[S3 Ep. 4:Apertivo]

I loveloveloved this episode, for a very many reasons which will be obvious  as you read through the review.

But one thing I have to mention:
I love that they showed characters  taking some time to recover from their injuries(granted, this episode *did* jump around in time,like in one scene Will is in a hospital bed and the next he's in his garage fixing a boat motor. For people who don't understand that, it's called a plot device. I saw criticism of that from a website that is normally very supportive of Hannibal.They're entitled to their opinion but IMO it seemed like they weren't understanding what was going on.

Not sure if it was the structure of this episode, but I was amazed at how fast it went by-I mean, I'm sitting there watching and half an hour has gone by already!

And how about that promo for next week! Shit is going to get real,that is all I have to say about that(I wish it was Thursday already!)

OK, that said, on to the review. If I miss anything out, I'm sorry, but I've been tweeting whilst I watch the show instead of taking notes.

*Mason!  was really skeptical that Joe Anderson was going to be able to fill Michael Pitt's shoes, but I needn't have worried. I loved his interactions with Alana("Dr. Lecter got deeper inside you than any of us") *Ed McMahon laughter*. My jaw was on the floor at that. We got a flashback showing him getting his face repaired(in yet another Dead Ringers homage)

Mason's face was not as gnarly looking as I thought it was going to be(the only frame of reference I have is Gary Oldman's Mason, from the movie Hannibal)

*Margot was flirting with Alana,which  is going to pay off  along the line. We're introduced to a "new"(she's in traction the first time we see her and then in a wheelchair and later, when she is at Mason's, using a cane(well, I did say it jumped around a lot.)Alana

Alana is rebuffed by Will when she shows up at Hannibal's house(Will happens to be there-funny that that's one of the places that she would think to check for Will)

*If you ever wondered how someone could survive getting shot in the face, we saw how with Chilton(whose first act, as soon as he was able to, was to trademark "Hannibal The Cannibal".And absolutely nobody is surprised,LOL

Chilton is trying to get his revenge squad together, and goes to Mason, first, then Will, then Alana and eventually Jack. He basically gets rebuffed by them all, one by one(again,nobody is surprised.)

*Will's story sort of is the start(well, not the very start) and the end of this episode,which,given the fact that the next episode is going to be somewhat Will-centric, is apt.We flash back to Mizumono,which morphs into Will waking up in the hospital

(OK gonna  ramble for a second: even though he was in a coma Will was able to breathe on his own apparently.Not only that, but his hair is always perfect. Best not to think about it too much, I think. :P

Then we fast-forward a couple(?) months and Will is in his garage fixing a boat motor(more about that in a minute!) when Jack shows up. He wants to make sure that they're sticking with the same story of what happened. Jack wants to know why Will called Hannibal that night. Will says because Hannibal is his friend and..he wanted to  run away with him. Wait, what?Bacdafuqup!(this episode was a shipper's dream..literally.. the ship sailed at the end of the episode-Will was sailing to Italy(the left it kinda ambiguous as to whether he sailed all the way to Italy or went most of the way there by ship and took a plane or train the rest of the way)

*Jack's story was the hardest to watch(I loved that they kept Bella's death the same as in the book,where she died at home. My dad said it seemed slightly ambiguous as to whether Jack killed Bella or not, but  I think he did.

And knowing that Laurence Fishburne, who plays Jack, and Gina Torres who plays Bella, are husband and wife makes it even more heartbreaking. We get similar flashback to the Will-Abigail parallel scene in Primavera.

Hannibal sends a note of condolence to Jack(gotta wonder how he knew that Bella had died though..)

Jack goes to Will's, only to find Alana, who is watching Will's dogs(and BTW, we got to see Will's dogs twice this episode!)

Random things:
We met Mason's nurse Cordell,who also does his bidding(he is a very bad guy indeed in the books-I wonder if he'll have the same backstory that he did in the books.)

Alana had a slightly different look now,I have heard  theories that it is related to her fall(and  she says the fall caused her to have extra bone marrow and she'll start thinking differently. I didn't know that that was a thing but apparently it is(just from what we saw it looked like Alana had a lot of bruising -which, given she fell from a second story window,isn't surprising.)