Happy Hannibal Rant (3x01, 3x02, 3x03)

Well, I promised myself I’d use DA to rant about something positive for a change, and things don’t get any more positive than Hannibal for me, so here I am.

Watching these first couple of episodes of the season, it’s been a real joy to be reminded that Hannibal is my show where everyone says and does exactly what I want them to say and do.

First off, did anyone else notice that Hannibal’s Florence apartment has similarities to his Baltimore office and home? 



So happy about this! I knew right from the end of season 2 I’d miss those sets, especially the office. It’s not quite the same, and I think the biggest difference is in the color palette, but there was still enough of a similarity to make me let out a nostalgic “aww”. And who knows, maybe Alana or Chilton could take over Hannibal’s office once the story moves back on them. That wouldn’t be creepy at all.

On the Bedelia front – I can’t wait for the show to eventually go back to her murdering her patient and witness what were the events that led up to it. I mean, you don’t just hire a well known actor to have him lay on the ground for a few seconds, right? I was definitely not expecting the murder to be as violent and unusual and cool as it was. The show had hinted before at the guy not having his tongue attached, but I always figured that a knife was somehow involved, not a fist.

I think I enjoyed the Hannibal / Gideon story even more than the Hannibal / Bedelia story. For some reason their flashbacks kept reminding me of Dr Frankenstein and Igor, I can’t exactly verbalize why, they just did. Maybe it was the black and white palette, maybe it was the way Hannibal kept imparting his philosophy on Gideon, maybe it was the lonely monster music in the final scene, I don’t know.

I remember watching those scenes and thinking they feel very similar to what the show did in season 1 when it initially portrayed Georgia as the monster under the bed, and then in season 2 when it portrayed Randall as a kind of werewolf.

So nice to see Gideon pushing Hannibal and finding ways to affect what he's about to say. Hannibal doesn't typically let stuff get to him, but Gideon definitely managed to throw him off balance a few times. Good for him, that he managed to find a way to have some power under those circumstances.

As far as favorite lines go:

“You really are the devil” – haha

 “This isn’t cannibalism. It’s only cannibalism if we’re equals” – yikes, yikes

“The eating of the heart is a powerful image” – haha, but also, foreshadowing much? I wonder if he’s gonna tease Will with eating his heart this season or the next.

“Have you given serious thought to eating professor Sogliato?” – only on Hannibal is this a serious line

“When I’m not busy eating myself, you wish me to be eating oysters, drinking sweet wines and snacking on acorns. All to make me…tastier? […] Imagine what you must taste like” – looove the snark and spitefulness here!

“Snails aren’t the only creatures who prefer eating with company. If only that company could be Will Graham” – that’s exactly what I was saying while watching the scene! Ah, I’m gonna miss Gideon.

I’m sad that Antony Dimmond had to die so soon, but I love, love, love that Hannibal is killing more openly now!

However his line to Bedelia – “You say you’re observing, but this, this is participation” – I don’t think it was honest. Hannibal uses truth to manipulate people, he doesn’t lie often, but he did here. He is the one who invited Antony to attend a lecture that he was giving under a different name than the one Antony knew him by. He was always going to kill the poor guy, regardless of what Bedelia did or didn’t do.

Visually, I’m always in awe of how the show manages to reinvent images that it already used, there’s some of that in Primavera as well, but in Antipadto the knife reflections were powerful call backs to season 2, Mizumono in particular, Bedelia staring at the faucet was basically the return of Will’s prison sink, and the water drops rolling off of Hannibal might as well have a been a continuation of the rain scene in Mizumono.

Then there are the new images – Hannibal giving a lecture, standing under the word “Lucifer” and having the drawing of a devil overlap with him was all kinds of glorious, so was the heart sculpture at the end of the episode, the snails feeding on Gideon’s arm was beautifully eerie, and the shot of Hannibal closing the door after Antony right before killing him looked particularly sinister.

And then there are the puzzling visuals – what the hell kind of a winery has dead animals inside? What was that place?

And on to 3x02.

I think I actually missed Will the most. I love Hannibal, and what I’m about to say doesn’t cheapen him one bit as a character (he’s still one of the most unique ones out there), but there are plenty of awesome, complex, fun, interesting villains on TV shows and movies. Not that many awesome, complex, fun, interesting heroes though.

I’m not quite sure what it means, but there’s an obvious parallel between Will and Bedelia. She sinks into the bathtub, falls under water, then resurfaces, while he sinks into the blood sea and doesn’t resurface. Maybe it means that Will is fully immersed in Hannibal’s world, he sees all there is to see and is willing to do whatever he has to do, whereas Bedelia still has some reservations and is not ready to take her psyche into that dark of a place?

Nice to see the broken teacup putting itself back together and morphing into Will as I took it as a symbol of him being in the process of healing emotionally, putting himself back together after everything that happened at the end of last season. And with the stag dead (*cries forever*) I was really worried about him when Mizumono ended. I always saw that animal as a guiding light of sorts. Sure, it had some messed up ways of helping him, but whenever it showed up on screen I always felt like it was telling Will “Hey, pay attention! Something isn’t right here!”

I spent the first 3 minutes after the flashback shocked that Aby was alive, because I had her as the character who can't survive the S2 finale, then got sad the moment Will started talking about what could’ve happened in some other world. It had such an air of finality that I knew I was right. When characters in horror and SF start talking about doors to other worlds, it never leads to anything good, and especially never if they're metaphorical doors and worlds.

And her clothes in Italy played so well to the theme – a red jacked (blood) over a white shirt (ghost). Have I mentioned that I love this show?

But how sad is the dialog between them in retrospect? – “They told me he knew exactly how to cut me […] that it was surgical. He wanted us to live.” – that’s Will telling himself that Hannibal didn’t want him to die, but to live with the loss.

“Do you believe in God?” – “What I believe is closer to science fiction than anything in the bible” – I so loved that he said that!

And when he goes on to say that Hannibal has fun defying God, for a show based in reality, the writers often manage to give it shades of the supernatural and elevate their characters to something more than human. And it all works together so beautifully!

Pazzi: “I’m like you. I do what you do” – No where near, actually. I’m assuming he meant that they’re both profilers who get into the minds of killers. But Pazzi’s approach is intellectual. He enjoys the mental stimulation and putting the pieces of the puzzle together in order to solve the mystery. Will’s approach is primarily emotional. He emotes with them in order to understand them, feels what they felt during the murder, except, of course, it’s having an entirely different effect on Will because he’s a good person. Pazzi gets to validate his own intellect, Will gets nightmares.

See, I knew something horrible was about to happen because ominous heart beats will be ominous. But gwaahh!! Can that stag get any more fucked up? I don’t know what was creepier – the way it looked (especially the absence of eyes), or the fact that it wanted to establish a connection and be Will’s friend. Not that I’m complaining, because I’m not, it was a terrific visual. I wonder if we’re ever going to see it again.

“You don’t know whose side I’m on” – yeah, I kinda don’t believe him. Just the fact that a moment later he says that he doesn’t know what he’ll do when he finds Hannibal says a lot. If you see the side of you that wants to take Hannibal’s side, and you’re unhappy that you’re seeing it, and you’re fighting it and worrying that you might not do the right thing, that pretty much tells me that when push comes to shove you’re absolutely going to do the right thing. If you were an asshole or an immoral person you wouldn’t be worrying about that.

This episode alone there were several moments that affirmed and reaffirmed who Will is as a person. When Aby tells him that they could’ve gone together in another world, where Hannibal made a place for them, and Will answers “A place was made for you Abigail. In this world. It’s the only place I could make for you” – it means that he can’t image a world where they left together to be a murder family, that’s not a world he can be apart of, not something he can bring himself to do.

Then there’s the exchange he had with Pazzi: “I read all about your incarceration” – “Keep reading, I was acquitted” – love how personally he takes this, he's so not over it. It’s not just this episode either, he had a similar moment in season 2, when Margot told him “I either know you, or know of you” and he answered “I’m the guy who didn’t kill all those people”.

And let’s not forget that he started visiting Peter after his social worker got arrested, which of course he’d do, because in season 1 he tried to save someone (Georgia) who previously tried to kill him.

It’s also the reason why I didn’t believe it in season 2, when the writers wanted us to be worried about what he’ll do.

Finally, did anyone else imagine Hannibal running away at the end of the episode (in the tunnel) because of all the feelings? I could watch a parody of that. And then a parody of Hannibal calling everyone by food names rather than their actual names.

I genuinely believe that Will genuinely forgave Hannibal, I don’t think he was lying about it. But at the same time I don’t understand how he managed to forgive him for killing Aby.

So many gorgeous, creepy visuals in this episode as well – out of the ones that I haven’t mentioned yet I’ll give shout outs to the blood drops smashing on the floor of the chapel, the bloodied up water during the autopsy scene, the tunnels (the camera movements, the lighting, the chromatics, the statues, but also the corpse that almost looked like it was disappearing into the wall), the skull and the painting that was watching Hannibal while he was watching Will. With all the religious talk in the episode, I have to wonder if that was in a way "God" being judgmental of Hannibal.

Update: 3x03.

I really, seriously don’t have time to write 2-3 pages on Secondo, but I have to add a few quick thoughts:

I think I’m going to start referring to Dr. Du Maurier as Badass Bedelia – “How did your sister taste?”. It’s not just that she said it out loud, it’s that she deduced it without Hannibal saying anything about it.

“Nothing happened to me, I happened”  

Man, just when you think this show can’t possibly get any more gorgeous – the moth-man which served as anything but a subtle reference to Silent of The Lambs, the plants in the cemetery, the firefly fountain, the gates, the bird wallpaper (or was that a painting? I’m not sure), the catacombs / jail area with all the candles, the snails in the blood, Hannibal’s face morphing into Chiyoh’s reflection, Will’s reflection on the blood water, more knife reflection, the kaleidoscope effect.