Friday, July 10, 2015

Hannibal 3x06 "Dolce" (Blurred Lines) [Contributor: Rae Nudson]


"Dolce"
Original airdate: July 9, 2015

Jack, Will, and Hannibal finally sit down for the dinner they planned last season. It only took a little bit of planning and a lot of bad luck. This family dinner is just one of the new memories Hannibal and co. make this episode. They not only make memories — they modify some, confuse others, and block a few out completely.

Bedelia is leading the way on rewriting some of her memories. After she helps patch up a bruised and beaten up Hannibal, she decides that this is where he leaves her. They both know that the authorities are closing in on him and that he can’t stay in Florence and remain free. So Bedelia, looking like a stone cold fox, packs his things for him to go. I love Bedelia, and she has never been fiercer than when she tells Hannibal he may make a meal of her yet, but not today.

Bedelia asks Hannibal what he will say of her when he is caught, and he says he’ll back up whatever story she wants him to. (There they go again, telling stories and setting the stage.) As soon as he leaves, Bedelia sets her plan in motion by taking the unique concoction of drugs that Hannibal likes to give to his patients. When Will and Jack arrive at the apartment she shared with Hannibal, Bedelia is high on this drug, and she claims she is Mrs. Fell and her husband Mr. Fell was treating her for being "confused."

That is her story, and she’s sticking to it, even though Will and Jack both know better. Jack’s not even mad, he’s just impressed she’s managed to stay with Hannibal for so long and stay alive. (I’m impressed, too.)

While Will and Jack are looking for Hannibal, Mason gets the news that Inspector Pazzi has been killed. Mason needs a new plan to get Hannibal in his clutches, and Alana suggests paying off the rest of the police department.

When Mason first appears in the episode, he and his caretaker are practicing preparing food so they will be ready to cook Hannibal. (Hannibal isn’t the only one putting a lot of thought into preparing his meals.) Mason’s caretaker talks of phantom limbs — the phenomena that occurs when a person loses a body part but still feels it after it. I imagine that’s what Will and Hannibal feel like to each other: a missing part that they can still feel so clearly.

Mason is also rewriting his past when he talks with Margot about having a child. He tells her that his greatest regret in life is taking away her ability to create it. But he doesn’t regret it at all. He loves the ability to decide life and death for other people, and his falseness is just another way to manipulate Margot. (Does Margot really want to have kids, or was that just a way to get out from Mason’s control? I guess it could be both.) He tells her he wants them to have a child together, using his sperm and a viable uterus.

Margot is definitely interested in someone with a viable uterus, and she and Alana have one of the craziest sex scenes I’ve ever seen. (It’s right up there with the Will/Margot/Hannibal/Alana/Wendigo five-way from last season.) In a kaleidoscope of colors and images, Alana and Margot blur into one another, crossing lines and crossing them back again. I love the idea of Alana and Margot together. They have both been used and broken by the men around them, and both are so strong and came out of their experiences darker than before. I do wish that there had been more of a lead into their romance — it would have been fun to see them flirt more.

I’m excited to see where their relationship goes, though, and it seems like both Alana and Margot feel like they can be honest with one another. Alana tells Margot that she is planning on turning Mason into the FBI, and Margot tells Alana that she is going to try to harvest Mason’s sperm. I feel like Margot has a plan that’s more than just using his sperm to have a child, so we’ll have to wait and see what she’s really up to.

Meanwhile, back in Italy where Margot has somehow managed to bribe the entire police force, the police finally bring in Bedelia for questioning. Jack, Bedelia, and an Italian policeman all talk about how to find Hannibal, but none of them is telling the truth. Bedelia still claims she thinks she is Mrs. Fell, Jack pretends not to know where Hannibal is and that the policeman is being paid off by a bountyhunter, and the policeman pretends to believe both of them. He dismisses Jack and corners Bedelia, who decides to be “cooperative” while never breaking her false identity.

While Jack and Bedelia are at the police, Will is already a few steps ahead of them. His mind is so blurred with Hannibal’s that he knows he will find him in front of one of his favorite paintings. The two meet as if they are old friends — conveniently forgetting their murderous past and how it destroyed Will. Will says his life is separated into before Hannibal, and after Hannibal, and that they are so close he feels as if they are conjoined twins. Would either of them survive a separation? It seems like his words were just for Hannibal’s benefit because as soon as they leave the painting and go outside, the music starts to sound like a bomb ticking and Will takes out a knife to stab Hannibal.

But Chiyoh stops him by shooting Will in the arm. Chiyoh is a bit of a tough spot for me because I don’t entirely get her motivations. Why would she keep searching for Hannibal after she left Will, only to find Hannibal and then let him go? Is she just that mad at Will that she wanted to finish what she started when she pushed him off the train? She told Bedelia she is Hannibal’s family and that she saw the monster he became when it was created. Maybe she also feels too connected to Hannibal to entirely let him go.

When Jack leaves the police, he goes straight to Hannibal and Will. (I think they are in the apartment of a man that Hannibal killed, right?) And Jack finds, waiting for him, the dinner party they set up in Baltimore so long ago. Only Will is what’s for dinner. Hannibal has already drugged Will and quickly catches and drugs Jack. Since Jack is the one who originally suggested they get into Will’s head, why don’t they do that now, Hannibal says. And then he takes a saw and cuts open the top of Will’s head. (!!!)

But before he gets much further, Will and Hannibal find themselves both upside down in a meat locker being welcomed to Mason Verger’s Muskrat Farm. Will appears to have his head, thank goodness. It took me a little while to put together how they could have gotten from Hannibal’s dinner table to Mason’s farm, but I think Bedelia told the police where Hannibal was, and then the police turned over Hannibal to Mason. The dreaminess of Hannibal is wonderful, but the plot holes are getting pretty big and that’s sometimes hard to look past. Once I put together a story that made sense to me, I think it worked, but I had to work a little harder than normal to get there.

Next week looks like some more torture, dinner parties, and escaping evil people trying to eat you. So, more of the usual on Hannibal.

Dessert:
  • Dolce can mean soft and smooth, like Gillian Anderson’s voice, and in Italian it means “sweet.” 
  • I know I say this every week, but Gillian Anderson steals every scene she’s in. She was hilarious and fierce and perfect.
  • I know I hate on Chiyoh, but that scene with her and Jack in the elevator was wonderfully tense. 
  • “Did you murder him with your husband, or did you just watch?” That question coming up again: Are you going to observe or participate?
  • What if we did one episode of just the women of Hannibal? I’d be down.

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