Review: Hannibal ‘Fromage’ – How Well He Plays

Throughout the first season, there’s been a certain dark beauty to each one of the killers investigated – as well as Hannibal’s cooking sessions, which are doused in the implied knowledge that he’s cooking human meat. It’s the reason the show’s violence can be so visceral, so unsettling – and yet, so exquisitely shot and framed we can’t help but stop and admire it. It’s a performance – and who doesn’t love a good performance?

‘Fromage’ takes this theme to heart, a performance piece of its own, complete with an expertly-staged fight scene at the end. I talked last week about Hannibal‘s operatic qualities and how the music and sounds perfectly reflect the pace of the events on-screen: and that’s apparent again this week, but takes on a whole new literal meaning when Tobias, the ‘friend’ of Hannibal’s patient, tries to serenade Hannibal by turning a man’s vocal chords and throat muscles into bass strings in the same fashion one would treat strings made of cat guts. Tobias (a man who runs a bow store, and gives music lessons) wants to get Hannibal’s attention – like Hannibal, he’s looking for a friend.

That’s the underlying theme of the episode I found most fascinating: Hannibal, Tobias, Tobias’s friend, and Will are all reaching out to other people in this episode, trying to fill the hole inside themselves (notice the shot of Will standing in front of his broken fireplace, juxtaposed against the black hole of his chimney, the ‘soul’ of his home, so to speak). Everybody just wants a friend, right – and Hannibal doesn’t want one like Tobias who can think like he does – he wants someone who understands and empathizes with the criminally insane, being able to inhabit their world in his mind (the best example of this in ‘Fromage’ is when Will tells Hannibal the murderer is “playing our song” over and over in this head).

Will isn’t necessarily looking for a friend – he’s looking for an anchor, and turns to Alana Bloom for his comfort (an easy move, admitting that he’d been attracted to her for a long time). Paralleling back to Hannibal’s conversation with Bloom last week, Will initially ponders why they haven’t ever been romantically involved – but unlike Hannibal, he takes it a step further and reaches out to her with a romantic gesture. She certainly enjoys it (calling it a “great kiss”) but she believes her mind is too curious and Will’s is too damaged, so she backs away.

It’s a little shoehorned in (as Will points out, the two of them have never really been alone together before), but it makes Will’s moments of bonding with Hannibal later in the episode that much more satisfying, on both ends of the stick. This episode takes a long, hard look at Hannibal’s loneliness as well, as Tobias and his friend separately try to create a friendship with Hannibal. But that’s not what he wants – that’s not who he is ‘performing’ for, so to speak. His shows are for Will and Jack right now, and even as he teases Will’s mind with the Chesapeake Ripper murders, he still finds himself seeking some form of platonic companionship, which he looks for in Will. His little smiles at the end when Will comes to check on him is such a meet-cute moment – and it’s happening between a serial killer and the man investigating him?

If that doesn’t convince you how amazing and cerebral Hannibal is, I don’t what could. But Bryan Fuller and company continue to knock it out of the park, infusing this fantastic game of chess between Tobias and Hannibal with Will continuing to slowly lose his mind, reaching out in more severe ways to the people around him. Hannibal is enjoying this game of bringing Will closer and closer to the edge (while bringing him closer and closer to himself): he’s playing a dangerous game, one only the ego of Dr. Lecter would attempt.

Grade: A-

Other thoughts/observations:

– when the episode opens, Will is working on a boat engine. The presence of a boat would suggest the beginning of a journey, or a transition from one place to another. In other words, Will’s either about to embark on an investigation to lead him towards the Chesapeake Ripper, and/or he’s moving slowly from sanity to insanity. Either way, it’s an image that stuck with me throughout the hour. (It’s also a clever way to say that something’s wrong with Will that he can’t quite figure out how to fix).

– Will is hearing dogs being mauled and murdered around him, but can never find the source. To me, this would suggest that someone close to him (those dogs are his family) is going to die, and he’s not ready to help them.

– Dr. Lecter gets defensive: “psychopaths are not crazy.”

– what kind of pills is Will taking? Anti-anxiety medication?

– Will sits down to play the human bass, and Garrett Hobbs loves the song he plays, clapping enthusiastically in the audience, covered in his own blood. Why? It’s the song of death, the same song Tobias played to woo Dr. Lecter.

– “This is my sound… this is my design.”

– Dr. Du Maurier’s reason for retiring is revealed: she was attacked by a patient, and lost trust in her patients after that, except Lecter.

– Lecter: “what do you see behind closed eyes?”

– it’s sick, but the thought put into these murder sequences are amazing. The man’s throats are turned into strings, but if you think how a bass is traditionally held and the way the man was impaled on it, a person would be cutting the bow back and forth across their stomach region (where Tobias was removing intenstines for string material). Isn’t that the sickest fucking bit of poetry you’ve ever read?

– Lecter’s last murder victim before being captured was a flutist in the Baltimore Philharmonic. (Jesse Pinkman voice) Parallels, bitch!

– Will’s problems are seeping into his work: while in the room with the M.E.’s and forensics people, Will blurts out “I had to open you up,to get a decent sound out of you.” Someone needs a stress reducer.

– Jack continues to push Will, putting the finger in his face and telling him to get to work. He doesn’t care if it’s getting harder: he wants it done, continuing to be blinded in his quest to avenge his trainee’s death (and in part, the cancer he can’t kill to save his wife).

– “The Virginian wine revolution is upon us.” Hannibal, ever the trendy drinker of spirits.