Ron Does Stuff

I know I’ve neglected this show for more than a month now, but if you’ve been reading my other posts, work was a bitch. But now I’m feeling a little better about myself, and I’ve been posting a little more regularly now!

At the end of the previous episode, Crawford, and probably the audience that saw this episode for the first time more than a decade ago, got the surprise of his life when the Chesapeake Ripper leads him to a still alive Miriam Lass. She’s missing an arm, of course, but at least she’s still alive!

With Miriam Lass now recovered, the FBI gets to run a fine-toothed comb through her to search for the Chesapeake Ripper. Miriam looks traumatized, and she definitely is, but so is Crawford, who keeps replaying the message that came with Miriam Lass’ arm back in season one.

But, ever the investigator, Crawford doesn’t let his guilt stop from asking for Miriam’s help in finding the Chesapeake Ripper, since she’s one of the few who’ve survived him. Unfortunately, Miriam doesn’t remember who he is, saying that he got into her head. She tells Crawford everything she knows, and I can’t help but feel that this would have been the conversation Crawford would be having with Clarice if Clarice wasn’t as successful with Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs.

Of course, since he is the Chesapeake Ripper, Hannibal gets invited to the FBI to see if Miriam is going to have an adverse reaction to him once he sees her. But since he’s already manipulated her memories — I’m guessing that’s what the lights were that Miriam was describing — Miriam doesn’t recognize him. Will Hannibal set Will up for this? But why go through all the trouble of kinda clearing him in the previous episode?

The show answers my question after the opening credits by showing Will being let out of Chilton’s hospital after the prosecution dropped all charges. Chilton expresses his wish to have Hannibal Lecter imprisoned instead of Will, and Wil tells Chilton that he’s going to be next on the menu, figuratively speaking. Chilton’s only hope is to convince Crawford that Hannibal is the Chesapeake Ripper, but I don’t think they know about Miriam Lass just yet. Chilton also asks the $69 question, which is why didn’t Hannibal just kill Will? Will says that it’s because Hannibal wants to be his friend, but as Archive of our Own tells us, the viewers think Hannibal wants to be more than just your friend, Will.

The first person to meet Will once he’s set free is Jack Crawford, who tells him that Miriam Lass is alive and that they’ve found her, but not the Chesapeake Ripper. Jack confesses that he gave up on finding Miriam, and he gave up on Will too, but that’s going to change now. He’s going to listen to Will, and the first order of business is going to where Miriam Lass was found.

Will does his thing in Hannibal’s…murder space, I guess? And I know it’s been said many times before, but I really gotta praise the production for some of the stunningly grotesque visuals they serve for the show, and the fact that it aired on network television in the United States.

And what Will figures out is that all of this is a misdirect away from Hannibal, to have him focus on something else while Hannibal does his cannibal thing. Will cautions against trusting Miriam, as well as telling Crawford not to trust anything in the crime scene that leads away from Hannibal.

Back at his home, Will’s welcoming committee are his dogs and Alana Bloom, who admits that she was wrong about him, but also wants him to stay away from Hannibal and not to hurt him again. And since Will is no idiot, he figures out that Alana’s sleeping with his boyfriend and tells her that Hannibal is dangerous, and she should stay away from him because Hannibal is his boyfriend.

At the FBI, Chilton is offering his services pro bono to help Miriam Lass recover her memories, since getting Hannibal Lecter imprisoned saves his own skin. I do like the poignancy of Crawford questioning why Will hasn’t told him about his recovered memories, and Chilton responding that Crawford told Will his memories are meaningless, so why should Will trust him now? Unfortunately for Chilton, Crawford isn’t receptive to the idea of him working with Miriam Lass.

One person that Crawford does trust to interact with Miriam Lass is Will, and they both share their experiences with the Chesapeake Ripper manipulating their memories using a light. And before I go any further, I really like Anna Chlumsky’s posture in this scene, like she’s always trying to shrink into herself.

The next scene — Will confronting Hannibal in Hannibal’s home — confused me a bit because I was expecting it to be a dream sequence. But it is real and Will is talking to Hannibal with a gun in his hand, asking Hannibal how Miriam Lass found him the first time. Well, Will, she found him the way you found him in the book. Will has got the upper hand and could easily kill Hannibal, but doesn’t go through with it because the heart wants what the heart wants.

After Will, Hannibal gets another confrontation, this time in the form of Crawford bringing Miriam Lass to Hannibal’s office. The work here is so good, because it’s disorienting how the show is slipping moments from Miriam’s memories into the present situation. For a few seconds I thought this was a flashback, or Crawford just working out in his mind how Miriam found out Hannibal was the Chesapeake Ripper. Hannibal is so confident with how he’s scrambled Miriam’s memories that he even volunteers to “help” her recover what she last saw before she got caught by the Chesapeake Ripper, and all she remembers is the Wound Man.

Back at the FBI, the lab has found a smudged fingerprint in one of the flower petals from the “tree” victim in the previous episode, and it’s…Hannibal Lecter’s. Now Hannibal’s plan becomes clear: he’s framing Chilton. Props to Hannibal for anticipating what Will was going to say, and planning accordingly. Crawford decides to bring both Hannibal and Chilton in to the FBI, and here’s where we see how well Hannibal has planned his misdirect. He’s left a just dead Abel Gideon in Chilton’s basement, kills the FBI agents tasked to bring Chilton in, and left Chilton with the murder weapons, and one of the agents made to look like the Wound Man.

So where does Chilton run? To Will Graham, who tells him to stay because running makes him look guilty. Will has also called Crawford, who still has not learned his lesson and continues not to listen to Will. Crawford apprehends Will, and maybe it’s just me, but I found it darkly funny seeing Chilton going through everything Will went through when the FBI thought he was the Chesapeake Ripper. Miriam Lass, however, does not find it funny. The false memory Hannibal implanted in her mind to make her think Chilton is the Chesapeake Ripper makes her grab Crawford’s gun and shoot Chilton. She doesn’t kill him, though!

Meanwhile, Hannibal’s night of wine drinking is interrupted by the arrival of Will, who tells Hannibal that he has to deal with him, and his feeling about him. The heart wants what the heart wants, Will!

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