Seeing Hannibal walk away from Jack with open wounds was a jarring experience and it took this week's episode, "Dolce", to help cement what it really meant. "Contorno's" bulletin finale was designed to make viewer's understand that we were entering completely new territory. No one was safe anymore. Not even Hannibal himself. The first four episodes of this season exist to move characters around on a story arc chess board. It just took this long for this to be clear because Bryan Fuller and his team managed to do an ingenious job of hiding exposition behind the best cinematography and editing the show has achieved thus far. Not to mnetion dialogue so vague and mysterious it could only die-hard fans could assemble the puzzle from the pieces provided. Bedelia has been warning Hannibal all along that he's been flirting with disaster and now, finally, disaster had chosen to respond.
Bedelia herself is a huge part of "Dolce" and with good reason. It seems to be the last episode Gillian Anderson will occupy and she goes out with a bang. Even after everything that Hannibal has done to her, she still doesn't want to be directly responsible for his downfall. There's a kind of love there that no one, not even Bedelia, fully understands. Knowing her own limitations when it comes to creating an alibi for herself and her supposed husband, Hannibal, Bedelia shoots heroin to keep herself from revealing the truth. The beauty of this sequence is even though she's helping Hannibal, she's ultimately just trying to free herself from him and after providing a wonderful performance and a sultry and silly alibi, she finally does it.
We also learn this episode the full meaning of Margot's motivations. She wants a child more than anything and has developed a physical (at the very least) relationship with Alana in order to help her get it. A kaleidoscopic sex sequence helps what could have been a blunt elbow to the ribs sequence become something much more and this reason isn't much of a surprise. Hannibal has always been skilled at taking expository sequences and masking them behind mind bending visual effects which make for great TV watching and force the audience to keep their minds open while they watch in order to absorb every detail.
The final storyline in the episode follows Hannibal as he nurses Will's wounds. That is, until he realizes that if he doesn't act on what has become an obsession with eating Will Graham, he'll certainly miss his chance. So follows the most jaw dropping ending sequence the medium of television has seen in a long time. Hannibal has Will drugged and strapped to a chair, forcing Jack (who's achilles tendon has been slashed) to watch as he saws open Will's skull. And as if the show realized when it's audience simply couldn't take it anymore the scene just stops. Suddenly we find ourselves pushed ahead through time, though how much time we don't know, and Hannibal and Will are the prisoners of Mason Verger. It's almost too much to take. What on earth could happen next?
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