TV Review: ‘HANNIBAL Season 2, Episode 12: TOME-WAN’

Tome-Wan is an episode all about letting the truth come out.

There’s the final scene of course, Will and Dr. Lecter alone with each other in the office, Will makes it clear to Hannibal that they will be caught soon and that  his best course of action would be to come clean to Jack about being the Chesapeake Ripper. For the final scene of the penultimate episode of the season, it isn’t super tense or shocking, it’s just a man who knows he’s trapped in a corner and knows that this is the only peaceful way to resolve this. Of course, we all know that’ll never happen. The final scene is very much a chess scene, Hannibal moving into position to take down the king, AKA Jack.

I like that the producers aren’t putting all the guest stars names in the opening. It would have spoiled Freddie’s appearance last week and Bedelia’s appearance this week. She shows up tonight to disclose some information on her attacker to Will and Jack. She’d been lying all along, and came clean that she killed her attacker and she did it under suggestion from Hannibal. Will assures her that he’s aware of his manipulative ways, but she’s adamant that if he’s close to being caught, it’s because he wants them to think that. It’s nice to get a little more backstory and to see Gillian Anderson again, but I felt as though the scene’s only purpose was to maybe add a little foreshadowing and to tell the audience “Look out! Hannibal’s good at manipulation!” which we’ve heard a lot before.

Of course the biggest truth to come out was Mason. After an eventful meeting between Hannibal and Mason’s associates wherein Hannibal fatally stabs one of the cronies sent to kidnap him, Hannibal is contained in a straight jacket dangling over Mason’s pig pit and Will is instructed to slice the doctor’s neck so that when they lower him into the pit, the little piggies have something to taste. From the opening sequence where Will describes in great detail how he’d love to do this, we get a good sense of inner conflict and irony from Will. Of course since his name is the title of the show, we know Will isn’t going to cut his throat, so he slices open the jacket to set Hannibal free and is rewarded by a knock out blow by Mason’s right hand man, Carlo. Will awakes to find the stage smeared in blood and decides it would be best to go home. He probably wasn’t expecting to come home to a drugged out Mason slicing off bits of his face and eating them. This is where the truth comes out, Hannibal has finally exposed Mason as a monster. Underneath his conventional good looks lurked a monster, and under Hannibal’s suggestion, Mason has torn off his mask and revealed the gruesome demon that he really was.

Visually this episode was impressive, and I don’t say this often, but the sound design was stellar too. After Hannibal forces a cocktail of hallucinogenic drugs into Mason’s system with a gas mask that would put Frank Booth to shame, Mason goes on a wild ride that reminded me a lot like the Scarecrow hallucination sequences from BATMAN BEGINS. Hannibal’s dialogue was distorted so we couldn’t quite make out what he was saying, but it wasn’t important what he was saying. All we needed to know is that Mason is about to be entirely under Hannibal’s control and that we as an audience should be very afraid.

The only disappointments I have of this episode are that we didn’t get a follow up on the Freddie being alive twist from last week and that we’re so close to the end and Alana is still being underused. Since they’re both so important and next Friday is the finale, I have no doubt that we’ll be seeing them both soon.

Alright kiddos, we’ve made it through most of the main course. I can’t wait to find out what Mr. Fuller has prepared for desert!