TV Review: ‘HANNIBAL Season 2, Episode 11: KŌ NO MONO’

So the opening of tonight’s episode confirmed my deepest fears: Will killed Freddie Lounds, fed her to Hannibal, set her corpse on fire, put her on a wheelchair and pushed her into her former parking spot at Tattler. Of course none of this really happened because, SURPRISE! She was alive in Jack’s office the whole time. Fuller and company have a lot of explaining to do over the next two episodes and I’ve got a feeling that, like most of what goes on in this show, a lot is going to be left  to our imaginations. But, alas, kudos to them for pulling off a twist that I did not see coming.

Hannibal continues to be the master manipulator this week. Margot reveals to Hannibal and Will that she’s pregnant and that she doesn’t necessarily need Will to raise the child, although this does lead us to a great moment where Will tells Hannibal that he thinks he’d be a great father. Hannibal all but tell’s Mason that he’s going to be an uncle soon, thus becoming not the only male heir to the Verger fortune, and Mason’s response is not a calm one. Of course the twist at the end throws everything into a different light. When you have something like Freddie’s body being exhumed and displayed like Shiva, you have to wonder how much of what Will is doing is being influenced by Hannibal? How much is he being swayed by Jack or Freddie? How much of Will is Will?  We’ve only got a few episodes left until we find out.

Pitt continues to completely kill it and takes deranged billionaire to a whole new level. The scene where he torments the little boy on the tour by telling him he’s never going to see his parents or kitty cat again was agonizing and the way he caps it off with “Here, have a chocolate” it’s enough to send shivers down your spine. And of course, he produces a little tissue to capture the kid’s teardrop and puts it in a martini. He literally drinks the tears of children. Anyone who has seen the Hannibal film knows that Mason is a pedophile and child molester, and I dig how they’re kind of skirting around who Mason is without actually using those words. Then there is of course the creepy doctor scene. After preventing Margot from escaping, Mason has her restrained in a hospital room that looks like something from Dead Ringers, he informs her that he’s having her made infertile, so that he would become the sole heir. Pitt’s Mason Verger is one of the most psychotic villains I’ve seen on TV ever and the Joker like mannerisms he adds make him all the more terrifying.

The final scene of the episode is a great sucker punch of an ending too. Will accosts Mason while he’s listening to classical music with squealing pigs as an accompaniment after he finds out what he’s done to Margot. He dangles Mason over his pit of pigs and explains that if it weren’t for Hannibal he’d be dead by now, and then hints to him that Hannibal has been manipulating him all along, and should be the one dangling over the pig pit. It’s this moment when you kind of realize that everyone on this show is manipulating everyone else and that this whole universe could unravel at any minute.

Every time an episode of Hannibal ends I have to look at my watch to reassure myself that only an hour has passed because every episode packs so much story into it. I’m just glad that the folks at NBC have the guts to give us as much as they do and have renewed it for a third season! Keep ’em coming Bryan Fuller!