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http://www.wired.com/2015/06/binge-guide-hannibal/
WIRED BINGE-WATCHING GUIDE: HANNIBAL
AS ONE OF only three films to win the five major Oscar categories (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Screenplay), Jonathan Demme’s adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs remains an indelible story that defies easy genre classification. It has terrifying suspense and grisly horror, but also the thrill of a detective story. The film cemented Hannibal Lecter as one of the most memorable screen characters of all time. And for two decades, the role was inextricably linked to Anthony Hopkins, who was the only man to sufficiently bring the alluring air of European sophistication to the cannibal psychiatrist.
So when it was announced Bryan Fuller, creator of Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies, was creating an NBC adaptation of Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Lecter novels, it seemed like another attempt to dredge up an existing character to attract an audience. But when the show debuted in the spring of 2013, it shocked pretty much everyone—not because it was the best Hannibal Lecter-related story since Silence, but because it’s one of the most deeply unsettling crime stories to ever air on broadcast television. Every element, from impeccable casting and impactful writing to gorgeous cinematography and Brian Reitzell’s hauntingly ever-present score, works in concert to create one of the most aesthetically satisfying television shows in years.
And it’s hard to discount just how graphic the show can be, even in an era where gritty, boundary-pushing violence is the norm on SVU, The Following, or any number of other murder investigation shows. When Hannibal depicts an exquisite corpse, it does not mean the surrealist writing game—it means the literal definition. But unlike the deluge of torture porn or extreme horror films that keep pushing the envelope of violence purely to shock and dismay audiences, Hannibal‘s mantra, “this is my design,” helps ground all of the grotesque tableaus with thematic purpose. There is a method to every bit of madness, whether it comes in the form of murder-scene-as-installation-art or a meticulously crafted dinner recipe.
The show’s third season debuts on NBC tomorrow, so here’s how to catch up in order to get on board with the show as it scares the hell out of everyone this summer.
Hannibal
Number of Seasons: 2 (26 episodes)
Time Requirements: At 26 episodes and just under 20 hours, it’s possible to devote a day to each season and catch up in a weekend. But if that’s too much traumatizing content to take in at one time, you could watch two episodes every other day and catch up in time to watch the first episodes of the third season before they expire on Hulu and be caught up for the rest of the season.
Where to Get Your Fix: Amazon Prime
Best Character to Follow:
It’s right there in the title of the show: Hannibal. Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen (Le Chiffre from Casino Royale) imbues Lecter with every bit of the threatening but transfixing gravitas Hopkins brought to the role and more, since he gets to explore the pre-incarceration days.
Fuller has stated that the impetus for the show was to examine Lecter as he hadn’t been seen before—as a practicing forensic psychiatrist before he was incarcerated by the FBI, between the rightly-ignored Hannibal Rising origin story and Silence. That allows Fuller and his staff to develop Lecter’s relationships with unstable criminal profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), FBI Special Agent-In-Charge Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne), and former student-turned-professor and FBI consultant Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas).
The fear with shows about seemingly superhuman serial killers (ahem, Dexter) is that they need to keep backing the criminal into a corner like a dangerous animal, and using blind violence to get them out of impossible situations. Hannibal has so far evaded that particular weakness by treating Lecter’s invisibility to his coworkers as paramount until absolutely necessary. Whenever anyone comes close, be they a colleague, a victim, or a stranger, there’s a sense that this version of Lecter has created an elaborate interlocking puzzle that only he can control. Mikkelsen’s ability to convey the wheels turning inside Lecter’s head, and how he appears to be a few steps ahead at all times, is one of the show’s greatest assets.
Seasons/Episodes You Can Skip:
With only 26 episodes, there aren’t too many to skip, but there’s one wrinkle to discuss about Hannibal‘s first season.
Season 1: Episode 4, “Œuf” In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, as well as the Sandy Hook school shooting, NBC pulled this episode, where the case-of-the-week involved a mysterious mother (Molly Shannon) influencing young boys to kill their families. The episode was turned into webisodes online in order to paper over any continuity gaps in the first season—but NBC also aired a few episodes of the first season out of order. If this episode wasn’t now available to stream in full, and was still only available in piecemeal fashion, it would be perhaps the only episode that truly isn’t required for understanding the larger narrative arc of the series.
Seasons/Episodes You Can’t Skip:
Let’s stipulate off the bat that aside from the one technically unaired first season episode, everything in the first two seasons shouldn’t be skipped. Having said that, here are a handful of the many highlights from the past two seasons. Also, for great insight into how Fuller and the whole production team crafted these seasons, look to Todd VanDerWerff’s excellent Walkthrough interviews over at The A.V. Club, which cover the first season in chunks, and then each episode of the second season.
Season 1: Episode 1, “Apéritif” It’s the pilot, and a surprisingly strong one at that, waiting to introduce Mikkelsen’s Lecter until well into the episode, instead choosing to establish Will Graham as a brilliant criminologist teetering on the edge of sanity for his preternatural abilities to get inside the minds of the most horrifying murderers. The first time the show depicts Graham’s re-enactments is the first of many breathtaking stylistic flourishes that became Hannibal’s calling cards.
Season 1: Episode 2, “Amuse-Bouche” The first season begins to take shape not only as a game of cat and mouse between Will and Hannibal, but as a tug-of-war for Abigail Hobbes, the daughter of the serial killer Will shoots dead in the pilot. His post-traumatic stress and strong paternal instincts are what drive him to seek Hannibal’s treatment, which also tragically lead him to unravel when he’s at the mercy of such a manipulative monster fascinated by another gifted mind.
Season 1: Episode 5, “Coquilles” In a season full of disgustingly beautiful images, perhaps the most haunting is that of the Angelmaker’s victims’, with the flesh of their backs strung up to the ceiling to imitate angels’ wings. “Coquilles” also introduces the always-incredible Gina Torres (Firefly, Suits) as Jack Crawford’s wife, who becomes Dr. Lecter’s patient and struggles with how to tell her husband about a terminal cancer diagnosis.
Season 1: Episode 6, “Entrée” Whoever does the casting for Hannibal deserves multiple awards for this episode alone. In it Eddie Izzard plays incarcerated murderer Abel Gideon, who attempts to take credit for Hannibal’s murders as the Chesapeake Ripper, Raul Esparza plays Dr. Frederick Chilton, a character played by Anthony Heald in Silence, and Anna Chlumsky portrays Jack Crawford’s previous protégé at the FBI who disappeared without a trace.
Season 1: Episode 8, “Fromage” Serial killer shows often try a variation on the team-up plot where one murderer seeks companionship with another. But Hannibal is a lone wolf, and here he rejects the man who turned a classical musician into a human cello (another nauseating image), which leads to the first serial killer showdown fight scene in one of the most exciting episodes of the debut season.
Season 1: Episode 9, “Trou Normand” Each episode of Hannibal‘s first season ramps up the violence, but a totem pole on a beach composed of human bodies ranging from freshly-killed to decades-old is the most severely unsettling visual the show has ever conjured. It’s also the second appearance of Gillian Anderson as Bedelia Du Maurier, Hannibal’s own psychiatrist.
Season 1: Episode 10, “Buffet Froid” Bryan Fuller loves to bring back actors he’s worked with before—just look at Caroline Dhavernas returning to the fold from Wonderfalls. Here, Ellen Muth, Fuller’s leading lady from Dead Like Me, returns to play Georgia Madchen (a variation on George Lass from that previous show), a woman suffering from Cotard’s Syndrome who believes she is actually dead and cannot recognize faces.
Season 1: Episode 13, “Savoreux” The season-long story of Hannibal‘s first season is how Dr. Lecter incrementally pulls Will Graham under his influence, believing he has found a like-minded friend and intellectual equal, but still giving into his murderous predilections. The grand twist here—which surrounds Will with visual cues that audiences have associated with an incarcerated Hannibal Lecter for decades—is one of the best-executed in a modern crime show. The psychological torture and hallucinogenic cinematography all comes together in a macabre symphony that leaves Will trapped, with little possibility of escape.
Season 2: Episode 1, “Kaiseki” Starting the season with Will in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and Hannibal aiding the FBI in murder investigations is quite the inversion from what was expected when this retelling debuted. But Fuller gave a glimpse at where the show was heading with a flash-forward prologue that pitted Hannibal and Jack Crawford against each other in a brutal fight scene. That taste of things to come set the entire season on edge.
Season 2: Episode 3, “Hassun” The trial of Will Graham, prosecuted by Kade Prurnell (Cynthia Nixon) doesn’t get off to a great start. Evidence mounts that the real Chesapeake Ripper is still on the loose, and then the bailiff and judge in the case are murdered and displayed in increasingly symbolic grotesquery. This episode is one of the good examples of how the show complicates Hannibal’s character by making him indecisive. He cares too much for Will to let him take the fall for so many crimes, and he lashes out in his anger for putting a friend in that position by striking down those in the justice system too blind to see what Will sees in the evidence.
Season 2: Episode 5, “Mukozuke” Beverly Katz (Hettienne Park) was one of the best original characters created for the show, able to throw Will Graham for a loop with morbid observations, so doubtful of Will’s guilt that she continues to ask him for help on case work, and skillful enough to uncover a trail that led to Hannibal Lecter’s murder chamber. But it sadly brings about her demise. Another great deviation from Harris’ books is casting muckraking journalist Freddie Lounds (Lara Jean Chorostecki) as a woman—in this episode the one who discovers Beverly’s remains, displayed in vertical slices like a Bodies exhibit. From prison, Will is able to manipulate an orderly much in the way Hannibal manipulates him—leading to a violent confrontation where a still-clueless Jack Crawford barely saves Hannibal.
Season 2: Episode 7, “Yakimono” Hannibal knows exactly when to bring back long-forgotten guest stars, and the re-emergence of Anna Chlumsky’s Miriam Lass is just the thing to send Jack Crawford into fits. It’s also another virtuosic episode for Hannibal’s ability to evade suspicion while casting aspersions on another character. Instead of following Harris’ novels to the letter, Dr. Chilton doesn’t make it to the Silence of the Lambs installment of this storyline.
Season 2: Episode 12, “Tome-wan” Other than the incarceration, trial, and release of Will Graham, the second season—which follows the order of courses in a Japanese Kaiseki meal—has one other big storyline: the tense sibling relationship between Margot and Mason (Michael Pitt) Verger, which is the origin of Gary Oldman’s character in Ridley Scott’s Hannibal. In this version, Margot and Will have a tempestuous relationship and Mason exacts sadistic violence upon his sister when she experiences even the slightest happiness—and worst of all, the heir to a porcine fortune offends Hannibal Lecter. The film version of this story is graphic, but in this episode, it’s perhaps one of the most viscerally upsetting scenes on television. Michael Pitt going on a drug trip and slicing up his visage is gross even when it’s barely suggested, but after a commercial break, when Will happens upon what Hannibal has coerced Mason to do for Will’s dogs, it’s a truly shocking ending.
Season 2: Episode 13, “Mizumono” With the prologue tease, there’s a dramatic weight hanging over the second season of Hannibal to make everything worth the anticipation. But “Mizumono” delivers in every respect, bringing together a fake death long-con involving Freddie Lounds, the surprise re-appearance of another presumed victim of the Chesapeake Ripper who has ties to both Hannibal and Will Graham, and an ending so full of bodies it would satisfy a Shakespeare tragedy. It’s such a bloodbath that it left a pall over whether or not so many of the beloved cast members could even return for a third season.
Why You Should Binge:
So many episodes of Hannibal back-to-back will be psychologically punishing. It’s tough to sit through so many brutally violent images and be thrown off-kilter by the hallucinogenic sequences taking place in Will’s mind or from his perspective. But American television so rarely takes advantage of the 13-episode season as well as Fuller has with Hannibal, crafting sealed installments that reward viewers on an episodic and overarching level. The abbreviated (for American television) seasons play into the idea of modern serialized drama as novelistic storytelling. The first season is an introductory novel that digs into each character and makes the audience care about them before ending in a cliffhanger, while the follow-up season deepens the conflict between everyone, goes for bigger set pieces, and ultimately blows up the show’s structure in order to let the mastermind killer on the loose on the world. An onslaught of the visual extravaganza is like one of Hannibal’s meticulously crafted dinner parties—overstuffed, but dangerously delicious.
Best Scene— “I Gave You a Rare Gift, But You Didn’t Want It”:
Everything in Hannibal’s first two seasons builds the second season finale, where a bleeding, broken Will Graham lies on the ground of Hannibal’s kitchen, and the tragic love story between them is laid bare. Hannibal’s sadness is profound in its horror, and how the show picks up the pieces in the third season as it irrevocably shifts format will be fascinating to watch.
The Takeaway:
Sometimes it’s best just to let a proven creative talent have another shot at revamping a well-known character, whether it’s the endlessly copied Sherlock Holmes or Hannibal Lecter.
If You Liked Hannibal You’ll Love:
It’s diametrically opposed to the violence of Hannibal, but Fuller’s previous series Pushing Daisies still has a wonderful fascination with death, just like Dead Like Me.
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Last 3 things I watched:
The Changeling Season 1 (Apple+): C
OMITB Season 3 (Hulu): B-
Ahsoka Season 1 (Disney
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