"And the Woman Clothed with the Sun..."
Original airdate: Aug. 1, 2015
Will can’t escape his nightmares. He lives inside them with Hannibal when they are discussing the families the Tooth Fairy has killed. They walk around in scenes of death, covered in blood. “Have you ever seen blood in the moonlight?” Hannibal says, as pleasantly as if he’s asking Will to smell a flower in a field. Will wakes up from a bad dream where he’s killed the woman draped in blood, only to see his face crack in a mirror just like the ones the Tooth Fairy smashes. From his first conversation with Hannibal, Will faded back into the past just like the camera faded into black.
And what would cause a compassionate man who just left this nightmarish world only three years ago to dive back in? His family. Jack showed him pictures of the families the Tooth Fairy had killed while he was having dinner with Will’s own family. He felt he had to do anything he could to protect families like his own that are happy and know love, but whose lives ended in terror.
Will isn’t the only one focusing on family. The episode flashes back to Abigail, Will and Hannibal’s surrogate daughter. (Will’s real family includes a son, not a daughter like Abigail. I am sure that Will couldn’t face raising a daughter after what happened to her.) Hannibal adopted Abigail into his life and took the place of her other cannibal father. I love that the show revealed secrets from past seasons about how Hannibal faked Abigail’s death, and showed her eager participation in it.
Hannibal trained Abigail to embrace him as her new family by getting her to accept, and then let go of, her old family. “We have a basic affinity for our family. We can detect each other from smell alone,” Hannibal says to Abigail. Abigail remembers her past and faces her father in her mind—and she defeats him as she imagines slitting his throat, as he did to her.
As Hannibal and Abigail deal with the memory of her father, Tooth Fairy Francis Dolarhyde dined with the memory of his beloved deceased. Francis Dolarhyde finally spoke in this episode — and he is quickly climbing the list of most terrifying villains. The way he moves is creepy, the way he speaks is cryptic, and when he asked Reba to take a ride with him for his pleasure, I was ready to crawl out of my skin. Francis asked about infrared film to keep filming the families he stalks, and in the process, he made a friend of the blind woman who develops his film. He feels less self-conscious around her because she can’t see what he views as his deformities (or the film he develops), and she likes that he doesn’t pity her. Their conversation came to a dangerous halt when she mentioned speech therapy, but Reba tried to make it clear that she was very interested in what Francis had to say. I hope she makes it out of this alive, but I’m not feeling very confident.
If Francis and Abigail had a dysfunctional family, it’s nothing compared with the dysfunction of Jack, Alana, Margot, Will, and Hannibal. They can’t escape each other, and they depend on each other in so many aspects of their lives, none of which are healthy. I mean, Alana has a child with Margot because Hannibal helped them kill their baby’s father. Hannibal can detect Will by smell, just like he tells Abigail families can recognize each other from smell alone. And, after all, he agrees to help Will because he considers him family.
All in all, not much action occurred in this episode. It was full of mood and imagery and talk of what makes a family, but the only plot that really occurred was Will and Hannibal making some headway on their case and Will and Molly adopting two more dogs. It was one of the most beautiful episodes of Hannibal, and the images pushed new boundaries on a show already full of beautiful images. I am so, so sad this show might not continue. What will I have beautiful nightmares about when it is over?
Dessert:
- Coolest scenes, in no particular order: every fade to black; Will and Hannibal standing in the backyard facing each other with the moon in the background; the “Open wide, say ahhhhh!” dentist ad behind Reba getting into the car with Francis; the entire part where Will talks to his wife on the phone; Hannibal being reflected in the glass during conversations in his cell.
- DID YOU GUYS SEE FRANCIS DOLARHYDE’S TAIL??????
- “Trust me, I’m smiling.” (At this scene, my dad texted me “I’m smiling, too.”)
- “I love a good finger wagging.” “Yes, you do. How is Margot?”
- Freddie is back! She’s not scared of anything. Even though she probably should be.
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