In the twelfth episode of the first season of Hannibal, I’m not okay, you’re not okay, NOTHING IS OKAY ANYMORE. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Hannibal.
Trigger Warning: For continued talk of gaslighting/abuse, mental illness, death.
fuck this show WHY AM I WILLINGLY DOING THIS TO MYSELF
- I’m so fucked up I’M SO FUCKED UP
- This might be the most ridiculous video I’ve ever filmed of myself. I yell. Constantly. CONSTANTLY. I’m near tear half the time, and I am just way over the top. Understandably so! Because “Relevés” is SO FUCKING NOT OKAY I CAN’T HANDLE IT.
- I can’t believe I never saw the endgame. I get it. I get it now. Hannibal had an exit strategy, and HE WAS READY TO USE IT AT ANY TIME. By entwining Will into his experiments, he had the perfect scapegoat.
- I was so happy to see Georgia at the beginning of the episode, and it made me miss Dead Like Me terribly, and hearing Ellen Muth’s voice was so comforting. BUT Y’ALL. Will and Georgia bonding? It will always be one of my favorite things about this season. There’s always been a lot of talk about Will’s ability to completely empathize with the murderers he investigates, but here we watch him empathize with a victim, and it’s so important. It’s important because both characters struggled with identity and undiagnosed illness. They are both misunderstood by the world around them, and it’s that stigma that surrounds mental illness that harms them. And Will refuses to let that happen to Georgia, even after she dies.
- Oh, right, Hannibal murdered her in the worst way imaginable. I was already completely devastated by this episode in the first five minutes, and this was NOTHING compared to what was coming.
- Y’all, these people all got so close to the truth, and none of them have actually figured it out. THEY ARE SO CLOSE.
- With the break in his fever, Will begins to understand reality better. It’s fascinating to me that we also see understanding dawn in both Jack and Freddie Lounds, who may come to different conclusions based on their own biases, but who still experience arresting epiphanies on their own.
- Initially, Freddie Lounds, through her interviews with Abigail, figures out that Abigail has been lying. At the very least, Freddie suspects Abigail killed Nicholas Boyle, and really, I should have expected more of Freddie. She’s a selfish woman out for her own gain, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t incredibly astute. This is her job, and she knew that Abigail was too smart for her own good. She knew there were “plot holes” in Abigail’s story because… well, it was a story.
- So I found it particularly meaningful that simultaneously, Will was realizing that he’d been experiencing a “story” himself. If “Rôti” is the breakdown of Will Graham, then this is him deliberately assembling himself and the world around him back together. His clarity allows him to see the one thread that links Georgia’s murder with that of Dr. Sutcliffe, with all of Garret Jacob Hobb’s copycat’s murders: they’re all imitations. Georgia was killed because she saw the imitator.
- And then there’s Jack Crawford, who goes to Hannibal with his own story: Is it possible that Abigail Hobbs is the copycat killer? Like I said before, Freddie, Will, and Jack all approach this reality with their own bias, so it makes sense that Jack’s suspicion of Abigail would morph into this. It’s frustrating because he’s half right. Abigail did kill Nicholas Boyle, and she did act as the bait for her father. But he then follows Hannibal’s lead – exactly as Hannibal intended him to – right to Will Graham. (Who is Freddie Lounds’s bias, by the way.)
- BUT FIRST HE VISITS BEDELIA AND OH MY GOD
- OH MY GOD
- I NEVER EXPECTED THIS
- I NEVER THOUGHT ANOTHER CHARACTER IN THIS SHOW WOULD EVER MEET HER
- AND I FUCKING ADORE HOW BOTH THESE ACTORS PLAY UP THE COY NATURE OF THEIR CHARACTERS AS THEY PERFORM THE COMPLICATED LEGAL DANCE AROUND CONFIDENTIALITY AND BEDELIA DU MAURIER IS MY E V E R Y T H I N G.
- As soon as I heard Bedelia say that her attacker “swallowed his tongue,” I knew that Hannibal had to be involved, but only because it’s a reference to The Silence of the Lambs.
- AND YET, STILL NOT PREPARED.
- “Will would be better off with more friends like Dr. Lecter in his life.” NO NO NO NO NO NO OH GOD NO YOU ARE SO WRONG PLEASE SOUND EVERY ALARM I AM DYING.
- Of course, the show takes this scene and makes it EVEN WORSE. Because then Bedelia confesses to Hannibal that Jack visited her, and the conversation they have is simply unnerving. I still think I’m right that Bedelia is delicate about what she says to Hannibal because she suspects a lot more about him than she’s letting on, but she’s incredibly bold here. She outright tells Hannibal that he’s got to stop thinking of Will as a friend when both Will AND ESPECIALLY HANNIBAL don’t understand the concept of friendship.
- Which is particularly frightening to hear from her when she basically admits that Hannibal was the one responsible for making her attacker swallow his tongue.
- MEANING SHE KNOWS PERFECTLY WELL WHAT HANNIBAL IS CAPABLE OF
- I AM SO FRIGHTENED, PLEASE RUN AWAY BEDELIA. YOU KNOW. GO AWAY NOW AND SAVE YOURSELF.
- Basically, that’s how the suspense works in this episode. The audience knows everything, and we watch these characters stumble through ignorance, and it’s the most frightening thing imaginable. I can’t even wrap my mind around the scene where Will, trusting Hannibal because Hannibal has manipulated and gaslighted Will into doing so, TELLS HANNIBAL, THE ACTUAL COPYCAT KILLER, ALL OF HIS PLANS TO CONNECT THE COPYCAT MURDERS WITH GEORGIA’S MURDER. AND YOU CAN WATCH HANNIBAL’S MIND BEGIN TO IMMEDIATELY PLOT HOW TO TURN ALL SUSPICION AWAY FROM HIM. IT IS THE WORST. WE ARE WATCHING HANNIBAL LIGHT THE MATCH FOR THE BOMB SITTING UNDER WILL GRAHAM.
- Because the people who make this show have no respect for my own dignity, the next scene shows how Brian and Jimmy have figured out that Abigail was on every single trip that her father was on where he stalked his victims. Meaning that they now know part of the truth, which verifies Jack’s untrue theory that Will is protecting Abigail.
- That’s precisely when Hannibal lights the fuse. When Jack comes to visit him to discuss Will, Hannibal takes the opportunity to create the perfect storm around Will. It’s absolutely devastating to watch because from Jack’s perspective, all of the evidence points to Will. The dissociative episodes. The obsession with Abigail. Will’s lack of alibis. Will’s presence at all the crime scenes. Will’s intimate knowledge of the case. WILL ADMITTING TO LECTER THAT HE IMAGINED THAT HE KILLED MARISSA.
- THAT LOOK ON HANNIBAL’S FACE WHEN HE KNOWS HE’S SUCCESSFULLY MANIPULATED JACK IS GOING TO HAUNT ME FOREVER.
- Everything about this show is going to haunt me forever, LET’S BE REAL.
- And amidst all of this, it’s Will who gets the closest to the truth. When he and Abigail go back to her father’s cabin (which is, admittedly, a TERRIBLE IDEA, one that Will should know better than to do, but ALANA BLOOM IS NOWHERE NEAR HIM TO TELL HIM TO STOP), he figures out that she was the bait. The order of events was a bit confusing, but the way I understood it was: Will’s empathy helped him to understand that it was Abigail who baited her father’s victims, and he hallucinated mounting her on the stag antlers because of how upset at was that he’d been misled. This led him to have a psychotic break from reality, which accounted for the missing time and why he was on a plane by himself. Abigail stayed behind after leaving him in the cabin and heading for her old home.
- WHERE HANNIBAL WAS WAITING
- NO
- NO NO NO NO
- I MEAN SHE’S NOT DEAD ONSCREEN YET
- SO MAYBE???
- NO THIS IS SO AWFUL
- HE’S GETTING AWAY WITH EVERYTHING
- WHY DO I WATCH THIS SHOW WHEN IT HURTS ME SO MUCH MY HEART CAN’T DEAL WITH THIS.
- If only everyone had listened to Alana Bloom, I SWEAR.
- I don’t know how I can do the finale next. I don’t know how this is even possible.
- GAH.
The video for “Relevés” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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