Ron Does Stuff

It’s two more episodes before the end of season one and I finally get to watch new to me episodes of this show. Let’s get into it!

At the end of the last episode, Will and Georgia had that bittersweet moment between the two of them where they try to remind each other that they’re alive. But it’s not the two of them who we start with in this episode. Rather, we go back to Dr. Gideon, who Hannibal and Chilton are discussing over dinner. Dr. Gideon is accusing Chilton of pushing him to kill, which if you’ve watched any other Hannibal Lecter media you’d know would be impossible because he just doesn’t have the skill for it. Hannibal does, however, and in not so many words he tells Chilton what he’s doing to Will.

And where is Will? Sweating in bed, dreaming about the gruesome totem pole, and just all around not having a great time in bed. I wonder how they shot that dream sequence because it’s both chilling and also visually appealing to me.

Feeling another kind of chill is Chilton, who has to take Dr. Gideon to court since Gideon is accusing him of pushing him to kill the nurse. Chilton isn’t exactly apologetic for his actions which really will come back to bite him in the ~guts~ (see what I did there?) later on in the episode, because Gideon manages to escape captivity.

Of course, the task of finding him is left to Will, who we all know is suffering from encephalitis but he doesn’t know that yet. Will is still very sure that Gideon isn’t the Chesapeake Ripper and he would be correct! Gideon isn’t the Ripper but he certainly can be as gruesome as he is, especially now that he’s making his way back to Baltimore and Chilton.

Chilton doesn’t know that yet, though, and he’s busy trying to pass around the blame for Gideon’s killing to Alana and Will, who have accosted him in his office about Gideon’s escape. He really does not want any of this coming back to him but that’s really not for him to decide, now is it?

At the FBI briefing on Gideon, Will goes into one of his encephalitis-fueled hallucinations again and I gotta commend the art department for the beauty in that scene with all the antlers and stuff. The way Will’s face was framed by those horns? I thought it was beautiful.

Of course, since Will’s still unaware that Hannibal already knows about his sickness, he goes and tells Hannibal all about his hallucinations in therapy. Since he doesn’t know that all of this has a physiological explanation, Will thinks he going crazy and that maybe he might just be pushed to kill eventually, since he spends so much time in the minds of these killers.

Back at the FBI, it becomes apparent that Gideon is going to exact revenge on the doctors who “worked” on him when he was in the asylum, and one of those is Alana Bloom. Sorry, but I like Alana the character and the actress who plays her but her and Will together just isn’t interesting to me. Not saying it can’t be done or that it doesn’t make sense, it’s jsut that to me it’s yet another heterosexual pairing. We’ve got a bajillion of those.

While Will and Alana do their thing, Gideon is calling up Lounds and making her thinks he’s a celebrated psychiatrist who wants to take her on as a writing partner. Lounds goes to meet this doctor and we get a hilarious scene of Gideon trying to keep a tongue from moving while it’s hanging out of the doctor’s slashed throat. Maybe it’s not funny for everyone but I thought it was a funny sight gag, sue me.

Gideon now has Lounds in the same observatory where Jack found Miriam Lass‘ hand with the handphone and I really love how this version of Lounds always seems so unfazed. Which totally makes sense if you’re a woman in a male-dominated field! She’s being used to lure Hannibal out, but of course Hannibal is smart enough to not just avoid being lured but also tell the FBI where Gideon is.

Back in the observatory, Gideon is cutting open Chilton, paying off the lame joke I made several paragraphs ago. Jack and the FBI arrive in time to sorta save Chilton, but it’s Will who actually “catches” Gideon, making him drive him to Hannibal. Which, wrong decision, obviously. Hannibal does his gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss routine on him and poor, poor Will Graham just can’t catch a break. It is heartbreaking to hear him tell Hannibal not to lie to him.

And as fucked up as it all is, I really do think that Hannibal thinks he’s being a friend here. He’s even sent Gideon away from Will and off to Alana. And the way he cares for him after and leads him to Gideon to be a hero? It makes sense in his fucked-up brain. But of course, at the end of the day, Hannibal is going to think of Hannibal first!