seeing a character, aside from Crawford, refuse to coddle her. Crawford, at times, seems misguided and makes things too personal and emotional. Freddie, for the most part, seems like a sociopath with a clean record.

Later on, Crawford would encounter Freddie in a search for Will and Abigail. Freddie was quick to ask whether or not Abigail Hobbs murdered Nicholas Boyle; however, you know Freddie Lounds at this point. A question is usually an answer in disguise.

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Jack Crawford popped in on Hannibal in order to discuss the current mental state of Will Graham, Hannibal’s patient. Of course, much would remain confidential, but Crawford seemed to be entirely unaware of just how severely Will’s mind had degraded. In addition, Crawford, through this conversation, seemed to become much more privy to the bizarre relationships forming between Will, Lecter, and Abigail Hobbs. In an attempt to get to the bottom of the situation, he paid Hannibal’s psychiatrist, Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier (Gillian Anderson) a nighttime home visit. Crawford began to suspect that Hannibal, and also Will Graham, were hiding details surrounding the murder of Boyle. Bedelia was very hesitant to divulge any true information, but was willing to discuss her own close brush with death. Remember, a patient of hers had attempted to murder her. This episode, we discovered that this man had swallowed his own tongue in the process, dying before he could do the deed. We also learned that Hannibal was responsible for referring the man to her.

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Following Crawford’s visit, Bedelia met with Hannibal once again. She was quick to inform him of Jack’s questioning, but also made sure that Hannibal knew she was speaking as a colleague rather than his doctor. In truth, she was unsure of Hannibal’s hand in what had occurred, but advised him to back off of his treatment of Will. Whatever Hannibal was doing, seemed to be having adverse effects. In addition, we learned that a mystery man had been involved the night she was attacked. The allusion was, of course, to Hannibal. Could that have been the moment Lecter became a serial killer?

At this point, I should bring up what has become the central arc of this season. What are Hannibal’s true intentions with Will Graham? Here’s how I’m analyzing things. I think this was intended to be a two-birds-one-stone type of a manipulation. It seems, the only man who could bring Hannibal, the Chesapeake Ripper, down is Will Graham. Having said that, Will is also Hannibal’s only true shot at ever having a friend. Thus, he could essentially drive Will from Jack Crawford by encouraging his mental breakdown, and subsequently freeing Will of the pressures of that life, while also freeing himself from ever getting caught. In addition, driving Will to the brink of insanity would also bring him more in touch with Lecter, as Hannibal seemed to be driving Will to think like a murderer by attempting to peg his own work on him. Remember, Hannibal loathes when people take credit for his kills. If he is looking to set Will up, it’s a compliment. I don’t necessarily think that he was looking to get Will arrested for his crimes. I think it would be more so the sort of situation Hannibal had with Abigail Hobbs, in that he could keep Will’s secret, which was obviously truly his own. Of course, by the end of Episode 12, things changed entirely.

Will became a man on a mission. He visited Abigail to further explore the power that comes with killing another. The two shared their mutual unwavering fear of her father, leading Will to inform her that, in a sense, he is indeed still alive; there’s a copycat! During a visit with Hannibal, Will described his plan in detail, revealing his intentions to take Abigail back to her father’s cabin in order to scan the scene and finally nail the copycat killer. Hannibal, needless to say, was not pleased. Lecter knew that the time had come.

Crawford, meanwhile, had been leading his own mission to catch the copycat. After having his team research the travel itineraries of Garret Jacob Hobbs, they managed to uncover that the man did indeed work with a partner. With some further investigating, they discovered that Abigail had enrolled in orientation sessions at each of the colleges the murdered girls had attended. It seemed as though Abigail Hobbs was her father’s partner, only to be the one continuing his work following his death. Crawford immediately sought out Hannibal, demanding to know the truth. Hannibal, after playing Crawford a small clip from one of Will’s most intimate sessions, was able to incriminate him for his own crimes. Hannibal had intricately set Will up to take the fall as the copycat killer, citing Will’s habit of “losing time” and disassociating as the moments he would have snapped. It appeared as though Will were finishing Hobbs’ work and finally murdering his daughter, Abigail.

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Will and Abigail made their way back to her father’s cabin for one last investigation; however, the pressure of the situation seemed to send Will back into a spiraling state of fever. Abigail became afraid, as Will managed to piece together that she was her father’s “fishing lure,” and in his eyes, a killer all the same. For a quick moment, Will lost reality and envisioned impaling Abigail. In truth, he merely lost time yet again, waking up on an empty plane back in Virginia.

Abigail had left him at her father’s cabin and journeyed back to her old family house. There, she found Hannibal Lecter waiting in her kitchen. In the end, Hannibal revealed the entire story to Abigail. Abigail, having heard Hannibal’s confession, began to panic. Hannibal, in truth, had manipulated the entire ordeal to give her a taste for murder. Abigail, as it seemed, did not react in the way Lecter had hoped. It seems she is truly not her father. Now, here is my small bit of confusion surrounding this scene. I was very sure that Abigail not only knew that Hannibal was the one to call her father to tip him off, but that she also knew that he was “like” her father. I could have sworn she knew the taste of human flesh when she joined him for dinner (the episode where Freddie and Will sat to argue about Abigail’s new book). Remember when Abigail and Hannibal made the pact to keep each other’s secrets? I thought it was assumed that Hannibal would call her father for a very very specific reason. Apparently, the girl had not pieced together the puzzle because Hannibal’s massive revelation threw her for a loop, and now, it seems, she too must die. To be continued, ladies and cannibals.