(The following review contains spoilers for the first half of Hannibal’s third season. It also contains some very grotesque descriptions of events)

I know that I’ve written about Hannibal a number of times lately, but there’s been a good reason for it. There is not a more beautiful or more grotesque show anywhere on television, and Hannibal’s growing apathy for traditional storytelling and “relatable” characters sets it apart from anything that may otherwise approach its visual prowess. And somehow, at least through the end of the current season, Hannibal airs on network television.

Even if Hannibal’s ratings weren’t in the toilet, it would be easy to see why NBC finally threw in the towel this year. While previous seasons at least pretended to follow a procedural arc, with a number of case-of-the-week murders, the first half of season three completely dropped any pretenses and became a manhunt for Hannibal Lecter. It also threw any concerns about character relatability to the curb. No longer are Hannibal and the weekly killers the lone madmen in a world ruled by the normal. This year, every single character, from Will to Hannibal to the Vergers to Bedalia to Alana to Chiyo, is insane. Hell, even Jack Crawford, the rock that typically holds everything together, eventually meets up with Will Graham and assists in a completely off-record pursuit of Lecter.

This complete descent into insanity has admittedly made the show difficult to watch at times. When even Will, ostensibly the hero of the show, is making elaborate moth-like displays of corpses to lure his target and object of obsession, we’ve really gone off the deep end. But the complete abandonment of any recognizable emotional motivation makes this season unique among television programs. Despite being based on the work of Thomas Harris, season three of Hannibal is much closer to capturing the dark prose of Edgar Allen Poe.

It all culminates in what may be the most batshit crazy episode of television I have ever witnessed. Episode seven, which is the end of this particular arc while being the mid-point of the actual season, brings the character of Mason Verger back to the forefront. His plans make Hannibal’s actions in the previous episode, which involved cutting into Will’s head with a bone saw, seem quaint. Mason, who simultaneously idolizes and hates Hannibal, plans to eat him piece-by-piece while he’s still alive. To make matters even more depraved, he intends to do so after first cutting off Will Graham’s face and attaching it to his own face, which he previously cut off and fed to his dogs after being drugged by Lecter. This would presumably satisfy his jealousy of Will, who Hannibal has always favored. Awwww.

That’s only the start of the insanity. Mason tells his own sister Margot, who has fertility problems due to her brother’s experimentation, that they have found a surrogate for her eggs, so that they can finally have a “Verger baby.” Margot later finds this “surrogate” to be a pig, and pulls a dead human fetus from its innards. Margot and her lesbian lover, Alana Bloom, later steal Mason’s sperm while he’s asleep by stimulating his prostate with a cattle prod.

Again, let me remind you that this is a program that airs on network television station NBC.

It would all be simply too grotesque if the show didn’t have a sick sense of humor about it all. Case in point: Mason’s weird, repeated fixation on Hannibal’s penis. He recalls a story he heard about a German cannibal who advertised for a friend and, in the process of eating him, overcooked his penis. “Go to all that trouble to eat your friend and you overcook his penis!” Mason exclaims. Only in Hannibal is such a line hilarious. Mason also verbally considers the possibility of feeding Hannibal’s penis to his giant pet eel, the same eel that kills Mason when he is dunked into the tank by Margot and Alana. If there’s not some kind of message in a lesbian couple stealing sperm from a penis-obsessed maniac and then killing him with a living phallus, then I’m not sure that messages even exist.

But this descent into pure madness has a narrative purpose. When Hannibal rescues Will and carries him away, we return to the teacup metaphor of season two. At the time of its introduction, it was a symbol for Will Graham being broken and reassembled as Hannibal’s protege. Here, though, we see the teacup shatter and remain broken. Will has finally reached a breaking point. The Verger incident was his rock-bottom in insanity, providing the moment in clarity he needed to distance himself from Hannibal completely.

The way that this reframes Hannibal’s “capture” is particularly brilliant. This was not a victory for Will Graham and the police, it was a way for Hannibal to keep his hold on Graham. When we rejoin Will and Jack next week for the Red Dragon arc, it will begin as a return to normality. Three years will have passed, Will will be married, and he will have moved on in his life. But Hannibal will be waiting in his cell for Will to come and see him. And Will will know exactly where to find him.