HANNIBAL on NBC seems amazing and therefore deserves it's own thread!

oh!!! jose andres is doing all this? oh fuck that's awesome

The use of Iron Butterfly in Manhunter in the deranged finale is really awesome and oddly out of step with Mann's usual type of soundtracking. Love that film.

lol theremin

that (not a theremin) was one of the most amazing sounds ever to come out of my tv

Despite what I said before, I did find the death of Franklin quite amusing. That scene of him attempting to psychoanalyse Tobias was so hilariously awkward that it was actually a relief when he got the ol' neck twist. I'm pretty sure Hannibal just wanted to stop him embarrassing himself any further

Also, my favourite line of the series so far: "I didn't poison you, Tobias. I wouldn't do that to the food."

oddly 'scandal' was more vicious and bloody this week than 'hannibal'

do censors even work for tv networks anymore?

Violence is fine, it's sex they have a problem with.

Hannibal killed Tobias in self defense but I don't get why he killed Franklin? He seems like he's made a lot of poor decisions lately.

i've seen people argue that it was either a comedy death (couldn't stand listening to franklin's psycho-babble anymore, also apparently this is a callback to something in the book series?), or that he knew tobias was going to kill franklin or reveal hannibal's secret to franklin, so getting him out of the way was going to need to happen either way. what i don't understand is what he was trying to accomplish by sending will straight to tobias, endangering his life, in the midst of all his talk of a potential friendship/looking genuinely relieved when will turned up alive at the end.

Hannibal had already told Tobias not to kill Franklin. I think he was sparing Franklin from death at the hands of Tobias, who would have wanted to put on a show for Hannibal; it also immediately gives him the upper hand over Tobias. And I think you're otm, that it also afforded him the expedience of sparing Franklin from finding out the the truth about Hannibal.

still don't know what hannibal's secret was that tobias said he knew. now that tobias is dead i guess we'll never find out :-(

maybe the secret is hannibal is planning a surprise party for will.

wouldn't be unprecedented

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2CZGOsMqTs

wasn't the secret that tobias followed hannibal and saw him go on his dinner party killing spree last episode? i thought it was just "you are also a crazy murderer, let's be murder friends."

yeah exactly

i don't know why everyone is jumping to the assumption that hannibal is a killer. that would be like a huge twist -- not sure if this is that sort of show.

:P

dying laughing every time someone takes s. clover literally

s.clover can i have a copy of your business card for my records

Caught up, it's a very entertaining show. Wow Mads is good, charisma off the charts. Better than Hopkins (nb I've never really liked Hopkins).

I still think it's pretty silly though. For one thing the characters seem to be able to teleport around several states. Wouldn't for example Will's lecture hall and Hannibal's practice be several hours apart?

how long do you want the show to be?

:)

I see Kate Beaton's a fan, if this hasn't already been linked:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/ac920caee3cf213e16eabef8e2dee5f5/tumblr_mmixp5q2CH1rhz8hro2_500.jpg

omg lance henriksen hearing about how he made such a terrible mistake re: he son, and he just kinda...taps the arm of his chair in quiet dismay? i love the choices this show makes.

absolutely! very stylish, lots of subtle nuances.

Not that I'm not enjoying how creatively grotesque this show is when it comes to showing dead bodies, but they really should hold back a bit or there'd be nothing shocking enough left for later seasons (if it even gets that far - what are this show's ratings like?). Like how much more freakish can the killers get?

Even on something like Dexter - I remember thinking the sixth season was the absolute worst, but their murder set design had never been better.

Grafton, WV, on the banks of whose adjacent Tygart Lake reservoir the body totem is placed, touts itself as the birthplace of Mother's Day.

but they really should hold back a bit or there'd be nothing shocking enough left for later seasons

Yeah right - the corpse totem was a smidge too OTT. I'm enjoying the regular characters' interactions way more then the sometimes slightly tiresome serial killer of the week stuff.

so i was thinking this before, but especially after this last one - it seems to me as if the writers are pretty deliberately putting more of an emphasis on shame than on guilt.

i'm not going to try to sort it out now, but that would sync up with:

1. will's need not to be seen when he's empathizing with the killers; he is (so far) not the same as them, and so he's not able to handle being seen while he's 'being' them since it would do harm to his sense of self (already pretty fragile as far as what others think of him is concerned)

2. the constructions that are put on the girl's killing of that guy. before she reveals her real secret to hannibal, he makes it out to her that he wants to help her keep her responsibility for the guy's death secret not because it was wrong to kill him, but because people will falsely believe that makes her like her father, she'll be unable to avoid the shame (or at least being shamed) the world at large will subject her to. hannibal sells a similar line to will after hannibal confesses to having helped her. then, once she reveals her real secret, it seems as if she's upset not out of guilt, but out of letting herself be seen for what she is after hiding it: the flashbacks to her operating on the train are a little ambiguous about it but she doesn't seem to feel too guilty about what she's helping with (she's not squirming, acting real coerced, etc.).

3. i think hannibal's former patient, the one in the vest, was a source of embarrassment (cousin of shame) to him when he encountered him in public and then in the office with the violin-maker. this was partly because the patient posed a threat either to his sense of refinement, or the image of refinement he projects, and maybe partly because (as someone who apparently has no financial limitations or needs, no need to have to put up with tedious patients to make a living) the fact of his having accepted the patient reveals something of his desires.

4. which define him precisely through the fact that he is not ashamed of having them, of being that person - he only conceals them in order to continue to operate, and to be able to relish the feeling (perversity?) of having those desires 'in plain view', with no one the wiser (thus the dinner parties).

5. when bloom confesses that she has feelings for will (showing that she's unashamed of them), she pretty casually brushes away the suggestion that she might feel bad about them because of something like a professional ethical violation, guilt over breaking the rules. instead, it's because will seems unstable: she's afraid of him, sees him as a danger to her. so she's afraid that giving in to her desires will harm her, destroy her.

6. crawford and will seem to take satisfaction from having revealed lance henriksen to have been guilty of killing his own son, a la a tragedy; but when he taps the arm of his chair it reads more like a little chagrin that his accomplishment, which for him was such a private source of pride (his pleasure in it sounding much like what we see hannibal doing: concealed in plain view, not at all ashamed), was blemished a little, had an asterisk next to it.

7. will is regularly shown being able to handle his empathetic communions with the killers, after the fact when he puts on his classroom performances in a very stagey (also kind of like an operating theater) lecture hall, but under conditions where he's seen by the audience that he can't so much see - where the threat of shame has been managed, controlled (when he's the one in control).

8. the theme of the many therapeutic encounters / ambiguously therapeutic conversations with therapists is basically the same, helping the sufferers be ok with who they are (to not be ashamed of who they are), or in will's case to be able to hold himself together (i.e. to maintain the working sense of shame he brings with him to the work). i kind of expect hannibal to try to work the angle, eventually, with will that he would suffer less if he would just accept this darkness inside him, etc. etc. (although hannibal would not seem to think of it as darkness, just… the way he is).

9. have any of the killers really been motivated by anything like a need to atone or a desire to punish or pay back or anything like that? it seems to me like they're all given 'projects' rooted in self-growth or self-protective desires.

hmm - maybe henriksen's first kill? i didn't quite catch the story.

Impressive analysis, though I couldn't grasp the distinction you make in #9 until, while endeavoring to synthesize some snark, I thought of it in terms of Elvis Costello's famous "revenge and guilt" quote. So, I thought, the narrator in "Watching the Detectives" --whose type is such a staple on most torture-porn police procedurals-- would be out of place as a killer on Hannibal? Why, yes, as a matter of fact, he would.

i don't know the song well, but yes i think something like that - any kind of killer who was like hunting down unclean bitches or working out a childhood trauma or some kind of paranoid grievance would be out of place, and i gather those would all sort under killers whose motivations circle around guilt and debt and owing. (kind of a nietzsche angle, which i guess seems to me appropriate given how much serial killer fictions, and who knows maybe serial killers themselves if all the fictional images are to be believed, trade in the beyond-guilt/beyond-good-and-evil sort of thing. it's just that, as far as i recall, they often add touches of the guilt-associated range of concepts to their portrayals, or somehow try to make them more malevolent, rather than aiming for an unnerving 'natural' sociopathy. hence all the food and animals and e.g. the minnesotan setting here.)

(the touches of 'guilt' stuff of course also goes along with the idea that the killers take pleasure on what they do and who they are, so the more theatrical ones of course may get a kick out of acting all slavering evil to the non-sociopaths around them.)

idk about alana's reservations but a pure empath w/crazy supernatural imaginative capabilities and a lot of pent-up emotions in need of release would make for some crazy weird sex.

"i bite your lower lip tenderly and pull your hair as per your desire, but just before you signal that desire. this both pleases you and frightens you, each sensation heightening the other. i tear your blouse so what is done cannot be undone or ignored; you'll have to wear one of my shirts home. we consummate in the kitchen. there are olive oil and a rubber spatula involved. this is my design."

omg

slugbuggy i see a very successful tumblr in your future.

interesting posts j.! i find abigail really hard to decipher; i thought her expressions on the train DID show sublimated horror at what she was doing, but she's also such a good liar/manipulator that i would believe your interpretation too.

now that i have a more articulated sense of what to watch for i'd like to have another look, from the beginning, to try to follow the story - unfortunately the earlier episodes are already vanished from hulu, tv networks sure are either idiots or cheap about understanding their 'second screen' viewers' habits

or both

man Lance Henriksen bought some Albert Fish to his character, creepy as hell. That whole speech about smiling and waving, going to church, good stuff

Renewed.

http://www.deadline.com/2013/05/hannibal-renewed-by-nbc-for-second-season/

:D

"In the next season, VegemiteGrrl convinces Hannibal that her unusual Australian taste due to a diet of koala tacos and Vegemite pancakes means he should look elsewhere."

It deserves another series, it isn't perfect as many bitchy interlopers have pointed out. But hell it is good enough to warrant another.

if that stupid Lifetime/Clarice Starling thing goes ahead swear to god I'll give Mads $$$ to practice his craft

the series-long progression from "coy implication that hannibal killed somebody" to "hannibal straining bodily to rip a guy's jaw off his face" has been really effective in freaking me out.

Agreed. I am also really glad they toned down the Hitler haircut.

CAT scan hallucination wigged me right out

also ppl under the bed O_O noooooooo why is this show trying to give me nightmares

“we'll help you with the nightmares.”

the series-long progression from "coy implication that hannibal killed somebody" to "hannibal straining bodily to rip a guy's jaw off his face" has been really effective in freaking me out.

The blurred out face caused by the mental illness made this more freaky/scary to me that it would have been if Hannibal's face had been shown.