‘Hannibal’ Recap: The Dragons Come Home to Roost

If a lifetime of gorehoundsmanship has taught me anything, it’s that horror is a genre in perpetual conversation with itself. By that standard, “…And the Beast From the Sea,” this week’s Hannibal, is a chattier episode than most. And why shouldn’t it be? If you’re going to bring one of the most iconic monsters in horror history to the small screen, why not cannibalize some of that history in the process?

So take a look at Francis Dolarhyde’s raid on Will, Molly, and Walter Graham’s family homestead. His mesh mask echoes the pantyhose disguise of an earlier incarnation of the Red Dragon, Tom Noonan’s in Michael Mann’s Manhunter. Molly & Wally’s daring through-the-window in-a-bathrobe escape echoes Wendy & Danny Torrance’s flight from Jack Nicholson and the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. The way they burst from the trees into the road to be saved by an African-American motorist passing by feels a whole lot like the end of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, while that motorist’s death so that they might live is reminiscent of one of the shootouts in No Country for Old Men. You don’t need to know any of these reference points; hell, they don’t even need to be things the show is deliberately referring to. They’re just part of the narrative and visual vocabulary of terror available to any astute horror filmmaker. And that’s long before we get to the Tooth Fairy’s Tyler Durden impression.

Yet the threat of the Dragon felt strangely empty this week. Some of that was structural: The placement of the home invasion at the end of the episode’s first act indicated that nothing truly momentous was going to happen — a consequence, perhaps, of accelerating the timeline of the break-in from its climactic role in the source material. Molly’s quick thinking during her and her son’s escape, and her gallows-humor affect after the fact, further convey the sense that she was never in any real danger.

Meanwhile, Francis’s sincere affection for Reba, not to mention his ability to successfully woo her in the first place, let a great deal of steam out of the Dragon’s nostrils, so to speak. If, as Hannibal points out, he kills to become the kind of being his idealized woman would be attracted to, as in Blake’s paintings of the Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in the Sun—hey, mission accomplished. If he attempted to kill Will’s family so that the Dragon, thus satiated, would spare his girlfriend—well, he took a Fight Club–style auto-beating from his alternate personality and still managed to break up with Reba in a normal enough way for her to interpret his “I’m afraid I’ll hurt you” as a typical avoidance of commitment rather than a literal warning that he might shoot her in the gut and shove broken glass into her orifices, so he appears at least potentially capable of managing the beast on his own.

But with the Tooth Fairy’s wings at least partially clipped, the core cast felt much more menacing. Will Graham, for example, continues to be a far more assertive and angry character than he was in the throes of his murder-marriage to Hannibal Lecter. Listen to how he sneers at his old boss for pulling him back in: “Jack Crawford, fisher of men. Watching my cork move against the current? You got me. Again.” Even better, dig how he growls at Hannibal following the doctor’s orchestration of the Red Dragon’s assault on his family: “I’m just about worn out with you crazy sons of bitches.” As that line indicates, this Will is aware of the absurdity of his situation; as he puts it to Jack after his son Walter confronts him about his dubious history and demands he kill the Dragon rather than institutionalize him, “I had to justify myself to an 11-year-old.”

The killers aren’t the only ones with bite. Will is quite right to wax embittered about Jack Crawford’s cold calculation, putting the needs of the case ahead of those of his supposed friend and prize protégé. The FBI honcho is hardly even concealing it, let alone attempting to mitigate the damage like he did back in the day. And Alana Bloom, who was once the soul of the show until her body got tossed out a window, shows that her immersion in the demented dynamics of the Verger clan has caused her to pick up some sadism by osmosis: In punishment for his warning to Dolarhyde that “they’re listening,” she takes away all of the Cannibal’s creature comforts, up to and including his toilet. Okay, sure, this would be more impressive if his cell weren’t bigger than my entire apartment—seriously, he’s living as large as Hitler in Landsberg or Pablo Escobar in La Catedral—but it’s the thought that counts.

Which brings us to the Mannibal himself. The caged Hannibal is a surly beast, more prone to sarcasm and bluntness than the witty Wildean mockery of old. He’s a troll, basically, goading the Dragon like a devil on his shoulder and blowing up the FBI’s spot by warning him “they’re listening.” It’s pure “U Mad?” (Or in this case, U Mads?)

Yes, this segment of the Red Dragon arc departs somewhat dramatically from previous renditions, even going so far as to tweak them openly: Hannibal’s mocking little list of methods by which the Dragon could have contacted him, “Personal ads? Writing notes of admiration on toilet paper?”, were memorably portrayed in Manhunter. But Lecter is now closer to the Brian Cox and Anthony Hopkins versions than he ever has been before—a thoroughly nasty piece of work, his mask of civility hanging loose around his face, a far more familiar one in its place.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) is a freelance writer who lives with Diet Coke and his daughter, not necessarily in that order, on Long Island.