TV Review: Hannibal “Su-Zakana”
By: Brandon Wolfe
‘Hannibal’ has been so relentlessly active thus far in its second season that it hasn’t really stopped to take a breath in quite some time. However, with the Chesapeake Ripper arc brought to a close last week, the show now needs to switch gears into what will propel the second half of the season, and “Su-Zakana” is very much a transitional episode.
Jack and Will are ice fishing and having a loaded conversation about the appetites of fish and how best to lure them, suggesting that Hannibal is still very much at the forefront of Will’s thoughts. The fish they catch, it turns out, wind up as the main course for a dinner between the three men at Hannibal’s home, allowing Will to make sure there will be no mystery to the meat this time. Will claims to now be convinced of Hannibal’s innocence for Jack’s benefit, but he does not do a terrific job of veiling his contempt for Dr. Lecter. Hannibal, meanwhile, is still sleeping with Alana Bloom, who has reservations about Will resuming his therapy with Hannibal after Will attempted to have Hannibal killed from behind bars. Hannibal assures her that Will’s intentions were to protect her and were noble at heart, and that she should not worry about Will because he is in good hands.
A body is found in a stable, sewn into a dead horse, and the team is dispatched to investigate. Hannibal, still acting in Will’s usual capacity as lead profiler, surmises that the killer was attempting to cleanse the victim, Sarah Craber, through a symbolic rebirth. Zeller and Price uncover soil impacted in the victim’s throat, but are then thrown when the corpse appears to have a heartbeat. Opening the chest, a live bird is discovered inside, likely included by the killer to represent the soul. Will is brought in to consult and concludes that the killer is someone who either worked at the stables or knew them very well.
This leads Will and Jack to Peter Bernardone, played by the great, eternally twitchy Jeremy Davies from ‘Lost’ and ‘Justified’. Peter is a mentally handicapped man due to once being kicked in the head by a horse. He now spends his time caring for animals. Though clearly unbalanced to some extent, Will does not believe Peter is the killer, though he may know the killer. After the soil sample extracted from Sarah Craber’s throat allows the team to pinpoint a location of origin, 15 other bodies are found, and Will returns to Peter, who finally accuses his social worker, Clark Ingram (Chris Diamantopoulos, the uncannily accurate Moe from the ‘Three Stooges’ movie). Ingram shows some telltale signs of being a psychotic during an interrogation by Alana, but Jack is forced to release him due to lack of evidence.
Ingram then goes after Peter, releasing his birds and murdering the horse that kicked him as part of a framing attempt. But Peter gains the upper hand on Ingram and sews him into this new dead horse while he is still alive. When Will and Hannibal arrive at the scene, Ingram bloodily extracts himself, only to face Will as he points a gun at him, seriously mulling over murdering the man over his tormenting of Peter. Will, clearly relating very heavily to Peter’s predicament of being manipulated by a maniac, is transferring his anger about Hannibal over to Ingram, a fact that Hannibal is quick to point out before stopping Will from pulling the trigger.
“Su-Zakana” is a bit disjointed as an episode. Thrusting us back into an isolated case-of-the-week that, for once, does not have Hannibal’s fingerprints all over it, it’s a major gear-shift from the huge events of recent weeks. This episode is essentially the connecting joint that bridges the show’s narrative as it moves into a new phase, and as such, it has to lay much ground for future episodes. Shoehorned in seemingly out of the clear blue sky are a couple of therapy sessions that Hannibal has with a woman named Margot, who has attempted to murder her brother for reasons left vague. Those following the behind-the-scenes developments of the show will recognize this patient as Margot Verger, the sister of Mason Verger, the villain from the novel and film ‘Hannibal’, but none of that information is expressly given this week. Expect the Vergers to start playing a major role in the series soon.
‘Su-Zakana” does lean on some questionable TV logic. It’s not a secret among Jack and the rest of the team that Will ordered Hannibal’s death from his prison cell, and almost succeeded. While Will resuming therapy with Hannibal is up to the discretion of those two men alone, would the FBI really allow them to work together on a case after that? Would Will even be allowed to resume his former consulting duties at all, visiting crime scenes and interrogating witnesses, after having just been locked away for months as a suspected serial killer? Would he have been issued a gun? The answer is almost certainly no to all of these, but there are certain things you just have to swallow when it comes to a TV show resetting its status quo after a major shake-up. Better to focus on what ‘Hannibal’ does well, which is providing us with the most creatively gruesome crime scenes imaginable. One wonders if half the fun of writing this show is attempting to constantly one-up whatever exorbitantly horrible thing the show did last week.
The best element at play in “Su-Zakana” is the headspace of Will Graham as he begins to navigate just what is to be done about Hannibal Lecter. In a therapy session, Will does not mince words and reveals that, while he does not expect Hannibal to come clean about his crimes, he would appreciate the courtesy of not being lied to by the doctor about what they both know is true. Will reveals that his attempted third-party murder of Hannibal led to a realization that he finds some joy in hurting bad people, though he no longer wishes to kill Hannibal because, in a reversal of roles, he now finally finds Hannibal interesting. But the confrontation with Clark Ingram proves that Will’s feelings toward Dr. Lecter are not simply as clinical as he claims them to be, and these two men continuing to circle each other should prove to be a fascinating ongoing joust.
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