Michael Wampler

Let’s get one thing straight immediately: “The Number of the Beast is 666” is a non-stop tour de force, from beginning to end. It is virtuosic in its scope, full of intimate scenes and juicy dialogue arranged around a lurid, stunning centerpiece that takes one of the most iconic, oft-parodied scenes of modern horror and makes it freshly terrifying. Make no mistake, Hannibal’s penultimate episode is perfect. It pains me that we have just one more week to revel in this brilliance.

That’s not hyperbole, either. The opening conversation between Will and Bedelia is, as is any conversation on this show featuring Gillian Anderson’s magnificent, lilting delivery, magnetic. A similar conversation appears later in the episode the episode, and taken together they are revelatory. Subtext has been becoming text for most of this season, but here we officially go there, with Will’s realization, at Bedelia’s suggestion, that Hannibal may in fact be in love with him. Leaving aside how very cool the notion of recasting the Hannibal mythos as a queer story is, the idea that the series has all along been built around, and in fact is building toward the conclusion of, this relationship provides context and weight to this final arc.

The discussion of Bluebeard’s wives, the idea that Hannibal uses Will as his agent in the world, and the return to the notion of participation—the suggestion that Will in fact chooses to be Hannibal’s agent in the world—all serve to recapitulate and to magnify the conflicts that have defined the series. Because with Hannibal behind bars, are not many of these conflicts beside the point? The devil is caged. And yet Jack is still a vengeful, manipulative, deceitful God. Alana is still cold and caustic, a far cry from the warm, nurturing woman we met three seasons ago. Will may very well be the murdering lunatic Freddie Lounds accused him being. Francis Dolarhyde may appear to be a wild card streaking through this assemblage, but it is all Hannibal Lecter’s design.

This is something Bedelia knows first-hand, knows instinctively, and perhaps this is why she seems to take such relish in laying it out for Will. Gillian Anderson’s addition to the cast has paid dividends this season, and her delivery here is as on point as ever; each word is clipped and crisp and fraught with meaning beneath the monotone of her voice. Bedelia is not the only who appears to be enjoying herself, either. Hannibal himself is a delight this episode, as Mads Mikkelsen’s performance edges closer to the rendition of the character with which we are most familiar. He has a permanent smirk plastered across his face, whether he is taunting Jack and Alana with their errors, lambasting Chilton one final time, or even, in a split-second gag shot, slurping up one of Chilton’s disembodied lips.

So much of the momentum here, then, is derived from long-standing character arcs coming to a head; from the continued twisting and turning and repeating of various motifs. Jack has always been manipulative of Will; now Will is aware of it and can call Jack on it, even if he continues to participate. Hannibal ribs at Alana, reminding her that he once tasted her lips, as well. Bedelia alludes to Bluebeard’s wives, but says with emotion that she would have preferred to have been the last (implying instead that she, like all of the others, has suffered some sort of death at Hannibal’s hand).

If the episode had just been a string of these sorts of scenes it would have been a series highlight. But it is the Red Dragon’s contribution to the episode that makes “The Number of the Beast is 666” the pinnacle of the series. (At least, one hopes, to date.) Dolarhyde’s abduction and torture and eventual murder of Chilton occupies an entire, extended twenty minute act of the episode, though it is unfortunately split by a commercial break (to give NBC credit, they did time it with a natural deflation of the tension, at Reba’s appearance). The entire thing is masterful, not least because this is such a recognizable, work-defining sequence. If you are anything like me, you cannot hear “do you see?” and not think first of South Park’s parody. But here we have a marvel of sustained a horror, a writer’s workshop in the slow ratcheting up of dramatic tension. Small scenes within the sequence fade to black and fade back in, mimicking Chilton’s consciousness throughout. Chilton is tied to a chair, shot from below, and above him the Dragon towers, his face obscured by a black mask that is more than a little reminiscent of our old friend, the Wendigo.

The writing and the direction are top-notch, but it is both performances that seal the deal. Raul Esparza plays Chilton with the perfect degree of smarm, but he turns that performance on its head here, parlaying Chilton’s fear into a considerable amount of audience sympathy. As for Richard Armitage, he is terrifying. His performance is so innately physical, from the jerking motions he makes as the Dragon, to the guttural growl the he modulates seemingly from the pit of his stomach. You are, in large part thanks to Armitage, on the edge of your seat for the full sequence, and only when you look up do you realize twenty minutes have gone by.

This is how great television is done, full stop—a textbook example of mood-setting, of dramatic structure, of thoughtful performance.

Stray Observations:

• “Quantifiably bitchy!” Chilton gets one last sick burn in before he, well, you know.
• “Are you a small or medium? Small, I bet.” Freddie Lounds, national treasure. TattleCrime is still a stupid name, though.
• The makeup work this episode is phenomenal, as well; Hannibal has never shied from gore, but the work on Chilton’s lipless face is among the grossest things the show has done.
• We have been advised to watch the final through the credits. Will there be a tag teasing Silence of the Lambs? Some other sort of Easter egg? My fingers are crossed for an eleventh hour renewal.

As Hannibal has adapted Red Dragon proper, it has been as consistently great as we’ve come to expect from the series, but it has also been something new: conventional. Up until now, this final stretch of episodes has been a fairly straightforward adaptation of the source material, and while it has been an undoubtedly skillful adaptation, it has also been something of a transliteration. Given the series’ earlier inventiveness—it’s willingness to subvert and sometimes wholesale alter the source material (a key plot point from Red Dragon, for instance, was exhausted some time ago)—these episodes can feel a little by-the-numbers, even if the quality itself hasn’t dipped.

Perhaps it is this sense of security that lends the middle sequence of “…And the Beast From the Sea” its palpable urgency. Dolarhyde’s attack on Will’s family, as prompted by Hannibal, is, in the novel, a final flourish, one that gives Thomas Harris’s story a typical thriller conclusion, which establishes Hannibal as a lingering, unkillable threat to Will’s well-being. By moving this sequence to the middle of the story, having it occur before Will and company even know who the Tooth Fairy is, Bryan Fuller has deftly moved us back into uncharted territory. The hunt for this new killer is distinctly more personal now. In terms of macro-narrative, the conflict between Will and Hannibal is now, once again, directly related to the plot of the season.

This is a sort of invention that we expect from Hannibal, and the sort that I hadn’t realized I was missing until that pulse-pounding chase through Will’s darkened house. We may know the general shape of things to come, but the emotional impact on our central characters is properly foregrounded once more. The big shift, the final narrative turn, will no longer bill the capture of Dolarhyde, or even his final, fitful attempt to harm Will as Hannibal’s surrogate—it will instead be the final shift of Hannibal’s relationship with Will, and on what note the show will leave their dynamic.

With that reshuffling in mind, the various pieces of the Red Dragon story fall into clearer relief. As Alana, Jack, and Will discuss Will’s run-in with Dolarhyde, which constitutes the first solid lead they’ve got. The focus is instead on Jack’s less-than-honorable approach to the investigation, as it becomes increasingly obvious that he is repeating the same mistakes that led Will into such a mess in the first place. When Molly takes a bullet, the consequences of Jack’s callous manipulation are all too clear. And yet—and Molly knows this—Will won’t say no anyway. He will always take Jack’s call. He will always go to Hannibal’s cell.

Alana’s arc, too, becomes more about playing the emotional fallout of the preceding series than it is about the particular plot mechanics at play now. When she strips Hannibal of his cell’s various amenities, she isn’t just punishing him for his interference in the investigation. She’s also inflicting on him the same indignities that he

has inflicted upon her, Will, Margot, and upon everyone he has ever come into contact with, to some extent or another. It’s no mistake that this scene, in which Alana’s staff strips Hannibal’s cell bare, is the first to explicitly confirm that the space was never real at all, just a figment of Hannibal’s imprisoned imagination. The constructed relationships between all of these people have collapsed, either under the weight of too much tragedy, or under the stress of being rent totally and purposefully asunder.

All of that brings us back around to Francis Dolarhyde, who in this episode begins his own conflict of identity. The Great Red Dragon begins to manifest itself as its own being, separate from Francis, and it calls into question for Francis his very sanity. This is new for Francis—for all he’s done. His sanity has never been in question. But how can he continue to murder, when he also feels this love for Reba? Hannibal’s solution, of course, is simply to feed the dragon elsewise—this was Hannibal’s solution to his love for Will, as well. In a way it’s a simple analogy: the Great Red Dragon is to Francis Dolarhyde as the Wendigo is to Will Graham. The common thread is Hannibal Lecter.

 

Stray Observations:

• Molly really is a badass. I love that in this adaptation, they’ve given her much more agency than she had in either the novel or in the film.
• There is a particularly great shot of Will confronting Hannibal—a clean line dividing them, Hannibal in a field of white, Will succumbing to darkness.
• Potential spoilers for the final two episodes: the major plot point of Red Dragon that has previously been exhausted is, of course, Freddie Lounds’s fiery wheelchair death, which was presented in season two as a ruse, but which in the novel leads directly to the discovery of Dolarhyde’s identity. Given that many of the newspaper communication games from the novel have been elided entirely from the show, I imagine that the conclusion will be markedly different from here on out.

Given its parallel title, it should be no surprise that “And the Woman Clothed in Sun” is, more or less, a direct continuation of the preceding episode, even more so than this highly serialized final run of episodes. Mostly, what’s here is further explication of Francis Dolarhyde, specifically and more generally, a further explication of exactly what goes on in the mind of a psychopath. Much of Hannibal has been concerned with the finer points of sanity, ever since Hannibal asked Will to draw a clock. Where does sanity end and insanity begin? How fuzzy is the line? Is it a gradient? a cliff? Are you born into it, or can it be cultivated?

Not that the episode offers any outright answers; in fact, the overarching argument seems to be that there are no answers. But in keeping with its subject matter, what Hannibal does offer is case studies. We spend much time with Dolarhyde this week, as his strange courtship with Reba McClane rounds home base. One of the eeriest scenes from the novel, in which Reba fondles an anaesthetized tiger, junk and all, causing Dolarhyde’s audible arousal, is here basically intact, and it’s lovingly shot, even if it is sometimes a little too obvious that that’s a tiger-patterned rug (maybe). Immediately after, Reba cozies up to Dolarhyde in similar fashion, feeding into his ever-growing ego as the “Red Dragon” begins to possess his mind.

With this continued focus on Dolarhyde, Richard Armitage continues to be a standout member of an already stacked cast. He plays the duality of the character with an unsettling ease. At times, he is vulnerable, even scared; at others, he is menacing. The combined effect is one of confusion and disorientation, which is never more effective than at the episode’s end, when Dolarhyde steals and eats the creepy Blake watercolor from which the novel takes its name. It falls just short of a punchline, which is just where the scene should land for maximum effect.

Another welcome case study is of Bedelia Du Maurier, who makes a triumphant return here as a speaker, capitalizing on her experiences with Hannibal, in which she has recast herself as a victim. Will is obviously unappreciative of this decidedly radical reinterpretation, and their back and forth throughout the episode is a highlight, providing the delightful repartee so many of the pairings on this show share. Bedelia steps almost gleefully into the Hannibal role, poking and prodding at Will as best she can. Hasn’t he learned his lesson? “Or do you just miss him that much?” she teases, raising that homoerotic specter once more. Her best line: “I don’t lie; I obfuscate.” If that isn’t a rationalization right out of Hannibal Lecter’s playbook, I don’t know what is.

The centerpiece of this story is Bedelia’s extended flashback to her first murder, of the patient whom Hannibal “manipulated” her into finding dangerous. The patient is played by Zachary Quinto, who is subdued and effective. It’s no stunt cast; a serious actor is necessary, even for this small role, to give the scene the weight it requires. This scene is beautifully edited, crossing back and forth to her appointment with Will, so that without a careful look at Bedelia’s wardrobe, it’s never clear to whom she’s saying what. This is a moment that we’ve heard about before, but to see it dramatized here, especially in such gory detail, puts a fine point on the dialogue that Bedelia has with Will. She harps about his exceptional empathy, and argues that it is just as empathetic to end a life as it is to save one; in some cases, it is perhaps smarter. Will refuses to believe this, and it’s that basic good nature (or is it naïveté?) that will ultimately undo him.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is a typically excellent episode of a show that is ending far too soon, and yet, I suspect, also at exactly the right time. The themes are coming full circle; the plot, building to a fever pitch. The effect of the Red Dragon arc is to take one of the “killers of the week” and make him a central figure on the show, and by placing Dolarhyde into relief with these other incredibly damaged people, we see the spectrum of sanity of which Bryan Fuller wishes to convince us. It’s all of a piece, and for that thematic consistency to remain as flawless as it now is, the piece must come to completion. Better a little perfection than a lot of mediocrity, and with this episode, we are one step closer to a perfect version of Red Dragon.

 

Stray Observations:

• I love the way this season plays with time and space, in a manner that surely was fueled as much by budgetary concerns as by artistic intent. There are the flashbacks with Bedelia, but throughout the season, characters have been in multiple places and multiple moments simultaneously; each time Hannibal sees himself in his office, rather than his prison, is another little pang, a sense of justice served to a mad man, for now.
• Dolarhyde seems himself, like Will, in a fractured mirror.
• Will gets more help from Hannibal, and there’s a great shot of them staring at each other through the glass, and Will’s reflection merges with Hannibal’s body

By now, the project of what is essentially Bryan Fuller’s version of a Red Dragon miniseries is abundantly clear: Hannibal is portraying two parallel and intersecting stories about the lasting effects that a man like Hannibal Lecter and his various, horrible misdeeds can have on the world around him. That’s a thread that runs through the novel and the film adaptation, as well—in a take on the well-worn trope, Jack calls Will back on the job for one final case. But in all the previous takes on this story, that trauma was implied. Here it is text. And we are reminded of it over and over again.

“And the Woman Clothed with the Sun” takes great pains to remind us of perhaps the greatest trauma Hannibal inflicted upon Will: his grooming and eventual murder of Abigail. In stealing Abigail away from Will, he perverted the one healthy relationship Will had managed; he called into question his ability as a friend, father, and his basic humanity. In murdering Abigail before Will’s eyes, Hannibal must have thought he was making some grand gesture of love. Instead, he ruined Will nearly beyond repair.

Knowing all of that and flashing back to Hannibal’s time with Abigail to give even more (super, super creepy) context to the whole affair, makes Will’s status quo in these episodes all the more poignant. He has managed to put himself back together, to find a wife and a son, and to live a relatively normal life. Hannibal inherently threatens that, and Jack knows it. His disregard for Will’s well-being, which was the engine of much of the early half of season two, is back in full force here. Jack seems to think that Will would say no, if he truly were unable to come help. Hannibal knows better, and he knows that that’s the avenue directly into Will’s head.

This is one of the greatest improvements that Hannibal makes upon the source material: these are all good friends. Will, Jack, Hannibal, and Alana have history, and it informs their decisions now. Alana worries about Will and about Jack’s manipulation of him as well as about Hannibal’s: “I’m not just worried about you. Last time it didn’t end with you.”

It’s fitting, then, that the episode hinges around each of the three protagonists paying Dr. Lecter a visit. Will is nearly crippled by just one conversation with Hannibal. Alana takes pleasure in toying with Hannibal, and she clearly revels in his reversal of fortune—check out the great blocking in her conversation with him, as the camera holds close on Hannibal, with Alana out of focus in the background; she only comes into focus when she gets a particularly good jab in about his imprisonment or Will’s utter indifference toward him.

As for Jack, he spends his time trying to justify himself to Hannibal—he recognizes the mind game but still falls victim to it, and, in fact, he leaves, opting out of the conversation rather than winning it, once he realizes that Hannibal has pulled what is essentially a trump card. The best thing any of these people could do is leave Hannibal to rot in his indignity and forget him entirely, but only Will really managed to begin to do that, and now he’s lost his chance. Look at the toll that this is already taking on him: away from Molly, his nightmares return, and his bed is once more drenched in sweat; when he looks into a mirror, his reflection shatters before him.

Of course, throughout all of this, the FBI continues its investigation into the Tooth Fairy murders, and they’re getting nowhere fast, even with Lecter’s help. Francis Dolarhyde is just as theatrical as Hannibal ever was, but the geographical distance between his crimes is a stumper. Seeing Dolarhyde in his daily life, it’s unsurprising that a man so reticent would be so careful in his insanity. Richard Armitage doesn’t speak his first lines until well into this episode, yet even in silence, he is thoroughly magnetic as Dolarhyde. There is a brief, as-yet unexplained flashback to his childhood; there are glimpses of him splicing together horrifying film of his handiwork, paralleled with Will’s study of the families’ home movies. There is the revelation that he kills the family pets prior to killing the families themselves.

And then there is his courtship with Reba McClane, played here by Rutina Wesley. Reba is blind, which adds a particularly unsettling element to their scenes. His awkward nature plays to her as almost charming, but we can see Dolarhyde and know that he’s anything but. That kind of blindness to certain aspects of one’s character is one that’s been a major theme throughout the series, but especially this season; we see it in Bedelia’s relationship to Hannibal, in Alana’s with the Vergers, and, of course, in Will’s with Hannibal.

By the end of the episode, Dolarhyde has placed a call to Hannibal, beginning another different courtship. Their collusion here links the past and present of the show, as well as giving Hannibal another avenue to inflict further trauma, even from within his cell. Why do the characters continue to subject themselves to him? Perhaps it’s something akin to charm. But it appears it’s quickly becoming too late for them to extricate themselves.

 

 

 

Stray Observations:

• Once you see the gay subtext on this show, you cannot unsee it. The opening scene is two ex-boyfriends talking to each other, word for word.
• Alana is still with Margot! As a matter of fact, this episode marks the first time that I feel like the new characterization of Alana is clicking. They’ve sort of merged her with Chilton from the books (making you wonder why they kept him around at all), but it works quite well.
• Another great shot—Will calls home to Molly, and, for a moment, they’re sharing the same bed.
• So does Hannibal’s cell really look like that, or is he imagining it? It’s never quite clear.
• Freddie Lounds is back! She called Will and Hannibal Murder Husbands! “Well, you did run off to Europe together.”
• NBC Doesn’t Care About Fannibals: In my market, Hannibal was pre-empted for a Phillies game and was then joined in progress. There’s making a sound business decision, and then there’s being downright rude.

There’s really no getting around the fact that with “The Great Red Dragon,” Hannibal has become an entirely different animal. While it’s always had elements of adaptation to it, especially in the beginning of this season, which drew largely from the novel Hannibal, the series has mostly told original stories with the occasional twist on or wink at the source material. The spirit, rather than the letter, of Thomas Harris’s published work, has been followed to this point.

No longer: “The Great Red Dragon” is a near word-for-word adaptation of the first several chapters of the novel Red Dragon, and it is great. It likely goes without saying that it’s far better than Brett Ratner’s film of the same name, but what’s truly excellent here is the way that the episode enriches the source material, expanding upon it in new ways owing to the larger context that the preceding episodes have built up.

For instance, we open immediately on a close up of Richard Armitage as Francis Dolarhyde, discovering his namesake on the cover of Time magazine. It is such a thrill seeing this moment recast with the show’s visual aesthetic and Brian Reitzell’s phenomenal score. We’ve been introduced to countless killers-of-the-week by now, and Dolarhyde is efficiently, thoroughly, and wordlessly established. On the one hand, the show takes advantage of shorthand, as we know the character already. On the other, the images and sounds tell us all we need to know anyway.

In fact, the episode is largely an exercise in returning us to the original format of the show. Jack Crawford recruits a reluctant Will Graham to investigate a case that only he can crack, despite the protests of those close to Will. Alana Bloom and Frederick Chilton trade barbs. Agents Zeller and Price return (FINALLY) and are sassy. And at the end, Will must go to Hannibal for assistance, just as Hannibal always knew he would. They’re all familiar beats, but the characters have been through so much. Three long years have passed since Hannibal was locked away; the context is all different. Whether or not Will should help Jack is a central conflict of Red Dragon, and it has been in Hannibal as well. But it’s remarkable how much more weight their reunion carries, now that the backstory has been dramatized.

It’s a recognizable adaptation of a familiar story, but it is chock full of the inventive flourishes we’ve come to expect from Hannibal. Following Dolarhyde’s introduction, a stunning, wordless sequence plays out of Hannibal’s capture and imprisonment. His reminiscences, like Will’s so often do, take place in his mind palace, and he pictures himself in the church in Florence, listening to a cherubic choir boy singing some version of “Hallelujah,” when really he is stuck in his sterile cell. Alana’s conversation with Hannibal is a nice example of the show enhancing the source material, playing off Alana’s expanded role and her history with Hannibal. She knows he’s not insane, and so does he—but that’s the plea he scored anyway.

Very little actually happens in “The Great Red Dragon” beyond what we’ve already summarized. It’s very prefatory, setting up the final arc of the show. We’re deftly introduced to Dolarhyde and to Molly, Will’s wife of an indeterminate amount of time, who feels like a fully realized character more or less immediately. That’ll be important down the road, of course, but it’s appreciated here as well.

More than anything, “The Great Red Dragon” serves to recalibrate the series following the carnage not just of “Digestivo,” but basically of everything since “Masumono.” It does so spectacularly. One of the episode’s final sequences is a good, old-fashioned crime scene investigation, just like in the early, more procedural days of the show. The swinging pendulum returns at last as Will re-enacts Dolarhyde’s crime, and he finally says that line that has, perhaps unexpectedly, become a catchphrase among fandom: This is my design. It’s awesome. A moment equivalent to Batman suiting up, and yet the feeling of awesomeness makes the audience inherently complicit in what Jack is doing to Will. We know the damage this work is doing to him; we shouldn’t be so jazzed to see it in process. But then there’s that killer shot of him standing over Mrs. Leeds, with the bright red strings of “blood” spray fanning out behind him, becoming illuminated, and it looks too beautifully composed to be concerned for very long.

 

Stray Observations:

• Next to Molly, Will doesn’t have to sleep on a towel. How’s that for “show, don’t tell”?
• Will’s reunion with Hannibal echoes for a moment that hallucinatory encounter in Italy.
• Hannibal and Chilton discuss the former’s cooking: “And when you last made it for me?” “The blood was from a cow, only in a derogatory sense.” Hannibal is still the stealth-funniest show on TV.
• Chilton promised himself he would never use colons in his book titles because, of course, he did.
• “A snaggle-toothed son of a bitch.” I don’t know why Laurence Fishburne’s delivery cracked me up here, but it sure did.
• NBC isn’t even bothering with previews for upcoming episodes anymore, if you needed any further writing on the wall.

In Italian cuisine the digestivo is had last, and its purpose is right there in the name: essentially a nightcap. It’s a small drink used to aid digestion of the meal. “Digestivo” is more a binge than a nightcap, but it does such a beautiful job of synthesizing not just the preceding season, but the entire series, that one would like nothing more than to become intoxicated by it again and again. It is a grand finale, reaching even further operatic heights than “Masumono,” ratcheting up not just the violence and gore, but the psychologically terrifying ways in which that violence is carried out. That the episode after all that should then end on a comparatively quiet flourish is fitting. The meal is done; now, we digest.

For all intents and purposes, “Digestivo” is the final episode of Hannibal proper. The best proof of this is in the title of the next episode, “The Great Red Dragon,” which abandons the culinary titling scheme the series has used thus far. Moreover, the final episodes of the show are effectively a Red Dragon miniseries, and while they will certainly call back to and develop on what we’ve seen so far, expect these episodes to function more as a sequel than as a part of what, with “Digestivo,” has become a pretty tremendous whole.

“Digestivo” operates on two levels. There’s the surface level: the operatic, Grand, Guignol-esque, terrific violence that punctuates the conclusions of the characters’ journeys to date (except, strangely, for Jack, who mainly sits this one out, perhaps having already had his big moment two episodes ago). Then there is the interpersonal level: the emotional stuff that underlies all the bloodspray. Both levels work independently of the other (spectacularly so), but they also intertwine so effectively that neither feels egregious or out of place.

This is a feat because there is plenty here that could be considered, on a lesser show, to be egregious. For instance, Mason Verger stole Margot’s uterus, implanted into it a baby born of his sperm and her eggs, and further implanted the uterus into a surrogate mother he keeps at his farm. That surrogate? Is a pig. And Alana and Margot, upon discovering this, cut the stillborn baby from the very pregnant pig’s womb, in excruciating detail. (And NBC couldn’t market this show!) This is the most horrifying thing that happens in the episode, but not without some tough competition.

After all, “Digestivo” also features their revenge-by-eel upon Mason. And a Face/Off style surgery in which Mason plans to cut off Will’s face and wear it as his own, while he eats Hannibal Lecter. (That Will voices his realization of this in what is basically a joke line is an indication of how twisted these people’s lives have become by this point.)

As I say, this is basically a series finale, and so it’s hard not to view the episode as a laundry list of loose end tying. In a lot of ways, it is just so. But the tying is done so satisfactorily. The knots are just tight enough to provide resolution but are loose enough to give the audience a thirst for more. Fortunately, a taste more is exactly what we get. But with “Digestivo,” I am more at peace than I have yet been with Hannibal’s impending end. In point of fact the show might as well already be over.

After all, what more need be said than what is so artfully depicted in that final scene between Hannibal and Will? Will saves him from Cordell and Mason, and he takes him to his home. Will wakes up, and teacup shatters again, never to come back together. He has what is more or less a literal break-up scene with Hannibal, and Hannibal takes the goodbye just as hard. This is the worst defeat Will can inflict upon Hannibal: to let him go. To not chase him, not find him, not think about him or care about him at all. Not to worry about forgiveness or blame. To let the teacup stay where it is in fragments on the floor.

This is the only way that whatever this thing is between them can end, and it removes, even if for a moment, all of Hannibal’s desire to keep playing the game. Mads Mikkelsen is at his best in this scene, playing a muted, vulnerable Hannibal for perhaps the first time in the series. No longer is there any need, any desire even, to eat Will. The fascination with Will, the love for him, morphs in an instant into a desire to strike back at the one who hurt him. “We are a zero-sum game,” Hannibal puts it so simply. And so he turns himself in to Jack, so that Will may always know where he is and exactly how to find him. Chiyoh has him in her sniper rifle’s sights, but she doesn’t take her shot. For her, Hannibal belongs in a cage, and a cage is where he will stay.

This could be the end. It would be a tremendous end. Even with the Red Dragon arc to come, I have a hard time treating this as anything but a finale to the series. That it is a nearly perfect one is all the better.

Stray Observations:

• Joe Anderson is more than fine as Mason, but he really is missing some of the spark that ignited Michael Pitt’s performance, even as some of his lines are truly delightful: “No. I drink martinis made with tears.”
• Will bites off Cordell’s cheek at Mason’s unbelievably creepy dinner party, and Hannibal looks so very proud of him.
• There’s lots of talk about literal dick eating this week, in terms of subtext becoming text.
• Alana’s arc is still one of the few weak points of the season for me. She releases Hannibal from Verger’s trap with the following explanation: “I was trying to save Will from you, but right now, you’re the only one that can save him.” This, along with her conversation with Will, is the best explanation we can get for her various actions, but they never felt tethered to a theme the way that Hannibal’s, Will’s, or even Bedelia’s similarly nebulous decision-making processes were.
• Is it wrong that Cordell’s recipe for Hannibal’s tongue sounds delicious?

Well. That certainly took an unexpected turn.

As the season (and series) begins to wind down, I imagined “Dolce” to be a sure shot; obviously Hannibal was on the ropes, and Will and Jack would close in on him once and for all, setting the stage for the adaptation proper of Red Dragon that will close out the show. There would be some kinks along the way—what role would Chiyoh ultimately play, for instance? Would Alana and the Vergers aid or hamper the effort?—but ultimately, the resolution was clear cut and in sight. I am both sorry and delighted to realize that I have underestimated this little show that could. Dolce is, of course, the dessert, a sweet course to be eaten before the final drinks and coffee.

“Dolce” is plenty sweet, a reward both to viewers of the series and long-time fans of the source material. Cleverly feinting toward resolution, “Dolce,” instead, pulls a sharp left, repurposing even more of the Hannibal novel and film in the lead up to one of the most batshit, insane final sequences the show has attempted (and yes, I am including the oft-invoked, blood-soaked finale of “Mizumono” in this estimation).

So before we get to Red Dragon, we’ve got Will, Hannibal, and Jack seated at a dinner table, much as Hannibal fantasized earlier. And Hannibal is cutting Will’s head open with a circular saw. We don’t get to see what happens next—one hopes that “Digestivo,” airing this week (about which more below) will fill in some blanks—before Will, Hannibal, and not Jack, are hanging by their feet in Mason Verger’s meat locker.

Thomas Harris’s Hannibal is perhaps the most luridly purple of the Hannibal Lecter works. The novel and film are both somewhat over-the-top; the event ill-suited to the stories being told. That’s not so here. “Dolce” is delightfully, unabashedly weird. Bedelia du Maurier, with whom I am officially obsessed, spends the first half of the episode stitching up Hannibal, while subsequently taunting him—his inevitable capture, his inability to turn her into a meal. And the second half she is doped up on heroin; the better to sell herself as helpless captive to Jack and Will. Early in season two, Bedelia played mind games with Will, too, and Will echoes that chilling whisper back to her here: “I. Don’t. Believe. You.” Gillian Anderson is the MVP of the episode, and it’s exciting to know that Bedelia will be sticking around into the Red Dragon arc.

The best thing about “Dolce” is how it gets so close to the end of the story, waiting until the last second to divert. Will and Hannibal meet. Their faces practically identical in their scars and dried blood. Throughout this season, subtext has become text, and here, the apotheosis. “You and I have begun to blur,“ Will says. “Isn’t that how you found me?” Hannibal replies. Hannibal goes with Will willingly (no pun intended); it’s oddly poetic. This really all has been a game for Hannibal, and Will a worthy adversary. Incarceration is merely the next round; a slightly different set of rules.

But then Chiyoh shoots Will in order to set Hannibal free. It’s one of the hilarious ironies of this last arc. All parties involved want Hannibal defeated, but they each want it done on their own terms. So they end up in competition with each other, while the true enemy slips away, even if just for one more day. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled.

As Hannibal cares for Will, not unlike how Bedelia cared for Hannibal at the episode’s opening, their strange, pseudo-romantic dynamic comes to the forefront. (“Just make out already,” you may or may not have shouted at your screen during this scene.) Of course, Hannibal does to those he loves the same thing he does to those he does not: he eats them. There is a difference in context, in preparation, but these nuances are known only to psychopaths. How do our intrepid heroes, if we can still call them such at this point, get out of this mess? If it’s anything resembling its source material, we’re in for one hell of a “Digestivo.”

 

Stray Observations

• “How is Chiyoh?” “Oh, she pushed me off a train.” There’s still a buddy-cop sitcom brewing somewhere in here, if we’re looking for ways to save the show from certain doom.
• Evil Alana is oddly similar to Chilton in mannerism and, also, in oddly significant cane-leaning. Intentional? Almost certainly. It also lends further to the episode’s general aura of the bizarre.
• Margot Verger’s new hair is awful.
• Holy suggestive sensuality, Batman. Margot and Alana get it on in a sea of kaleidoscopic vagina imagery. Most importantly, this makes Alana Eskimo buddies with Will—twice over, depending how much you want to read into all that Will/Hannibal subtext.
• As a matter of fact, there are many hazy, murky, fluid images in this episode, and many are drug induced, as though drugs are the only way to make any kind of visual sense of the horrors these people have perpetrated upon each other.
• Hannibal Renewal Watch: Amazon passed, the contracts are up, and, insult to injury, the show will finish its run on Saturdays. It is, sadly, time to retire the Hannibal Renewal Watch. We hardly knew ye.

“Contorno” presents an interesting question with regard to episodic television writing. To wit: how much does an absolutely killer final act compensate for an episode that otherwise doesn’t quite move the needle from the previous installment and only inches us forward, plot-wise, into the next? In beginning, to answer this question, let’s return as usual to Italian dining, in which the contorno is a side of vegetables or salad served alongside the main course. So is Bryan Fuller simply making us eat our vegetables here? That interpretation would fit the previous episode, too.

But if that is the case, then the closing scenes of this episode are one sweet gelato, a reward for the giant exposition salad we’ve been wolfing down for the past two weeks. It’s a little weird to start at the end here, but there is no denying the momentous nature of that reprise between Jack and Hannibal, one that perfectly mirrors and inverts their previous, much bloodier confrontation.

Hannibal doesn’t go to this particular well very often, but it makes a very worthwhile trip here: Laurence Fishburne is a towering hulk of a man. Really, he is. Jack is so physically imposing in these scenes. Just look at the first shot of his arrival, as he glowers up at Hannibal in the window, having witnessed his murder of Inspector Pazzi. (The shot is reversed at the end of the sequence, with Jack looking out the window at Hannibal as he flees.) The fight that proceeds is beautiful, one-sided, scored by one of the series’ most inspired musical cues to date, and is just generally a tremendous achievement. Certainly it is the high water mark of the season.

And yet it is not quite the end of this little European arc. The preamble to Red Dragon, which will (it is now all but certain) serve as the finale to this iteration of the Hannibal Lecter saga. Hannibal is bruised, beaten, and bloody, but he escapes, if only temporarily. Jack may have found him first, but Will and Alana are converging as well, despite their separate setbacks this episode.

In fact, I think the great strength of this episode is that, despite the absence of plot, it offers a few key images and conversations that bolster the series’ themes. There’s this recurring idea of reciprocity, which, of course, is the one word that may best describe the relationship between Hannibal and Will—really, between Hannibal and everyone else on the show. It’s all about how much he can do to them, how badly he can hurt them, and how much they’re capable of doing in return. Alana is the best example of this. I’m still not sold on her heel-turn into calculated villainy, but her single-minded attempt at vengeance, though foiled again by Hannibal, at least provides a clear explication of the theme. Also interesting is the way the show links her and Bedelia, through Alana’s careful explanation of how she discovered Bedelia and Hannibal through her weekly wine-and-gnocchi routine. There’s methodology to both women’s apparent madness.

Will is still the more interesting situation though, not least because Will is still the better-realized character. He and Chiyoh spend the episode on a train, engulfed in darkness, as they further contemplate Hannibal’s impact on each of their lives. Chiyoh’s purpose becomes clearer, as she seems to have gotten Will figured out: “If you don’t kill him, you’re afraid you’re going to become him.” There’s a strange symbiosis to their dynamic that, rightly, frightens Chiyoh. Enough so that she pushes him off the back of a moving train in the episode’s most jaw-dropping moment.

Not that Will is in any real danger. We have Red Dragon to get to, after all. And, more importantly, Will and Hannibal are inextricably, almost supernaturally linked. It should come as no surprise when our good friend, the murder stag, comes to Will’s side and nudges him awake (slash maybe back to life?).

But the thing I like best about this episode and the season so far is this recurring motif of the snail. “Contorno” delivers a new piece of knowledge (or, at least, new if you, like me, don’t know all that much about snails). They survive digestion. If you’re not convinced yet that our heroes are the snails in this story, you should be now. They’ve all been killed and “eaten” by Hannibal Lecter, without their knowledge; now they’ve survived the digestion, and each of them have become something else, something new, something different. That’s how they’ll catch him, at long last.

 

Stray Observations:

• There’s a beautiful early shot of Jack releasing Bella’s ashes. It seems odd to me that he decides to throw the ring away, too, though. Is that something people do? I suppose it fits the theme of rebirth/metamorphosis that we’re developing here.
• I love how they’ve repurposed the Hannibal source material with Inspector Pazzi, in a way that doesn’t suck so much and that serves the new version of the story they’re fashioning. I also really, really love how they retain the utterly silly depiction of Pazzi’s crack detective skills from the film, as he Googles a picture of Hannibal Lecter to determine that yes, indeed, that strange professor is Hannibal Lecter.
• I’m increasingly skeptical that there will be any real payoff to this business with Mason Verger and Alana, unless Verger will have some sort of role to play in the Red Dragon arc.
• Hannibal Renewal Watch: Amazon has passed, Netflix has passed, and the actors’ contracts have expired. This appears to be the end, my friends. Fortunately, The Silence of the Lambs is the Hannibal Lecter story least in need of rehabilitation.

“You Can’t Take Command” is the sort of finale that, as you’re watching it, is pretty damn entertaining. But the second it’s over (and, really, during any commercial break or even just a pause in the episode’s action), and you think about any of its components in any sort of detail, the whole thing threatens to fall apart. It coasts along on momentum, but then, at a crucial narrative peak, the momentum comes crashing to a halt. The show stops and forces you to think about what it’s doing—and all that anyone can be expected to think is, “wow, that was stupid.”

None of that is to say I hated “You Can’t Take Command.” In fact, I found much of it way more tolerable than the past several episodes of the season. (I certainly didn’t hate it as much as The A.V. Club’s Joshua Alston, for instance.) The episode coasts along a lot more smoothly, and in more entertaining fashion because it actually has an endgame to play out. We are past the point of endless table setting for a foregone conclusion, and that helps the show tremendously.

For instance, take the way the episode immediately drops the other shoe. Leave aside that Rowan’s fake name is Damascus; we, at this point, can take for granted that everyone on Scandal is a fucking idiot. The shit-eating grin on Joe Morton’s face as he hands Mellie the photos of her and Andrew, along with the Remington file, is pure gold. And how great that Mellie is finally, if against her will, placed smack center in the middle of all this B-613 shit. In other words, she is finally granted a role in the show proper, rather than shunted off to some narrative offshoot reserved just for her. (Like, just spit-balling here, an extremely improbable run for Senate in a state in which she does not reside.)

The script even does one better by drawing parallels between Mellie and Olivia, a concept that is always extremely welcome. Cyrus and Maya each tell them, respectively, how self-centered they are; how they construct dramas surrounding themselves, and other people are merely actors in those dramas. Never mind that everyone lives in her own drama.

This, ultimately, is the undoing of Olivia’s grand scheme to take down her father. No one knows who Rowan is. You can’t take Command, the logic goes, because there may as well not be a Command. Eli Pope is a doddering curator at the Smithsonian, full stop. “You Can’t Take Command” goes full-on “darkest before the dawn” here, as Rowan, in short order, murders the entire grand jury and even the stenographer too; threatens David Rosen with Abby’s life, leading to Jake and Olivia’s imprisonment (actually Cyrus does this, about which more in the strays); and systematically eliminates every person on earth who can name him as Rowan, even going so far as to offer Maya her freedom in exchange for her silence.

What a setup, right? The CIA is fully aware of B-613, and while Director Lowry seems to have been unaware of how out of hand it’s become, she’s powerless before Rowan and Cyrus to do anything about it. Like that, Rowan appears invincible.

And then Olivia and Jake just kind of win. They trace the money from the Smithsonian that Eli Pope has been funneling to B-613, and they nail the doddering old curator for embezzlement. They even visit him in jail and gloat.

I probably don’t need to explain why this is stupid. This is where the episode screeches to a halt, and it never quite recovers. To the extent that Rowan is actually eliminated here, what an anticlimax! All of this season has led to a financial technicality? He’s in regular-people prison, for a white-collar crime? There isn’t even the decency of a final showdown between Olivia and her father? Maya doesn’t have more of an interesting role to play? From the pretty effective groundwork laid in the first half of the episode comes almost nothing of interest or import, and that’s a bummer. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the finale of this season were a disappointment—but to have it come some close to salvaging something worthwhile, and whiff at the last minute, is the real scandal. (Sorry.)

And then there is of course the fact that Rowan hasn’t gone anywhere at all. So this is a false ending, and a disappointing false ending at that. It’s a matter of when, not if, Rowan returns and this whole sloppy mess rears its head once more. If nothing else, this finale and this season might have been an exercise in deck-clearing, freeing the show of the shackles of the B-613 storyline, but they haven’t managed even that.

That’s a shame, because the new status quo suggested by the episode’s final act is an intriguing one in many places, but it’s significantly less intriguing when all indications are that any shifts are temporary, awaiting reversion to the template. Consider the notion that the two most electric scenes in the finale are only tangentially related to B-613, and in fact grow out of the fallout of B-613’s “destruction.” Quinn’s confrontation of Huck, upon realizing that he (totally nonsensically, it should be noted) is still operating under Rowan’s orders, and killed the grand jury, is a unexpectedly cracking payoff to the season’s most frustrating plot thread. “Of course you have a choice. You always have a choice.” Leave it Quinn of all people to be the moral arbiter on this show. “You’re not thinking anymore, you just want to kill.” Katie Lowes’s performance is gripping here, and it’s about damn time the narrative grapples with the fact that Huck is essentially a monster in the employ of Olivia Pope. Fuck your white hats. The only negative about this scene is that it’s such a small part of the episode, and is left on a cliffhanger—one both hopes that Quinn shoots him dead, and yet doesn’t want to put that burden on Quinn. It would have been nicer to see this one laid to rest.

The other great, great scene is Fitz’s confrontation with Mellie. I think he ultimately is being a bit unfair to her, given all that he has done, but the idea that Mellie gave up that grand jury is too much to take for him. The whole last act of this episode is shit hitting in the fan, and it works on that level, allowing the episode to regain at least a little of the momentum it lost in the resolution of the Rowan business. Tony Goldwyn is on fire here, too, which helps tremendously. – “Do you think I’d let you be President after what you did? Pack your bags and get out of my house. Before I throw you out.” There’s a lot of talk on this show about what a great man Fitz is, and while I hate to see Mellie villainized solely to prove that point, it’s not unreasonable to see this as a breaking point for Fitz. That point is further emphasized by the fact that he summarily fires Cyrus, recognizing him finally for the snake that he is. Fitz has been a pawn for much of his life, this season included; perhaps he just has finally decided, no more.

And then there is, of course, that ending. Olivia Pope and Fitzgerald Grant making out on the White House balcony. (In a truly terrible VFX shot, but nonetheless.) The season has teased out their romance in fits and starts, but really this story hasn’t been the focus of the show for some time, and this seems like an odd time to revisit it. That said, it’s impossible not to get giddy at the sheer energy of the scene, and at the song choice, “Here Comes the Sun,” which evokes the metaphor of Jake and Olivia’s arguably more hopeful relationship just as it is abandoned in favor of Fitz and Olivia’s arguably more epic love. As we prepare ourselves for Scandal season five (and beyond, because as we know, Shondaland shows never end), it’s finally time for Fitz and Olivia to stand in the sun.

How long will it last? Other than “not very” the answer is left vague. For all the show’s talk of being the good guys, wearing the white hats, what “You Can’t Take Command” confirms if nothing else is that the very idea of white hats is unattainable. The bad guys will always have one up on our heroes, which is that no matter what awful things our heroes do, there is still a line that they won’t or can’t cross—and the heroes who do cross that line, for whatever reason, are summarily cast out.

This season was a mess, and the episode was too. But there are strands of good ideas, little ideas here and there to explicate. There is fertile ground for future stories, which is half the job of a finale, and is the half that “You Can’t Take Command” is much more successful at. For now I’ll pretend that Olivia just shot Rowan or something, and deal with him again when he inevitably shows up. Out of sight, out of mind.

 

Stray Observations:

• Cyrus Beene. What a dick this guy is, right? I don’t even recall if his partnership with Rowan was previously known or not, but it wouldn’t have been surprising anyway. His little quip, “I can’t have a soul. If I had one I would never accomplish a thing,” says so much about what he has become, and to an extent what he has always been. (Suddenly that wedding flashback makes more sense in context of the season.) He’s a monster, which we knew already, but certainly for me his threatening of Abby’s life was a bridge too far. It’ll be curious to see what his role his next year—does he go full black hat? Team up with Mellie? Something else?
• Verbatim from my notes: IS OLIVIA POPE ABOUT TO BECOME THE FIRST LADY
• “Susan is a national treasure.” You’re damn right Vice President Artemis is a national treasure.
• Jake tells Olivia that she’s in love with Fitz and he leaves, hopefully for good. The men on this show are always telling Olivia how in love she is with the other men on this show.
• That wraps another season of Scandal. I’m undecided whether I’ll be writing about it again in the fall—I had previously been reluctant to write about this one weekly simply because I don’t think the show is that fertile ground for weekly criticism, and I still feel that way twenty-two episodes later. But we’ll see. As always, the grade below is for the season. The episode gets an entirely too generous 8/10—the whole is certainly less than the sum of the parts here.