By: Brandon Wolfe
‘Hannibal’ has been in the ratings cellar since Day 1, and though executive producer Bryan Fuller has proclaimed a hearty optimism for it continuing on beyond this year, on NBC or not, the show has behaved this season like a series that lives only for now, with no eye out toward the future. Major characters die, seemingly impossible character reversals take place, and it plays like a show blowing itself up today because it doesn’t know if it will be around tomorrow. So daring has ‘Hannibal’ become on a routine basis that I genuinely have no clue not only what it will do next week, but especially what it will do next year. For a show that started life as a more gruesome, more artfully shot network procedural, it has become a truly unpredictable high-wire act. You would possibly have to go back to ‘Twin Peaks’ to find the last time a network series broke this many rules.
Will Graham’s rededication to Hannibal Lecter since being released from custody has always felt like a long con, a means of studying his adversary to best sort out how to defeat him. And perhaps it still is, but if so, Will is allowing himself to become compromised in the process in an alarming way. In the aftermath of his murder of Randal Tier last week, an act of unambiguous self-defense, Will has opted to take the body to Hannibal’s home, where he admits that he fantasized that Randal was Hannibal as he was killing him and that he never felt more alive than when taking the man’s life. While this alone is cause for concern on Will’s behalf, what happens next is where the rubber meets the road, as Will, either directly or complicitly through Hannibal, allows Randal’s remains to be merged with the fossilized cave bear he so strongly identified with, in full display at the Museum of Natural History. When the FBI is called to the scene, Will does his usual mental reenactment of the crime, but now he is no longer speculating. When he admits that the killer has no guilt over what he’s done, it’s not empathy, it’s a tacit confession (though it helps that nothing Will says sounds any different than the sorts of things he always says about killers).
The Vergers inch their way further into the proceedings this week, as we finally formally meet Mason, played by Michael Pitt with a bit of a young James Spader feel to him. Mason’s lifelong abuse of his sister Margot is still at the forefront of Margot’s therapy sessions with Hannibal, who is still strongly urging his patient to murder her brother once and for all. Mason already has his penchant for using hungry pigs as murder weapons (established in the book and film ‘Hannibal’) and invites Hannibal over, ostensibly for friendly reasons, but more to subtly intimidate the man and attempt to find out what he has been told. Margot, meanwhile, has decided to seduce Will, though Will’s mind is far too preoccupied with thoughts of Hannibal and his intimacy with Alana Bloom to invest himself in the moment.
There has been much talk in the media lately about the poor use and integration of female characters in Hollywood, and Alana Bloom stands as especially endemic of the problem. For a show so strong and sure of itself, it has never quite known what to do with this character. She has spent the duration of the series as an object of desire for Will and a conquest for Hannibal, but has never been granted the agency to become her own character beyond what she exemplifies for these two men. Caroline Dhavernas has always felt a notch below the rest of the cast, but it’s difficult to place much blame on her since she is never given nearly as much to do as her colleagues. It’s something the show will need to address at some point if it intends to keep Dhavernas’ name in the opening credits.
We learn this week that Will has opted to grant opportunistic journalist Freddie Lounds an interview for the book she is writing about the Chesapeake Ripper story, and Freddie admits that she believes Will’s previous claims that the Ripper was Hannibal, not Dr. Chilton. But Freddie thinks Will is mixed up with Hannibal and decides to do some snooping around Will’s farm. And it is here where ‘Hannibal’ goes down a hole that I don’t quite see how it can climb its way back out of, as Freddie finds the remains of Randal that were not deemed museum-worthy in a freezer and is accosted by Will, who attacks her physically and drags her from her car to a fate strongly implied to be Hannibal’s dinner table, in a meal shared by both mentor and apprentice.
We do not see Freddie specifically killed (though the show gets a killer joke in, when Hannibal instructs Will to “slice the ginger” with regard to the meat that very possibly came from the redhead), so the show could still worm its way out of that. However, Will’s actions will be a lot harder to walk back. His assault of Freddie and his role in what became of Randal are not deniable, and even if he is working to gain Lecter’s trust as part of some deep-cover scheme, the lines he has crossed are significant enough to alter him permanently as a character. It’s a stunning turnabout for a straightforward lead hero on a television series, network or cable, but it’s even more stunning when you consider how much it deviates from the character as established previously in the novels and films, where he was tormented, but never compromised.
That I have no idea what to make of the hero anymore speaks to what a thrill ‘Hannibal’ has become. The show is cultivating an environment where it feels like anything could happen and there is no net. The show is making its own rules as it goes along, with a feeling of abandon that most shows don’t adopt until their final seasons, if ever. It’s astonishing that something this fresh and alive has developed out of a project that seemed at first blush to be the numbing union of network procedural and name-brand cash-in. In senses both figurative and literal, this is a series that isn’t afraid to show some guts.
Discuss this review with fellow SJF fans on Facebook. On Twitter, follow us at @SandwichJFilms, and follow author Brandon Wolfe on Twitter at @ChiusanoWolfe.
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