'Hannibal' Season 1, Episode 2: 'Amuse-Bouche' Recap

Bullet casings hit the ground—Will Graham is at target practice. He sees the dead body of Hobbs, the man he killed, floating toward him and shoots frantically.

Jack Crawford knocks on the car window, waking him. They are in a national forest in Minnesota—Hobbs’ cabin. They peer around. It is full of taxidermied animals, and upstairs there is a room entirely of antlers.

Crawford tells him there are seven bodies unaccounted for, so maybe they can learn something. Graham reminds him that he was eating them. Crawford suggests he had help… Abigail Hobbs is a suspect. He says that neighbors have said Hobbs spent a lot of time there with his daughter.

Graham examines an antler covered in blood, and says Hobbs hunts alone. He dinfs a strange hair on the floor, and says someone else was there.

A naked woman sits before a computer with pictures from the cabin. She posts it on tattlecrime.com.

Graham collects himself, and then goes down an aisle to applause. He makes them stop. He starts a slideshow on how he caught Hobbs. He shows them Hobb’s resignation letter, which only had a phone number, and then a picture of Hobbs dead. The next photo is Hobbs and his daughter, and then the body from the copycat.

Alana Bloom comes up and asks Graham how he is. Crawford comes in “ambushing him.” He says he is up for a commendation and approved to return to the field. He is also requesting a psych evaluation—and he wants Dr. Lecter to do it. Bloom reminds him he just killed a man, and that can have an impression. Crawford insists on it—he needs to know Graham didn’t get too close.

Lecter tells Graham that he is approving him as sound. Now they can talk without the concern of paperwork, and Crawford can relax.

They discuss their sense of obligation for Abigail since she is an orphan now.

“Is this therapy or a support group?”

Boys are in the woods, when they find odd looking plants… they are mushrooms sprouted up around hands emerging from the dirt with IVs in the vein.

Graham goes back to the shooting range. Beverly Katz comes up behind him, teasing him. He says it took ten shots to drop Hobbs. She helps him with his stance and tells him Jack came to find out what he knows about gardening.

Nine bodies in various stages of decay, all well fertilized. The women were buried alive, and the mushrooms were encouraged to help destroy their features, they speculate. They were being fed intravenously while in the ground.

The redheaded woman from tattlecrime takes a surreptitious picture and flirts with a detective, claiming to be a mother of one of the boys. She asks what Graham is doing by himself and he tells her he is a special consultant.

Graham begins imagining in his mind, taking away the fungi, burying the bodies. The bodies are unconscious, duct tapes their mouths with a venitalator and puts in the IV. He looks down and sees Hobbs, and loses his focus.

A hand reaches up and grabs him—one of the bodies is still alive, though moments before Katz pulled away part of its face. Everyone rushes over.

Graham goes back to Lecter and tells him the paper might have been premature. He tells him about hallucinating Hobbs.

Lecter asks about the arms left exposed on the bodies. Graham points out they were being fed, not cultivated. Lecter suggests that he was interested in the complexity of the fungus and the human.

Outside the door, the woman, Miss Kimble, is taping the conversation. As Graham leaves, Lecter brings her in.

The woman pretends to be scoping him as a potential therapist, but he can see immediately she is lying. He asks if she is Freddie Lounds, the tabloid journalist. He asks for her bag and takes the recorder. She says she was recording their conversation... but he knows she recorded Graham as well. He asks how she knew he was there and she says she can’t tell him.

He makes her delete the conversation and tells her doctor confidentiality goes both ways, and asks how they should punish her.

Lecter presents Crawford with dinner. They discuss Graham. Lecter wants to know why he is so delicate with Will, and asks if he lost someone in the field. Crawford says yes.

They examine the bodies, which were covered in fertilizer for the mushrooms. They say the bodies were pumped with sugar water, and all died of kidney failure. Graham says they were designed to grow the mushrooms, kept alive until the sugar was in their systems and the mushrooms could access it. They all were diabetics, and the killer induced a coma so he works in the medical field. They dug up his crop and he will want to start a new one. Mushrooms have similar connectivity chains as human brains--it is about connecting.

A diabetic woman stops to pick up her prescription. The pharmacist switches the bottle, and has her sign, asking if her address is correct.

The FBI with guns drawn swoops in.

Crawford explains that ten diabetic customers disappeared from the location. They stop everyone at the pharmacy and ask for Eldon Stammets. A man says he just left. Graham asks if his car is still in the lot, and breaks the window. He pops the trunk and finds the woman on a ventilator in the trunk, covered in dirt.

A man tells Crawford they just checked his browsing history… and he won’t like it. They pull up an article about Graham on tattlecrime.com.

“One demented mind to catch another.”

Lecter reads it in his home, and says she is naughty.

Miss Lounds hears knocking on the door. The FBI busts in and zip ties her. Crawford tells her she entered a crime scene under false pretenses and lied to an officer.

“You got all that information from a local detective?” Zeller looks nervous.

He tells her that her article allowed a murdered to escape. He pulls a hair and tells her he can indict her for instructing justice and contaminating a crime scene. He tells her not to write another word about Graham. Zeller cuts her free and whispers that she used him.

Graham is in the hospital with Abigail. He thinks he sees an elk go by. He is asleep on the couch… a woman takes off her heels and goes into the room, while in the dream, Graham watches the elk go down the hall. The woman covers him with a blanket.

Graham wakes. Bloom is leading to Abigail, who is still in her coma. He points out they’ve never been alone in a room together, but she nods at Abigail. She mentions the “takes one to now one” article and tells him he saved Abigail’s life. She is a success.

Lounds grabs her coffee and leaves her hotel room. The detective who talked to her at the crime scene is standing by her car. He is angry, especially because she made inferences based on what he told her. She tells him she can get him work elsewhere—when Stammets comes up and shoots him.

“I read your article. Tell me about Will Graham.”

The body is wheeled away. Miss Lounds calls over Jack from the ambulance. She asks about Will Graham. She tells him Stammets was talking about properties of fungi and humans—thoughts leaping from brain to brain. He wants Will Graham because Graham can understand him. Graham was right—it is about connections. She admits she told him about the Hobbs girl.

“He wants to help Will Graham connect with Abigail Hobbs. He’s going to bury her.”

Stammets goes to the hospital and changes into scrubs. Graham gets a call from Jack, and pulls his gun. He rushes to Abigail’s room but she is gone. He finds a nurse who says they took her for tests. He runs off. He finds Stammets finally and shoots him in the shoulder.

“What were you going to do to her?”

The man rants about spores of mycelium, which reach for you, and know you’re there. He says he knows he is reaching for Abigail.

“You would have found her in a field, where she was finally able to reach back.”

Lecter talks to Graham about the incident. He admits he thought about killing him. Lecter asks if killing Hobbs really felt so good.

Graham says he liked it.