Only a Lass...

Note: Full spoilers for the episode follow.Chilton: Why didn’t Hannibal just kill you?Will: Because he wants to be my friend.When I spoke to Hugh Dancy going into Season 2 of Hannibal, he told me how the season was essentially structured with a “mini-finale” at the midpoint. And wow, he wasn’t kidding, as “Yakimono” sure felt like a season finale, with a ton occurring in one of the show’s finest and most exciting hours yet.Miriam’s return was a huge curveball, and it was fascinating to see the impact her turning up alive had. As expected, it wasn’t so simple as her saying, “Oh, yes, Hannibal Lecter is the Ripper.” No, as Miriam herself notes, the Ripper, who she can’t picture, “got inside my head.”Anna Chlumsky, hopping over from Veep (another terrific show you should all be watching!) was terrific reprising her role as Miriam, who had been through hell and back. She was no shrinking violet, yet she was understandably damaged, both physically and mentally. Seeing her fitted for that prosthetic arm was a powerful, silent moment, acknowledging the impossible to ignore sacrifice of the flesh Hannibal had taken from her.Hannibal has existed in a heightened reality from the start, but this episode perhaps truly solidified Lecter as a supervillain of sorts. He’s an ingenious, deranged and unstoppable force of nature who has abilities that go beyond just being a ridiculously smart, diabolical person. We’d already seen the results of his mental manipulation of Will, but he’d taken things even further with Miriam – not only making her not see or remember him as her captor, but implanting the idea that it was Chilton instead. Is this “realistic”? I don’t know, but it sure is compelling and the show has earned going this big at this point, having firmly established Hannibal Lecter as one hell of an “intelligent psychopath” - someone who could seemingly be an adversary for Batman, in an imaginary (awesome) crossover.Now exonerated as a suspect in the Ripper killings, Will being set free ends that portion of the series, and it was both gratifying to see him and Jack working together again and made sense that Will still had some resentment to work through, noting, “You didn’t have to find me, Jack. You just had to listen to me,” when Jack brought up how he’d failed both Miriam and Jack. Jack’s emotions over Miriam being alive were also powerfully conveyed, as his happiness was mixed with a bit of self-loathing, feeling he’d given up on her – made even worse when she thanked him doing just the opposite.Alana meanwhile remains steadfast both in Hannibal’s innocence and in her judgment of Will for trying to have Hannibal killed. As I believe I mentioned in a previous review, this is a tricky place to put the character in terms of audience sympathy, so I do hope something shifts for her soon… Or I fear she’ll fall victim to the man she’s currently sleeping with.Will actually going into Hannibal’s home with a gun was another fascinating scene. And yes, Will could just kill Hannibal, but then what? Will goes to jail for murder, with Hannibal dying looking like an innocent man, killed by an unbalanced person who’d blamed him for his false imprisonment. As frustrating as it might be, it’s understandable Will would bide his time. But what was great was when he put the gun to Hannibal and Hannibal flinched a bit and Will actually seemed to enjoy that. These two certainly have a twisted dynamic.So let’s talk Chilton. Having him killed by Miriam was a huge, gasp-worthy moment that really solidified that this series, while inspired by Thomas Harris’ novels, is willing to take its own path. Yes, Beverly was a character from Red Dragon, but she was a relatively minor one and taking her out earlier didn’t really feel like it made things different. But Chilton was such a notable presence in both Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, as the director of the sanitarium Hannibal is locked up in, that it felt like he had to be safe for that to one day become a reality on this series, when we get to (fingers crossed!) Season 4 and the Red Dragon story. Last season, it looked like Gideon might kill Chilton, making me wonder if Bryan Fuller was going to take such a big swerve with the character, but he survived… Lulling us into a false sense of security for the character.Chilton certainly went out with some amazing material. Hannibal’s frame job was wonderfully, horrifically perfect, quite literally laying out all the evidence that Chilton was the cannibalistic killer the FBI was hunting. It was already exciting to see Chilton and Will openly discussing their now mutual belief that Hannibal was a killer, but even more so when Chilton went to Will for help. I am a bit sad we won’t get to see this unlikely duo work together more, but alas, it was not to be, as Will called Jack and Chilton was brought in... where Miriam was waiting for the payoff to a trap Hannibal had been working on for two years. Which all makes sense, because Hannibal made Will look guilty both out of his own curiosity and his sense of self-protection – but we know that his perverse wish to be Will’s friend also meant he wanted him free in the long term. But someone had to take the fall for the Ripper’s murders, and now we know Hannibal had chosen Chilton as that person before the show even began.As an aside, I love how funny Chilton was here, given some great lines before his departure, as he noted just how unfair this situation was and how stacked the deck was, given he had corpses on his property and a “half eaten Gideon”, while when Hannibal framed Will, “You just threw up an ear!”I hope this isn’t the last we see of Miriam. It was really cool to see her and Will interact, and even bond, as he told her, “You and I are part of his design” and she (correctly), replied, Neither of us are really free. He’s not done.” In the long run, I’d wondered if Miriam could be used as a Clarice Starling substitute, if they can’t use that character due to the rights issues involving her – especially given the purposeful echoes of Clarice in her introduction. That seems more unlikely now, given what just happened, but you never know…Lastly, any other Twin Peaks fans out there who felt like the creepy score during the sequence at Chilton’s house, as he woke up to see what Hannibal had done, had a similar , evocative tone to it as the music from that series?