Hannibal

[S.Vineyard]

Well, I guess people are just fascinated by the devil. (Which was Mikkelsen inspiration for HIS Hannibal.)

[mangaluva]

Does anyone have ANY links that work in the UK? I still haven't seen any of this season.

[mangaluva]

I just watched the season finale and YOU REALLY HAVE NO IDEA HOW ANGRY I AM AT BRYAN FULLER RIGHT NOW

Spoiler:

Was Hannibal planning to elope with Will and adopt Abigail together? It literally sounded like he was asking Will to elope with him. And how betrayed he acted at finding Will in bed with Jack (essentially) and how tenderly he embraced Will while he was bleeding to death... I don't SHIP it because there is no way for Will to be consensually in that relationship but you can't deny the chemistry and Hannibal's behaviour.

BUT SERIOUSLY I SPENT SO LONG YELLING AT ALANA TO JUST HURRY UP AND SHOOT HANNIBAL IN THE FACE and okay that didn't work but why didn't she check she had bullets before going in the damn house?! WHY DID SHE GO IN THE HOUSE WHY DID SHE NOT WAIT FOR THE POLICE WHERE EVEN WERE THE POLICE EVEN AGES AFTER SHE CALLED THEM THERE WAS NO SIGN AT ALL WHAT THE HELL

AND WHY DIDN'T SHE WARN WILL THAT ABIGAIL IS ALIVE?! HE MISSED HIS CHANCE TO SHOOT HANNIBAL IN THE FACE!

I seriously wanted somebody to shoot Hannibal in the face so much

AND THEN THAT ACTUAL PIECE OF SHIT LEFT THE FOUR OF THEM BLEEDING TO DEATH AND ELOPED WITH BEDELIA WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL

BEDELIA YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER. YOU SHOULD KNOW SO MUCH BETTER.

So Jack, Will, Alana and Abigail are all bleeding to death and we have to wait for next season to find out how many, if any, survived (I think Hugh Dancy's been confirmed for next season so I'm assuming him?). I hate Bryan Fuller so, so much.

[Jd-]

This show epitomizes, in the most possibly clear manner, the phrase "style over substance". Anyone calling this the "best show on TV" and awarding it any sort of prestige absolutely must raise their standards. Spoilers for Season 2 below.

Spoiler:

The only thing this series has going for it are the visual gags. Unfortunately, they rarely have anything to do with anything and are so superfluous that a supercut of them would appear to be from a different series altogether. It very quickly becomes a tired mechanic the hundredth time we delve into Will's corrupted psyche to see the same sort of imagery in the same way in a slightly different setting over and over and over again.

None of the characters are particularly intelligent or clever in any regard. The character motivations don't really match up much of the time, with one of the prime examples being the woman who had oscillated between Hannibal and Will (can't remember her name, much like the other women in this show; say what you will, but it's probably the worst female cast of characters on TV right now). I was actually really glad to see the lab tech woman be taken out of the series, if only to potentially see her replaced by someone better later. As patently absurd as that plot line and episode was, at the very least it had the added benefit of killing off a really, really poorly constructed character.

What really gets me, though, is that the series has almost no surprises. I mean, were there any? It was obvious that Hannibal was being set up, that Freddie wasn't really dead, and that the only person who didn't know it was Hannibal himself. I see people saying that the show isn't about "plot twists" (or plot at all if I have my say) but more exploring these supposedly "deep and interesting characters". Except... they are all one dimensional. None of their interactions are particularly engaging or surprising or revealing. The only thing that's ever been revealed is how silly the plotting and character conventions are any time they are put in the spotlight. The only time this show really "works" is when it's not airing--the idea for a Hannibal show is a great prospect; it's just everything else that's not working.

This is all without even delving into how absurd most of the plot turns have been. Everything involving Will's incarceration, sudden release, and his sudden return to duty and "return" to Hannibal's side even though it was so incredibly obvious he was faking it were really hard to watch. No one comes off as particularly smart, because smart as they purport him to be, Will would be a fool in any other series to think Hannibal or anyone else would fall for this schitck. The character transformations just don't have any substance.

The arrest warrants and all of that in the last episode were about as ridiculous as it can possibly get. This is all without even getting into the issues from earlier in this season and, indeed, the series. All of the comically over-the-top murders-of-the-week only got worse in Season 2 and somehow became even more irrelevant to the actual plot.

The fight between Hannibal and Jack was shown in the first episode in a way to suggest "We promise this is going somewhere; forgive the slow pace and lack of actual plot development." But, by the time we got there, it was just so painfully forced and unnecessary that it only served to convince me further that this show is probably well beyond redemption at this point.

They don't have the courage to kill Will here. Abigail is an entirely void character, so killing her will only serve as a way to propel Will further in the manhunt for Hannibal. I am utterly baffled at the people proclaiming this as a "shocking" and "hair-raising" and "unbelievable" and "unpredictable" finale. The very first scene of the entire season showed us where this was all going. Were people actually fooled into thinking there was some ambiguity in Will's loyalty? How? Surely they didn't think he would actually side with Hannibal. If not that, then what was exactly thrilling or exciting about seeing one of the most predictable finales in the history of television play out over the course of an hour?

I stopped watching halfway through this season in order to get caught up at the end to see if it went anywhere. I probably should have just left it there. No Season 3 for me; twenty-six hours is plenty enough time to establish a series, and if it's not happening by then, it's not likely to happen.

[mangaluva]

I do enjoy watching Hannibal, but I have to agree with you about the style over substance issue. I do appreciate the amount of visual work that's gone into the show, but I've been increasingly disenchanted over season 2 with the treatment of my two favourite characters, Beverly Katz and Bella Crawford.

Spoiler:

I was angry about Beverly's death anyway, but I got really, REALLY upset when Fuller explained that she was meant to die in season 1 to motivate Will, but that the audience didn't know her well enough yet to be upset by her death so they delayed it. I am sorry, but there are twelve million things wrong with that reasoning, starting with KILLING BEVERLY PURELY TO MOTIVATE WILL. I loved Beverly. She was fun, she was clever, and I think I would've enjoyed watching her hunt down Hannibal while somebody directs Will to a more legitimate therapist. Besides, I feel like there have to be better creative decisions behind killing a character than motivating another, and given the hugely problematic history of fridging as a concept, killing an intelligent, capable female character to motivate your tragic male protagonist is just really, really problematic and wrong.

Then there's Bella. I love Gina Torres, okay? And I think the scene where Bella tries to commit suicide is one of my favourites in the series because of how well Gina acts Bella. It properly brought me to tears. But Bella doesn't get a lot of screentime, and I really, really hate how her life and death are entirely out of her hands and are manipulated by both Hannibal and the writers purely for the purpose of motivating Jack. She's been given cancer not to explore how she as a character handles that journey of dealing with death--her decision to commit suicide and even the act of overdosing on her morphine happen offscreen--but entirely to further Jack's emotional conflict.

Abigail Hobbs and Miriam Lass have gotten similar shit as well.

I enjoy the visual creativity of the show and I think they've created some really interesting characters, they just use very few of them well. *curls up in a nest of Beverly Katz fanfiction and dreams of Agent Carter and respectful treatment of female characters*

[Jd-]

Gina Torres is always good, but she's especially great in Suits (which I... think I saw you mention watching already?). If not, that is a must-watch for sure. Really a great cast there and she plays one of the most consistently powerful women on TV. Oh, and she's in almost every episode, so that's a plus.

I agree that there are seedlings of characters here that could work better in other contexts. The Jack Crawford character is obviously a good one, as enumerated in numerous portrayals already and having been based on John Douglas. The only issue is that, as I posted last season, he's kind of reduced to being the stapler to hold cases together and relies entirely on Will to do anything. He very rarely gets to do anything or really showcase any ability that we know he is meant to have--possibly due to all of the visual gags that take up a significant chunk of the runtime.

I'm not usually one to really get on a writing team's case for not doing one gender justice over another, but... Here, it really feels like the women get reduced to plot points way too often. I understand the central conflict of the show doesn't by name involve a female character, but that's no excuse to just use them to motivate the male characters into doing really questionable things without giving them their own roles to begin with. Alana is the one that has been misused the most, and I'm honestly not sure what made them decide to use her in the way they have in the last few episodes of this season.

[mangaluva]

I haven't seen Suits, but I'll add it to the watchlist because Gina Torres. I know it isn't directly relevant to the overarching Hannibal plot, but I would still sew somebody into a horse for some more deleted scenes about her character's struggle with her own forced mortality.

And yeah, I agree that Laurence Fishburne is meant for more than this. In general, Hannibal is staffed by amazing actors playing great characters with a tremendous amount of potential... that is, by and large, being completely unused. I think only Hannibal himself and Will are properly explored as characters, which is really too bad.

(Also, while I approve of completely removing the idea that Margot "became" a lesbian because of being sexually abused by her brother, because that's bull, I still find it annoying that apparently they were banned from outright SAYING that she's a lesbian--like, do they seriously think that'll upset anybody more than the totem pole of bodies? Seriously? I also have mixed feelings about her sleeping with Will to get pregnant. I mean, since she's dependent on her brother for money it could be that she's unable to go to a sperm bank without him spotting it in her finances, but that's never really clarified and the whole thing is all about Hannibal's manipulation of her and Mason to--what else?--mess with Will.)