Hannibal Recap: “Fromage”

by Veronique Medrano:

Hannibal Recap: “Formage”
Original Air Date (NBC): Thursday May 16, 2013
Season 1 Episode 8

Serenading the Ripper

Tobias, Franklin’s friend introduced in the episode Sorbet, is watching a young cellist play on new strings. The boy tells Tobias that he wants to learn the easy strings first and then go to the harder ones. Tobias warns against that and tells the boy that he must learn the hard strings before going to something less challenging. The boy, for some odd reason, asks if the strings are really made from cat guts. Tobias tells him not always. The scene cuts there and shows Tobias cutting into a person’s body, taking out their intestines and processing them to make strings. One of them being the one that the boy is using.

Franklin, Hannibal Lecter’s patient, returns for another visit. He is still hanging onto the fact that they can’t be friends, but is still trying to capture an essence of being like Hannibal by trying to act like him. Franklin expresses that he is analyzing his friend Tobias and that he shows signs of possibly being a psychopath via his ‘Google-test’. Franklin wants to discuss it further, but Hannibal refuses. Hannibal then visits his psychiatrist and is concerned that he cannot obtain a meaningful relationship. Dr. Maurier explains that the reason might be is because he wants someone to actually be clever enough to climb those barriers he’s put up around himself.

Franklin returns for another session and expounds on the notion of Tobias being a killer. He tells Dr. Lecter that Tobias confided in him that he wanted to play someone like a violin and that when he found out someone was killed to be played as aforementioned instrument he was concerned. Lecter tries to get Franklin to explore the reason why Tobias would say something so incriminating to him, if he was the killer. Franklin realizes the only reason Tobias would tell him something like that is because he knew Franklin would tell Lecter.

Dr. Lecter visits Tobias at his shop and there is a lot of in-between the lines conversations between the two killer’s and while I won’t recount the conversation word for word, I’ll ask that you take a peek at the episode or just take me at my word that it was quite stimulating. This leads Tobias and Hannibal to have dinner together and it is clear that despite his hopes to befriend Hannibal it really seems that they just want to kill each other. Since Tobias followed Hannibal around and knows what he did to his victims; Hannibal sees no need to befriend Tobias. A stare-off ensues and even though it seems that they are set to duke it out Will Graham appears and a chain of events is set in motion as soon as Hannibal suggests that Will go and interview Tobias as a possible suspect.

Lecter speaks with Dr. Maurier and discusses the possibility of friendship with a person i.e. Will Graham and how that friendship is something he wants and that despite advances by others for friendship he feels more inclined to give it to Will. Graham is the type of person he wants to befriend because he is so much more different than himself in the sense of perspective on the world around them.

The fight that was bound to happen and was teased about in all the previews has come. Hannibal gets into it with a fellow psychopath and after killing Franklin, who was being a chatty Kathy, we finally get a good brawl. Lecter eventually gets the upper hand and manages to kill Tobias and make it look like self-defense.

Training

A cellist is found with the head of said instrument protruding out his mouth and displayed in front of the orchestra. Crawford points out that the victim was killed soon after his last performance, Graham points out that the killer left him displayed in this manner to humiliate him in front of those who see him perform. Crawford notices that it is getting easier for Graham to get to his conclusions on motive, but Graham retorts that it isn’t easy and that he has to continue telling himself it is an exercise he can overcome, all the while popping pills into his mouth.

Breaking down the victim’s wounds Graham realizes that the ultimate design was to make his victim into an instrument and play him. I must say it is one of the most disturbing things to watch, a man’s whole body being used as an instrument to create a particular sound. When they take the body in to examine it, Will Graham deduces that the killer is a skilled musician who is trying out a new instrument via his victims. When Graham goes to see Dr. Lecter he is continuing to break down the murder and discover through conjecture that the killer was serenading someone out in the audience, possibly another killer.

Dr. Bloom and Will Graham kiss. It is awesome, but cut short by immediate refusal of his advances like a confused person. She walks out and he looks like a beat puppy and immediately runs to Hannibal for guidance. Hannibal makes him aware that there is a possible suspect he is aware of. Graham rushes over to interview him the next day and the moment he leaves his police escort by themselves they are killed by Tobias. He follows Tobias into the basement of his shop and finds the second police officer dead. Tobias tries to get behind Graham whilst he is unawares, but fails at bringing him down. Graham finds a free opening in the strings being tightened around him and shoots off a bit of Tobias’ ear and gives himself an audible blow-back. Tobias runs off.