TV Review: ‘HANNIBAL Season 2, Episode 2: SAKIZUKI’

“I love your work…” These words from our favorite man-eater definitely constitutes high praise.

Last week we were teased with a serial killer stitching together multi-racial victims to create a “human color palette” of sorts, and in this episode we get a very satisfying conclusion. In the cold open we see the final victim from ‘Kaiseki’, here given the name Roland Umber, is fully aware of his surroundings: Stitched and glued together to hundreds of corpses in a silo in the middle of nowhere, Roland painfully removes himself from this twisted artwork. And by ‘painfully removes himself’ I mean ‘OH DEAR GOD THIS IS THE MOST SQUEAMISH SCENE OF THE SERIES’. The sound design alone for this sequence is nauseating enough, hearing the flesh being ripped apart very slowly combined with Roland’s agonizing screams would be enough, but this being Hannibal and all we’re treated to a visual feast of blood and tearing and bone and all sorts of goodies. After Roland frees himself (sans bits of back, arms, and legs) he busts out of the silo only to be caught by the killer who chases him through a cornfield to the edge of a cliff, and Roland jumps to his death in the icy waters below.

Meanwhile, back at the FBI, our gang is examining the body and trying to determine why it was found in a different location than the previous corpses. Hannibal notes the traces of corn residue on the body and suggests they follow the river he was found in upstream and wherever they find corn, they find the killer. His suggestion is based on the fact that he’s already done exactly that. The day before we are shown Hannibal approaching the murder silo in his futuristic Patrick Bateman-esque blood splatter suit, climb atop the silo, and marvel from above at the pinwheel of flesh this deranged artist has created as the artist himself enters the canvas and Hannibal makes his presence known. Skip ahead to the FBI team examining the crime scene/artwork. They find the killer himself stitched into the creation, missing a leg. This is due to the fact that Hannibal convinced him to become one with the painting, then took his leg as a trophy.

This episode also features some great tense scenes with Will Graham. A lot of the case is brought to Will’s attention against Jack’s wishes since he’s under investigation and keeping ties with Will would be bad news for his job. The Will/Hannibal scenes are picking up pace here and you can really tell that Will is getting the upper-hand on Lector and that Hannibal’s guise is starting to slip. Especially important is the final scene of the episode where Bedilia du Maurier, after severing ties with Hannibal and Jack for professional reasons, visits Will’s cell and meets him for the first time and confides to Will that she believe’s him to be innocent.

This episode is definitely on par with the show’s best in terms of gruesomeness and a lot of great moments from the otherwise underutilized Beverly Katz, this episode does suffer from a distinct lack of Alana Bloom. And although the villain from the previous week does get a satisfying conclusion tonight, I was kind of hoping that this would be a season long villain kind of thing. That being said, I am excited to see how Will working with Hannibal from behind bars plays out for the rest of this season.