NBC’s ‘Hannibal’ season 2, episode 8 review: A lot of horsing around

Let’s start off this “Hannibal” review with the following: That scene with a woman inside of a dead horse has to be the most horrifying thing we’ve seen all season. Seriously. That’s the worst thing to happen to a horse since “The Godfather,” and also nightmare fuel for the rest of the week. If we did not love this show so very much, that may have been a little much for us.

This entire episode was in a way strange, and after a fantastic run through season 2 so far, this is one of the first times that we really wondered what in the world was going on most of the time. It was a sharp departure from the past few weeks in some ways, given that you had a number of new characters, and there was a shift away from Jack working more on the front lines to prove Hannibal’s guilt alongside Will.

The two new characters that we met here were Peter (Jeremy Davies), an animal rescue worker who becomes a suspect in the very bizarre murder that left a body stuffed inside a horse., and also Peter’s social worker Clark (Chris Diamantopoulos). Both become increasingly involved as the episode progressed, leading to that intense Will – Hannibal conversation at the hour’s end.

Let’s rattle off some great things about this episode quickly: Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen are brilliant as always, we’re buying Alana’s romance more than we thought that we would, and Will found a way to clean himself up. Also, Hannibal petting a sheep may be the greatest thing that we’ve ever seen.

What we worry about now is that as messed-up as “Su-Zukana” was (and it was very messed up, indeed), we have no idea now where the story is going from here. This story with Peter is not over yet, but is he going to be that important to the overall tale? We are still trying to figure out if this was a really gruesome diversion designed to get Will and Hannibal back out into the field, or something we need to be paying more attention to. Still, we were very entertained despite the blatant horror at times here, and it was nice to see Diamantopoulos on the show as a longtime fan. (Can you imagine what he told his friends he went and did at work?) Grade: B+.

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Photo: NBC