Hannibal

[serafina20]

We open with Abigail and her dad (henceforth known as Creepy Dad) hunting a deer. Abigail misses these hot the first time, but gets it on the second. The look of shock on her face lets us know that this is her first kill. She waxes philosophical over the deer’s carcass while Creepy Dad looks on. Then he begins enumerating the myriad of ways they’ll use the deer’s body. When Abigail says she doesn’t know how she’ll feel about eating the deer after killing her, Creepy Dad takes Abigail into his arms, looks her over and explains that eating her is honoring her. Otherwise it’s just murder. Then he kisses her on the forehead and watches with a faintly orgasmic look on his face while Abigail begins to gut the deer.

And then the deer turns into a dead girl and Abigail Hobbs wakes up.

For whatever reason, I find Garrett Jacob Hobbs so much more creepy than Hannibal Lecter. He’s just scuzzy. I know that Will says that there Hobbs didn’t have a sexual interest in the girls (or, at least he didn’t love them like that) but there so is a sexual component to it. The way he interacts with Abigail, the way he eats the girls (and more.) It’s all creepy in a DO NOT WANT way.

Will and his dogs! And they all run out to Alana Bloom, who is looking fabulous, as usual. Poor Will, always so emotionally exposed, is embarrassed at his lack of clothing in front of Alana (or, probably… anyone). He wants to cover up. No, Will. Please don’t.

“I like you that you rattle Jack. He respects you far too much to yell at you, no matter how much he wants to.” When Will said that, I immediately thought back to the bathroom scene in the first episode. Poor Will, again, a live nerve, who just tried to drown himself, probably to stave off panic or being overwhelmed, immediately gets yelled at by Jack Crawford over this serial killer. The yelling did help Will get to a level of understanding about the killer, but… yeah. Between the yelling and the idea planted into his head by Hannibal that Jack thinks of him as a fragile teacup, I can see where he might not feel entirely respected. He likes Alana as a buffer, but he’s also envious of her.

I still don’t understand Jack’s insistence that Abigail was her father’s accomplice. Before he gets Bloom’s report on Abigail’s emotional repression, practicality, and manipulative side. I don’t understand his thinking and the show hasn’t made it clear.

Oh, Hannibal’s face during Will’s lecture on the copycat. The whole scene is so beautifully crafted. He starts glowing, hearing his plaything dissect everything. He practically seems to be screaming, “Yes! Yes, that was me! I totally did it!” But that would ruin the game. He so badly wants Will to know, but he wants him to make the discovery himself.

Freddie Lounds is so beautiful. A horrible human being, but her hair. Her hair!!! I wanna pet it. It’s magic hair that lets her into places she shouldn’t be.
Okay, so the scene with Will, Abigail, and Lecter I actually have problems with. Not the Abigail stuff, but what Will says to her.

“There was plenty wrong with your father, Abigail, but there is nothing wrong with you. You say he was loving, I believe it. That’s what you brought out in him.”

I don’t like that line because that’s what Will says to Reba McClane in Red Dragon. It fits there because Dolarhyde was a messed up person who was abused up the wahoo and never knew how to relate to other people, particularly women, because of his horrific upbringing. Then he meets Reba and, in the midst of his “transformation”, he finds a reason to stop doing what he did. He couldn’t because he was already unbalance and got pushed over the edge, but he did genuinely want to stop and he wanted to be with Reba because she brought that out of him.

Garrett Jacob Hobbs loved his daughter too much and in the wrong way. He took that love and used it as an excuse to consume seven other lives. And while I don’t fault the character Will for trying to reassure Abigail that her father really did love her and she was a force of good in his life, I don’t like that they used something specific to another situation and shoehorned it onto this one, when it doesn’t fit quite right.

“Ms. Lounds, it isn’t very smart to piss off a guy who thinks about killing people for a living.” God, the look on her face when he said that. You could hear her thinking, “OMG, I DON’T BELIEVE YOU SAID THAT I LOVE YOU SO MUCH CRAZY WILL GRAHAM!!!!!” But she’s much too cool to squeal.

I like that Abigail reacts to Will’s poetic, “It feels like I’m talking to a shadow suspended on dust” line with all the blasé of a teenager.

The look on Hannibal’s face when Abigail says that she’d never “heard” the voice “before.” Like, “Oh, you disassemble, child.” And then when she lets Hannibal know, later, that she suspects him (“You be the man on the phone.” It’s all really cool.

Will’s dream about killing Abigail in front of the Raven Stag is… inappropriately arousing. And that’s all I’mma gonna say about that.

Also, I feel for Will because I’m having night sweats right now, and they suck.

I still don’t get how Hannibal got the first girl onto the deer head. Marissa I can kind of see, but the one in the field was all kinds of awkward. Maybe he used his special cannibal-magic powers that he uses to teleport between states so quickly.

Hannibal comforting Marissa’s mother will never not be creepy.

Worst secure crime scene ever. Just… not good.

The pillow-hair is horrifying. Just… and poor Abigail’s reaction to finding it. It’s one thing to almost be killed by your father and to hear that he’s a monster, but to then find the actual evidence. Poor Abigail. You never stood a chance.

So, the first time I saw this, I wondered what Abigail did to Nicholas that was so bad (beside stabbing him). Then I realized that she probably didn’t do anything but stab him and twist the knife (since Hannibal said she butchered him), which is an understandable reaction considering everything. She’s traumatized and then traumatized again and Hannibal knows that. He lies to the poor girl, isolates her, tells her that everything is not going to be okay and no one will believe her ever (which, considering Jack already thinks she’s a murdering cannibal, might be fair). But Abigail was always in a losing situation as long as Hannibal was around. Nicholas could have tripped and broken his toe, and Hannibal still would have found a way to make Abigail think she was damned for it.

I wonder what will happen when Abigail figures it out. She knows that he’s glad she killed Nicholas, but I don’t think, at the end of the episode, she realizes that she was set up. There was no way she was going to walk away from this without sullying her hands. (Actually, I think she begins to realize this at the very end). I wonder what she’ll do. I can see her going after Hannibal, trying to get her revenge. It won’t turn out well for her if she goes for a frontal assault. On the one hand, I almost want her to somehow subtly nudge Will in the right direction, but, on the other hand, I want Will to catch Hannibal on their own. So, I don’t know.

I like the episode, but there needed to be more Will. More… inside Will. The few scenes there were weren’t enough.