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.
Michael Wampler is a graduate of The College of New Jersey, where he completed both B.A. and M.A. degrees in English literature. He currently lives and works in Princeton, NJ while he shops around his debut novel and slowly picks away at his second. Favorite shows include Weeds, Lost, Hannibal and Mad Men (among many more). When not watching or writing about television, he enjoys reading, going for runs, and building his record collection.