Will Graham is in session with Hannibal, he tells him that he has put the snare around his neck. He told Mason Verger about Hannibal “to see what would happen.” Knowing that Hannibal wanted to kill Mason. Will goes on to say, “Mason Verger is a pig, and he deserves to be somebody’s bacon.” then suggests that Lecter kill Mason in their next session. Hannibal asks Will to close his eyes and imagine what he would like to happen. Will imagines slicing Hannibal’s throat, while he is bound in a straight jacket and dangling from a hook. Hannibal’s blood gushes from his body as he is lowered into Verger’s pig maze. Roll opening credits.
Mason is in Hannibal’s office looking through his drawings, and citing if they are good or “garbage”, while he shuffles through them Hannibal hides a scalpel up his sleeve.
Mason, “Shall we talk about what happened to poor Margo?”
Hannibal,” We can get to that later.”
Mason, “Oh, we can get to it now. Family affairs are best left to the family, Dr. Lecter, and you interfered.”
Hannibal, “I provided counsel.”
Mason, “You subverted me.”
Hannibal. “When you were subverting the underprivileged children at your summer camp, what did you learn?”
Mason groans, “Keen student of the bible…that I am, I learned about suffering.” He leans back behind the desk and puts his feet up on it’s surface, annoying Lecter. “Not mine, mind you, the general conceit.”
Hannibal, “God’s choices in inflicting suffering are not satisfying enough to us. Nor are they understandable, unless innocence offends him.”
Mason laughs wholeheartedly at this, “Clearly he needs help in directing his blind fury, with which he flogs this earth.”
Hannibal, “Margo’s Happiness is more important than her suffering.”
Mason, “You say that as if the two are mutually exclusive.”
Hannibal, “I believe they are.”
Mason spins around in his chair and rises, walking toward Hannibal, “You can never say to a certainty, it is one of those things that is hid…as the bible says.” Mason walks behind the chair Hannibal is sitting in, and pulls out a pocket knife, “Papa taught me to hide…all sorts of things.” He places the knife blade against Hannibal’s throat, but Hannibal doesn’t react. He just turns his head and looks at it. “This was his knife, I carry it around with me to remind me of him.”
Hannibal stares at his reflection in the blade, “Whose fat are you planning to measure today, Mason? Mine?”
Mason snickers, then brushes Hannibal’s sleeve in an encouraging gesture, “No fat on you. It would take more than a flesh wound to make you squeal.” Mason plops down into the chair opposite Lecter, and stabs the knife blade into the leather upholstery of the arm. Lecter has a priceless expression of dismay. “What game of chicken are you and the sperm donor playing, Dr. Lecter?! Don’t get me wrong, I play chicken with Margo all the time. I just don’t tell her I’m playing.” Mason pauses and looks around in that confused thought process way he is prone to, “I am good at chicken, Dr. Lecter, I never blink!” He stabs the leather again, and starts to laugh, “Ha, Ha! Just send me the bill..ha, I’m so sorry!” continuing his laughter. Hannibal closes his eyes and a peaceful smile settles on his face.
Margo looks at herself in the mirror as she gets dressed at the hospital. In addition to the many scars on her back and body, there is now a large one across her lower abdomen from the surgery. Will and Hannibal are then there, listening to her, “They could have done what was done laproscopically, but my Brother told them to leave a scar.”
Will, “He Branded you.”
Hannibal, “Mason wants you to know that this can never be undone.”
Will, “Mason can be undone.”
Margo, looking at Will, “Not without taking everything I have with him. He’s all I’ve got now, it’s exactly what he wanted. He won. He always wins.”
Will tells Margo that moving on isn’t just a distraction, it’s a rebuke. He urges her to show her Brother how strong she is, to survive him.
Will meets with Jack Crawford in his office at the FBI. He tells Jack that Hannibal has a certain style that they can all learn from, in moderation of course. Jack tells Will that all he wants to do is catch him, but Will replies that Hannibal has given him nothing. Nothing that they can take action on. Jack pushes Will, says that he needs something. He brings up the fact that Will has killed someone. When Will says that it was self defense, Jack replies that he doesn’t know if he can prove that since he mutilated the bod, and that Will made himself a public spectacle at Freddie Lounds’ funeral. He’s out on a limb, and the limb is going to break. Jack wants to know what Will isn’t telling him.
Will tells Jack that Hannibal is trying to manipulate him into murdering one of his other patients, but he thinks he can manipulate Hannibal into killing him instead. Jack asks what Verger has done. Will says that Hannibal considers him rude, that’s motive enough. Will tells him that when Lecter tries to kill Mason, he will arrest him, and they will have 2 witnesses. Jack replies that he might have 3.
Jack and Will watch Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier pace nervously in the interrogation room through the two way mirror. Will then goes into see her.
Will, “They tell me you were hard to find.”
Bedelia looks worn and scared, “That was the idea.”
Will, “Thank you…for visiting me in the hospital, and uh..what you said.”
Bedelia, “I didn’t say enough.”
Will nods, then sits down across from her, “Now’s your chance to say it all.” He tells her that she has been granted immunity against prosecution, and hands her the documents stating it’s so. “Let’s talk about Hannibal Lecter.”
Bedelia speaks slow and cautiously, “Some Psychiatrists are so hungry for insight, that they may try to manufacture it. How deadly that can be for the patient that believes them.”
Will,”You were Dr. Lecter’s Psychiatrist, he wasn’t yours.”
Bedelia, “I told myself that, but I was under Hannibal’s influence. What he did to you made that abundantly clear.”
Will, “You were attacked by a patient that was formerly under Dr. Lecter’s care. That patient died during the attack, a report said that he swallowed his tongue.”
Bedelia, “It wasn’t attached at the time.”
Will, “How, exactly, did your patient die.”
Bedelia, “I killed him.” taking a deep breath, and glancing at the 2 way glass, “I believed it was self defense, and to a point it was…..but beyond that point it was murder. Hannibal influenced me to murder my patient. Our patient.”
Will, “You weren’t…coerced?”
Bedelia, “What Hannibal does is not coercion, it is persuasion.” She looks at Will intensely, “Has he ever tried to persuade you to kill anybody?” Will doesn’t reply, so she goes on, “He will, and it will be somebody you love, and you will think that it’s the only choice you have.”
Will, ” How would you catch him?”
Bedelia, “Hannibal can get lost in self congratulation……at his own exquisite taste and cunning. Whimsy. That will be how he will get caught.”
Hannibal pours two glasses of red wine, one for himself and one for Will. Will tells him that so much about the current circumstances seem like a dream. Hannibal tells him that he is waking up to who he is. They discuss taking care of Mason Verger. Will accuses Hannibal of fostering co-dependency. He cites how he bonded with Abigail, and Hannibal took her away. That he bonded with the idea of a child, and Hannibal took that away too. Saw to it that Will alienated Alana Bloom, alienated Jack. Will says that Hannibal doesn’t want him to have anyone in his life but him. Hannibal replies, “I only want what’s best for you.” Will scoffs.
Jack talks with Bedelia, scolding her for running. Bedelia says that she didn’t believe the FBI could have protected her, since they couldn’t protect Will Graham. She tells him that if he thinks he’s about to catch Hannibal, it’s because he wants him to think that. Not to fool himself into believing that Hannibal is not in control of what’s happening.
Hannibal is in his kitchen, preparing stock with an animal’s jaw bone, and continues with creating a Ukrainian aspic seafood dish. He serves it to Jack at his table. Hannibal asks if he is harboring doubts still about Will. Jack tells him that Alana Bloom is convinced that Will killed Freddie Lounds. That he no longer is sure about who is pursuing who. Hannibal jokes that who ever is being pursued in that moment, he intends to eat. They laugh and commence with the meal.
A car pulls up to Will Graham’s house as he is feeding his dogs on the porch. It’s Mason verger. The driver pats Will down for weapons, and Will goes with Mason.
Mason’s henchmen corner Hannibal in his office, they tell Hannibal that Verger wants to see him. When he declines, they take out weapons. Hannibal stabs one of them with a scalpel.He kicks and punches, but one of the men uses a taser, disabling him. As Hannibal falls to the floor, the man he stabbed pulls the scalpel from his leg. The blood gushes everywhere. Hannibal says, “You shouldn’t have done that.” He tases Hannibal again and the screen goes black with his loss consciousness.
Hannibal is in a straight jacket, dangling on a hook on the platform above Mason’s pig maze. He taunts Carlo, who wants to cut his throat. Mason shouts, “Kill him and you will get no money! Carlo! Carlo!” Carlo backs off. Mason has Will at his side, who is pacing on the platform, watching the situation. Mason laughs excitedly, “Those little piggies are going to go EEE..EEE…EEE…EEEE all the way home! The swine may be shy…so we need to encourage them with (mocking Carlo’s accent) a little a sauce, eh?” He looks at Carlo’s face, who is not amused, then back at Hannibal, “So, we’re going to cut your throat.” Carlo tells Mason that he killed Mateo (the other henchman in his office). Mason says, “We can give Mateo’s family the Doctrone’s Cajones, for comfort. Capisce?” He pronounces is Capeesee.
Carlo hands Mason the scalpel, and says that he likes to cut low. Mason says to Hannibal, “You are an odd Psychiatrist. We could have had some good, funny times together. Its a damned shame!” Mason walked over to Will and puts the scalpel in his hand. “I’ve muzzled the dog, now is the time for you to put him down.”
Will stands before Hannibal, then moves to put the blade against his throat. Mason interrupts before Will can make a swipe at it, “Don’t bleed him out! (Grunts) Just a little nick, just enough …to give the pigs a taste!”
Will spins Hannibal’s body and slashes the restraints on the back of the jacket. Hannibal falls, and Carlo jumps into action, hitting Will on the back of the head. Will goes down, and loses consciousness. When he wakes, there is blood all over the platform, and he is alone. There are no bodies. He pushes the button to raise the hook that lowers into the maze. Carlo is on the hook, dead. The bottom half of his torso has been eaten away by the swine.
Hannibal affixes a vial of yellow powder to a inhalation mask, as Mason wakes from unconsciousness in his office. As Mason is roused, Lecter presses the mask to his face. A surreal sequence begins, showing the particles going into his throat and nose, and his heart jumping. You can see Hannibal’s reflection in Mason Verger’s eye, Mason starts to laugh, “Wowow wow!” Mason is hearing Lecter’s voice as a pounding echo, as the room reverberates like a pulsing drum beat. the drug has instantly taken effect.
Hannibal, “Mason, I must ask you to be quiet.”
Mason still laughing, puts his finger to his lips and shushes himself.
Hannibal, “You’ll frighten the animals.”
Mason leans forward, reaching out his hands. Oooh..piggy, piggy, piggy, piggy, piggy, piggy.” There is a blurry pig at his feet. Hannibal grabs Mason’s face in his hands, there are sparks flying around them. Mason looks into Lecter’s face, “WHAT….have you given me?!” Hannibal tells him a combination of psychedelic compounds. Mason says, “You…need to write me a prescription for this…Doctor.” He laughs hysterically.
Hannibal says,”Patients rhapsodize about the life changing insights that they achieve.”
Mason replies, grinning, “I am enchanted…and terrified.”
Hannibal continues to talk, but Mason cannot make out what he is saying. He hallucinates flickering images, including Hannibal’s head turning into that of a boar.
Hannibal says that he wants Mason to recall his education in the stock yards, “Show me again how to properly check the depth of a pig’s fat.” He hold the knife Mason used to stab his leather chair to Mason’s face. Mason grins wide and laughs, leaning forward toward the pig he sees, which may or may not be there. Hannibal stops him, “No, no Mason, show me on you.” Mason throws up his hands and shrugs, laughing even more. The scene fades.
Will approaches his own house. The door is open and his dog Winston is sitting on the porch. He says, “Hey Winston, where’s everyone else?” He then cautiously approaches the open door. Walking into his living room he hears Mason Verger’s voice, “I just love your dogs.” You only see Mason’s hand, dripping with blood, feeding strips of flesh to one of Will’s dogs. “How is that…is that good? Do you want another piece? How about you? That’s a good girl. Sit…SIT!” We can see the bloody side of Mason’s face.
Will, “Mason?”
Mason continues feeding them, and petting, “”I adopted some dogs from the shelter. Two dogs that were friends. I had them in a cage together, with no food and fresh water. One of them died hungry, the other had a warm meal.” Mason laughs and wags his finger at Will. “I should have put you in a cage with Dr. Lecter. I’m curious what would have happened.”
Will finally asks, “What are you feeding my dogs?”
Mason laughs again, looking up at Will. He has carved the skin off from just under his nose, to his jaw line. Holding his hands out in a shrug, skin in one, the knife in the other. “Ha! Just me!” He laughs and laughs, “Sit! Sit!” Will is looking at his dogs in stunned silence. His dogs obey the command, waiting for more. Hannibal turns, Will turns to look back at Hannibal who, has been standing next to him out of screenshot. The scene fades out.
The scene comes back into focus. Mason is seeing Lecter with a Boar head, telling Will, ” What Mason is experiencing isn’t restricted to reality, so…reality has to be forced to adapt.”
Will, “He fed his face to my dogs.”
Hannibal, “He broadened their palates, as I broadened yours.”
Will and Hannibal converse about the merits of murder and mercy, until Mason interrupts, “I’m hungry!”
Hannibal, “Eat your nose then.”
Mason, “Eat my…? Eat my nose.” He decides that this is a good idea, and cuts his nose off of his face. He ,very graphically, eats it. “I have a taste…and consistency that’s similar to that of a chicken gizzard.”
Hannibal to Will, “Taste is housed in parts of the mind that precedes pity. Pity has no place at the table.”
Mason burps, “I’m full of myself.” He laughs at his own joke.
Will, “I’m not going to kill him.”
Hannibal, “He was going to feed you to his pigs, right after he fed them me. Weren’t you Mason?”
Mason, “I was!” He chortles.
Will, “He’s your patient, Doctor. You do what you think is best for him.”
Hannibal looks at Will, then at Mason, amused. He walks behind Mason’s chair, grips his head and turns it. We hear a sharp crack.
In the scene that follows, Jack looks down at an eel swimming in a tank set into a lavish marble floor. The sound of medical monitors beeping can be heard. We can hear Mason Verger’s voice, “Good afternoon Agent…Crawford?”
Jack, “Yes, good afternoon Mr. Verger.” Jack paces around the tank, “What a magnificent creature.”
Mason, “Oh, thank you. It’s a Muraena Chordata, it’s common name is Brutal Moray. Would you like to see why?”
Jack muses, “No, thank you. I don’t want to take up too much of your time…Mr. Verger. I realize that you probably need to get your rest, but I would like to ask you just a few questions about what happened to you.” We see Mason for the first time, a mask hides his lower face, held in place by a metal bracket that is supporting his head.
Mason, “Took a tumble in the pig pen, broke my neck. Embarrassing really. Tut tut tut, clumsy, clumsy, clumsy. If my Sister hadn’t found me, the pigs would have eaten more than my face.”
Jack, “Pigs did this to you?”
Mason, “Oh yes, the pigs certainly did.”
Jack’s frustration is visible, “Mr. Verger, you are a patient of Dr. Hannibal Lecter, isn’t that right?”
Mason, “Dr. Lecter, yes, yes.”
Jack, “Have you ever seen or met another patient of Dr. Lecter’s, a man called Will Graham?”
Mason, “Will Graham? The Man that didn’t kill all those people, that Will Graham?”
Jack, “Yes.”
Mason, “Can’t say that I’ve had the pleasure.”
Jack, “Do you find that Dr. Lecter’s therapy has been helpful to you?”
Mason,”I’ve benefited greatly from Dr. Lecter’s therapy. I’m still benefiting from it. I will always be grateful for how he’s helped me. I only hope that I may repay him one day.” Jack stares at him intently. Mason continues, “Now if you don’t mind, I am rather tired.”
Jack, “Thank you for your time Mr. Verger.” He walks out.
When Jack is no longer in the room, Margo enters. Mason seeing her says, “Is it time to talk about what Margo wants?”
Margo replies, “What Margo wants is to take care of you Mason, dear….Just as you took care of me.” She tilts her head and smiles smugly.
Hannibal sketches in his study. Will enters to look at the drawing, it’s of Achilles and Patroclus. Hannibal tells him that their bond was forged in battle, that it took divine intervention to bring them down.
Will says, “This isn’t sustainable. We’re going to get caught.”
Hannibal, “Jack already told me that he suspects that you killed Freddie Lounds.”
Will, “If he suspects me, that means he suspects you.”
Hannibal, “I know.”
Will thinks for a moment. “You should give him what he wants.”
Hannibal,”Give him the Chesapeake Ripper.”
Will, “Allow him closure. Reveal yourself. You’ve taunted him for long enough. Let him see you with clear eyes.”
Hannibal, “Jack has become my friend, I suppose I owe him the truth.”
Fade to Black.
I am an avid horror watcher. I write a horror column for Zod’s sake! I can honestly say that watching the scene where Mason Verger cut strips of his own skin off and fed it to Graham’s dogs, and then eating his own nose, was the first time I have ever felt that queasy watching a show or movie in my life, save for one other. That one was an Italian horror movie made in a decade when they used real corpses in films, and I am still traumatized a little by it. I can’t imagine what Bryan Fuller and the Writer’s have in store next. I can’t possibly imagine anything that could be quite as disturbing. One more episode to go in the season. I will be watching….apprehensively. Probably through my fingers, with one eye closed. I also think I’m officially a vegetarian. *Shudders*