TV Review: ‘HANNIBAL Season 2, Episode 13: MIZUMONO’

I feel like television has become a numbers game lately. Every show runner nowadays is in competition with each other to see who can kill the most characters or have the most shocking moments. Game of Thrones set the bar pretty high with it’s Red Wedding, and since then we’ve had strong competition like Breaking Bad, Hannibal, and recently, Fargo. In terms of sheer “WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST WATCH” moments, it’s going to be hard to beat MIZUMONO.

This episode had such an incredible build. We begin with Will Graham pledging his allegiance to both Hannibal and Jack. The shot of Hannibal’s and Jack’s face was terrifying and reminded me a lot of the final shot of PERSONA. As, Will and Lecter destroy the patient records and notes of all of Hannibal’s previous patients in order to get a clean break. That’s when the first seed of distrust is planted as Hannibal sniffs Freddie Lounds’ scent on Will. They later share one final meal together as Hannibal re-enforces Will’s loyalty to him and ponders if he would accept Jack’s forgiveness, but Will is adamant that Jack isn’t into doling out forgiveness, but rather justice.

When the  higher-ups catch word that Jack and Will are trying to entrap Hannibal by use of murder, Kade Prurnell comes down to the FBI to put an end to it by forcing Jack to go on leave and arrest Will. There’s an excellent callback to the pilot here when Alana tells Will that there is a warrant issued for his arrest, he turns around and telephones Hannibal with a simple message “They Know”, the same message that Hannibal left for Garrett Jacob Hobbes.

So now that the cat is out of the bag, Jack has to reschedule his dinner with Hannibal to right now. He parts with his wife and shows up at Hannibal’s kitchen where the insane fight from the season premier finally takes place. The fact that we’ve seen most of the fight before doesn’t detract from the tension at all, but rather adds to it, as we finally get to see the build-up and the aftermath, and boy is there a lot of aftermath. So Alana happens to come to Hannibal’s place as she witnesses him in bloody getup, and attempts to shoot him, to find that he’s taken her bullets. She retreats upstairs only to be found by… Abigail?!?!

It was at this point that I shouted “What the fuck!” as loud as I could and disrupted my little brother playing his Nintendo next to me.

So how is Abigail back? No idea. She apologizes to Alana before pushing her out of the window. Will finally arrives on the scene and calls for an EMT. Inside he finds Abigail who confesses she was just following Hannibal’s orders and didn’t know where else to go. Then Hannibal shows up and sticks a knife in Will. Their embrace at the end is one of the most chilling moments of the series, as Will is trying to hold his guts in as Hannibal is asking for forgiveness. He then slashes Abigail’s neck (again), and leaves everyone in his house to die. Jack is trapped bleeding in the pantry, Alana is bleeding on the pavement outside, and Will is left to bleed to death next to Abigail’s newly dead body. Hannibal slips out before any medics arrive, and in a surreal post-credits sequence, is seen on an airplane headed to an unknown destination with Bedelia Du Maurier seated next to him. It was the second time this episode I shouted “What’s she doing there!?!”

Everything about the episode is sublime. The acting, the direction, the visuals are all award worthy. The nightmare sequence Alana describes where she was drowning was stunning and hallucination Will has of the dying stag as he’s losing blood really brings the episode home. This whole season has been about the permeation of two minds. Will and Hannibal getting into each other’s heads, and Mads Mikkelsen delivering his monologue at the end about allowing Will to wade in the waters of his mind was perfect. Mads spills his guts from his mind as Hugh Dancy spills his guts from his… well, guts. It also made Hannibal go from anti-hero, to straight villain. These past two seasons, we the audience have clung to Hannibal,  and grown to like him. Even though we know he’s a monster of a man, the monster of the week formula put Hannibal on our side and made it so that there was always a bigger evil than Hannibal. Well, after tonight, that’s done with. Hannibal is now the biggest evil of all.

So in conclusion, Hannibal has left a big bloody mess for someone to clean up in season three, and when Zeller and Price come into work tomorrow morning, they’re going to be in for a pretty hefty surprise.