The noose is tightening for Hannibal as the people he didn't actually kill are coming for him. And while Hannibal treats one of them to the kind of historical allusion/horrifying death that he's known for, it would be hard to say Hannibal comes out ahead this week.
Will and Chiyo are heading to Florence, but Will's trip is delayed when Chiyo throws him off a moving train. Now, Will's our protagonist, but he desperately needs a shock to the system that being gutted didn't accomplish. Will has spent way too much time with Hannibal, allowing il monstro to worm his way into Will's mind. The danger of Will's pursuit is that he is still seeing the world the way Hannibal made him see it - that he either needs to kill Hannibal or run off to be murder-buddies with him. Will is stuck in a rut - he's forgotten that he wasn't always this way. Oh, he was messed up before, sure, but nowhere nearly as after his abusive friendship with Hannibal Lecter.
Will this train ejection help him? I sure hope so. Nothing would please me more than to see Will grow past the form that Hannibal molded him into.
Meanwhile, however, Jack has arrived in Florence. He spreads Bella's ashes in the Arno along with his wedding ring before meeting up with Inspector Pazzi, with whom he is collaborating to capture Hannibal.
Poor (former) Inspector Pazzi, who we find out is actually of the Pazzi family who rivaled the Medicis for power in Florence. (If you've played Assassin's Creed II, you've killed some of his ancestors!) Pazzi goes after Hannibal, but rather than calling in the police, he responds to Mason Verger's bounty, taking great risk for a 3 million dollar reward.
Foolishly, he meets Hannibal alone and Dr. "Fell" shows him a woodcut of one of his Pazzi ancestors who was hanged after attempting to kill Lorenzo di Medici - and according to Hannibal, had been paid thirty pieces of silver by the Church to do so. This hanging, as we saw in an earlier episode (I want to say Antipasto,) is how the death of Judas Iscariot is depicted as well. Hannibal continues his horribly blasphemous antichrist routine by giving Inspector Pazzi the same fate, hanging him with an extension cord after slicing his abdomen open (bowels out.) (So is a piece of silver worth $100,000?)
It's exactly how Hannibal's dealings tend to go - a highly symbolic death committed with immense cruelty.
But just as Pazzi's guts hit the pavement below him, Jack shows up.
And Hannibal clearly did not expect this, because we get the most satisfyingly one-sided fight I've possibly ever seen on television.
Hannibal spends a moment trying to prepare for the confrontation, and all of a sudden the music comes on (it's a really famous bit of classical music that I confess I don't know the name of) and, taking a page out of the good doctor's book, Jack sneaks up behind him in just his socks. And then, holy shit, the mother of all beat-downs as Jack just wails on Hannibal.
Lecter doesn't get a single significant hit in. He is quickly disarmed and then thrown through glass cases. All the while, Hannibal tries to press his advantage with (and forgive me if you haven't already become addicted to TVTropse) a Hannibal Lecture, only for badass Jack Crawford, as an avatar of justice and rage, to just not give a fuck (just going to leave this here.) Hannibal ends the fight bloody and broken on the ground after being thrown out a fucking window, hobbling off while Jack stands victorious.
Sure, this'd probably be a good time to arrest him, but clearly Will's going to need to be there for that.
Pazzi's dead, which is certainly on the negative side of things (and in a way that looks like it was quite painful) but that fight left me freaking cheering at the screen. Hannibal seemed so untouchable, so powerful as if he would never be defeated. But this set the record straight. Also, Jack is fucking badass.
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