Hannibal: ...And the Woman Clothed With the Sun

July 30, 2015 8:10 PM - Season 3, Episode 9

The Great Red Dragon eats some pie. Hannibal and Will definitely don't eyefuck each other into oblivion. Freddie says what we were all thinking. Jack, you fucker! Hannibal, you fucker!

MURDER HUSBANDS

posted by showbiz_liz (283 comments total)

THIS WAS AWESOME OK

I loved loved Hannibal and Will's talk and how they incorporated the flashbacks/fantasy into it. I REALLY loved the stuff Hannibal said about Will and Francis both needing ready-made families to deal with the darkness inside them, yiiiikes.

And I really really loved FUCKING JACK, who last episode everyone thought "huh wow it seems pretty dumb/shortsighted of him to put Will back out there," only for it to turn out that, of course, he knew exactly what he was doing and just didn't give a shit. Oh Jack.

Also, FINGER WAGGING
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:14 PM on July 30, 2015 [7 favorites]

The mask really is off now for Hannibal, isn't it. No more need for pretense.
posted by figurant at 9:03 PM on July 30, 2015

Really, though, don't we ALL enjoy a good finger-wagging?

Scared my dogs laughing too loudly at "you called us murder husbands!"

I was glad to see Abigail, because that's what struck me as the shittiest part of Jack hauling out the dead family photos and doing the "what if it was your family?" shtick last week. It WAS Will's family, you ass, and you might have mentioned to Molly that what Hannibal does when he gets mad at Will is kill his children.
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:09 PM on July 30, 2015 [6 favorites]

Ah yes, but that's just how some families show love! By cutting each other's throats!
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:11 PM on July 30, 2015 [4 favorites]

The mask really is off now for Hannibal, isn't it. No more need for pretense.

And he loooooves it. I said when he turned himself in - it was mostly about Will, but it was also just because he got a taste of being known and seen by everybody for who he was, and he totally got off on it. Thus the complete lack of stealth during the entire Italy arc.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:13 PM on July 30, 2015 [4 favorites]

Alana's outrageous striped jacket was so totally this that it can't have been a coincidence
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:18 PM on July 30, 2015 [7 favorites]

The Great Red Dragon eats some pie.

Best synopsis ever! Nice table manners, there, Francis. And Rutina Wesley was wonderful (I haven't seen True Blood).

Hannibal actually seems more genuinely concerned for Will (in his monstrous Hannibal-esque way that will not prevent him from screwing with Will) than Jack is. Loved the dragon tail and Will's nightmare as well. It's been like three days, and he's already pretty messed up.
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:28 PM on July 30, 2015

The first time Francis spoke, I about jumped out of my skin, which is a great side benefit of all the initial silence.
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:31 PM on July 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Nice table manners, there, Francis.

Pretty much this
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:40 PM on July 30, 2015 [4 favorites]

Oh, and we must not forget that Freddie gave Will a BIG black box.
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:49 PM on July 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

There have been ten times as many dick jokes and sex jokes this season than ever before
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:51 PM on July 30, 2015

I just had a horrible horrible thought.

1. Hannibal very pointedly asks Jack if he has someone new in his life.
2. Jack says something like "it takes one to catch one," which is the EXACT phrase Freddie said she had been told by an FBI agent.

They wouldn't. Would they?
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:56 PM on July 30, 2015 [7 favorites]

Oh gosh, that would be an odd twist -- and if Jack thought Hannibal wouldn't know that smell, he's mistaken. If he's been Freddie-fied, it could help explain why he's not even pretending to give a shit about Will anymore, except in front of Will.
posted by FelliniBlank at 10:03 PM on July 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

One more thing before I go to sleep like I ought to:

We saw Alana's pelvis shatter, so no way would she risk a vaginal birth. She'll have had a C-section. Meaning she and Margot now have matching scars!

(Man I hope we get more Margot but I'm not optimistic)
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:11 PM on July 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

%n: "Alana's outrageous striped jacket was so totally this that it can't have been a coincidence"

I can't believe I missed that. Although I did say while watching that motherhood has caused her to start dressing like a goth beach umbrella which, close.
posted by these are science wands at 3:07 AM on July 31, 2015 [5 favorites]

Also, hands up who said, "Hello, mother," in a Mason voice when Alana confirmed she'd had a Verger baby.
posted by these are science wands at 3:08 AM on July 31, 2015 [5 favorites]

the stuff Hannibal said about Will and Francis both needing ready-made families to deal with the darkness inside them

So, definitely not another episode in which Hannibal talks about himself, then. This is not Hannibal talking about himself in any way, nope.
posted by tel3path at 3:41 AM on July 31, 2015 [5 favorites]

Meaning she and Margot now have matching scars!

And Will, don't forget! It's not like he could give birth to Abigail naturally.
posted by tel3path at 3:44 AM on July 31, 2015

God I can't wait to see this
posted by tel3path at 3:45 AM on July 31, 2015

There have been ten times as many dick jokes and sex jokes this season than ever before.

Indeed, including Molly and Will's "feelin' randy," which was an amusing (and cutely dog-related) alternative to Harris's "Horny." I'm almost starting to agree that this Will and Molly have a weirdly impersonal, non-committal relationship compared with Will and Hannibal (or Francis and Reba for that matter). Either that or the show is determined to treat Molly even more like cardboard filler than she was in the book.
posted by FelliniBlank at 5:49 AM on July 31, 2015

Aww, I liked their relationship more in this episode. It seems like they have a warm and loving relationship, but that it hasn't extended to beneath the surface of Will, because he thinks he can't let it. And now Will is pulling away from her, but she's not yet aware of it.

Still want her to eventually confront Hannibal.
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:01 AM on July 31, 2015 [4 favorites]

I think it was just the brevity of W&M's conversation that gave me that probably wrong impression. Her cheerful cluelessness about Will's situation doesn't say anything about them as a couple, necessarily, just that without knowing the details of his history, she's even more unprepared than BookMolly for what's coming. Personally, I hope she takes the kid to Oregon posthaste and never has contact with the Will-Hannibal world at all, but that has 0.4% chance of happening.
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:14 AM on July 31, 2015

For non book readers: Hannibal confronting Abigail with her dad's corpse in order to give her closure is precisely what he did to Clarice (after kidnapping and drugging her) in Hannibal.
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:40 AM on July 31, 2015 [2 favorites]

Hannibal: the show that makes me so, so glad not to have any sort of father figure.
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:37 AM on July 31, 2015 [3 favorites]

I must say, Lab Geeks fell flat for me this time around. I just can't see Jimmy, even if he does vastly prefer pets to people, being like "I don't really care about these brutally murdered children."
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:06 AM on July 31, 2015 [3 favorites]

That seemed like a clumsily uncharitable dig at fans, but "murder husbands" more than compensated for it, so.

I'm guessing the plan to make Dancy eventually say that particular phrase began to emerge during the Comic Con panel where he was all "No, I don't think they love each other that way" while Fuller stared at him with a big smug smile. And Freddie's "Well you did run off to Europe together" response was the cherry on the parfait.
posted by FelliniBlank at 11:17 AM on July 31, 2015 [1 favorite]

just that without knowing the details of his history

FelliniBlank, not seen this yet - but how do you reconcile the idea of Molly's "not knowing the details of his history" with the fact that Will suffered extensive and humiliating media exposure?
posted by tel3path at 11:29 AM on July 31, 2015 [1 favorite]

SO MUCH HAPPENED

THEY DID THE THINGS ALL THE THINGS

MURDER INTERN!!!!!
posted by The Whelk at 1:12 PM on July 31, 2015 [7 favorites]

Good question. Basically, she's acting just like BookMolly, whose husband did not formerly have a nearly fatal and emotionally devastating involvement with a murder-friend he's hanging out with again, and the only way that makes sense to me is if she somehow doesn't know all the stuff about Will, Hannibal, Abigail, etc. that we know. Because man, if I were Walter's mother and I knew about Will's past in detail and knew he was visiting his ex, I would have that kid and myself in Oregon or a secure bunker like, now.

We have no idea for sure what Molly does or doesn't know -- whether Will protected her from the unsavory details and she doesn't follow tabloid news or was busy nursing her dying husband back then or something, or if Will told her the tabloid stuff was bullshit, which a lot of it surely was. Or maybe she knows everything and is just the bravest, calmest, chipperest person who ever lived.
posted by FelliniBlank at 1:23 PM on July 31, 2015

Murder friend with benefits surely
posted by The Whelk at 1:31 PM on July 31, 2015 [3 favorites]

Oh god the ad/poster on the bus stop where Francis picked up Reba to ride with him for his pleasure! Bryan, such a kidder.
posted by FelliniBlank at 1:53 PM on July 31, 2015 [9 favorites]

well, if Molly doesn't know then maybe she should have done her due diligence, idk.

And tonight in Speculating About Stuff I Haven't Seen, my guess is that Will genuinely becomes a different person with a different mindset in Molly's presence. His reluctance to switch identities/cross the streams from one mindset to another is probably what's causing the stiltedness. I doubt that "superficiality" is what's going on.

I do think she's unable to conceptualize the struggle because she hasn't experienced it first hand; nobody on this show seems to have the first clue about a kind of conflict that is ultimately not that unusual, it's just a matter of degree with Hannibal. like Pazzi approaching the guy he thinks is Il Mostro but not doing anything at all to anticipate the risk that he might be, like, dangerous or have an IQ higher than about 7. Or Alana not recognizing Hannibal's grooming of Abigail even after walking in on the Dinner of Shrooms, as if spotting that kind of thing wasn't part of her training (she did have other teachers besides Hannibal). In light of this, Alana's taking the role of Hannibal's jailer makes sense in a world where the other options are, like, let Joe Bloggs run the facility and give Hannibal his own house key on a string around his neck.

i was thinking on my drive home "what would Bev say" and I think she'd say one of two things: "don't give him any opportunity to manipulate you, if you do you're a fucking lunatic, he sliced me into cross sections and would have et your brain if someone hadn't stopped him." or else she would say essentially what Molly said. it's one or the other.
posted by tel3path at 2:44 PM on July 31, 2015 [1 favorite]

We have no idea for sure what Molly does or doesn't know

I assume she knows some of it but not the full details. Her behavior's in line with that, I think.

Another fantastic episode in general. Hannibal's pained, "I gave you a child," was great.... If you forget that he also slit her throat at him. Of course he then got cattier with that, "You just came here to get a look at this booty," line. And even cattier still when he brings up Bella to Jack. He was mean this week!

The murder intern flashbacks were great. And the repeated use of very ghoulish lighting on Hannibal in his cell was great. Rutina Wesley is as delightful as Reba as I hoped she'd be. She and Armitage have kind of a cute energy (if you forget for a moment what a terrible murderer he is).

It was nice seeing Freddie, and I didn't quite have a problem with Sassy Science's scene, though I don't think it touches how delightful they were last week.

Finally: WILL ADOPTED THE DOG. FUCK YOU, JACK. Fuck you.
posted by sparkletone at 2:46 PM on July 31, 2015 [2 favorites]

well, if Molly doesn't know then maybe she should have done her due diligence, idk.

my guess is that Will genuinely becomes a different person with a different mindset in Molly's presence.

The super-cool contrast is that Alana definitely gets what's going on and is way more concerned about it than anybody, including Will or Molly. Notice Will's shocked expression when she tells him she isn't worried only about him because "last time it didn't end with you." Like it hadn't occurred to him that regardless of whether Hannibal gets back into his head or not (which he already is), merely re-engaging with Hannibal puts other people at risk. So yeah, Will may be in such a different headspace in Mollyland that he kind of doesn't remember all the stuff Alana's worried about -- whereas Alana has been around Hannibal with her 5 keys the whole time and hasn't had the luxury of not thinking about it.
posted by FelliniBlank at 3:17 PM on July 31, 2015 [2 favorites]

WILL GRAHAM UNREPENTANT WATERMELON THIEF
posted by The Whelk at 3:18 PM on July 31, 2015 [3 favorites]

Okay, that will be interesting to see because my biggest beef with Alana, and my biggest beef with the fandom response to Alana, was that she was *harming other people* by prioritizing Hannibal so much. if Alana's warning Will about it then it suggests that she's learned and internalised that lesson.

Book!Will couldn't have seen it coming, but show!Will - wtf man.
posted by tel3path at 3:30 PM on July 31, 2015 [1 favorite]

nobody on this show seems to have the first clue about a kind of conflict that is ultimately not that unusual, it's just a matter of degree with Hannibal.

Excellent point -- I don't know if I expect her to be smarter than everybody else because she's a regular down-to-earth person outside the fucked-up murderworld or what. I sure wish Alana would give her a call, though.
posted by FelliniBlank at 3:31 PM on July 31, 2015

Okay, that will be interesting to see because my biggest beef with Alana, and my biggest beef with the fandom response to Alana, was that she was *harming other people* by prioritizing Hannibal so much.

Oh yeah, there are two whole scenes where I was TEL3PATH IS GOING TO LOVE THIS.
posted by FelliniBlank at 3:33 PM on July 31, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm really liking Alana more in this arc to be honest
posted by The Whelk at 3:33 PM on July 31, 2015 [6 favorites]

The thing about the kind of abuse Hannibal dishes out is that anyone who hasn't experienced it thknks you're insane for believing it happened at all. I recommend Spartanlifecoach on YouTube who's got a lot of good material on this. It seems flat-out unbelievable, if you haven't experienced it, that any random person you might know, the mailman, whoever - someone who seems normal and nice - would take the time out of their day to fuck up someone else's life just for the sheer sake of it, would spend time plotting better ways to fuck them up, and would fake being their friend in order to get close to them while having an entirely different purpose in mind.

As law enforcements and forensic shrinks you would think these people had seen these patterns in other people, but nope. They're clueless till it happens to them.
posted by tel3path at 3:36 PM on July 31, 2015 [2 favorites]

I can't wait to love this, LET ME LOVE YOU SHOW
posted by tel3path at 3:37 PM on July 31, 2015

"Venkman, this reminds me of the time you tried to drill a hole in your head. do you remember that?"

"That would have worked if you hadn't stopped me."
posted by tel3path at 3:52 PM on July 31, 2015

And I can totally see that, instead of becoming more knowing, Will's mind could have just vomited it all out because it was too much to hold in.
posted by tel3path at 3:53 PM on July 31, 2015

Yep a lovely episode. For the unfortunate USians that Hannibal YouTube channel has this episode up, though the older ones have been removed.

I pointed out years ago that Clarice became the Woman Clothed with the Sun to Hannibal's Great Red Dragon, and I see Fuller took that all the way with Abigail in Clarice's place. I've always liked the way Harris ended Hannibal and thought it was necessary and appropriate considering the theme of the books. The way the Hannibal movie handled it was lame and stupid. But Fuller is providing a fully adequate reinterpretation.

Actually he is tying up so many themes from SOTL I can't figure out what they'll do if there as a fourth season.
posted by Bringer Tom at 4:11 PM on July 31, 2015

And now Will is pulling away from her, but she's not yet aware of it.

You totally called that one in last week's thread -- and after Will's delightful dream this week, Molly's likely to get the mega-cold shoulder from here on out even before the bad things start to happen and send him into a full-on guilt spiral. Just save yourself some time and file for divorce now, Molly.
posted by FelliniBlank at 4:13 PM on July 31, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's interesting, we see Will sharing headspace with Molly and Hannibal, but Molly's time in his shared headzone is cut short before they're back in separate rooms while Hannibal keeps waltzing in and out of his mind palace like he owns the place.
posted by The Whelk at 4:46 PM on July 31, 2015 [1 favorite]

I refuse to think Will's really let Hannibal back in until we get some Wendigo all up in his face.
posted by sparkletone at 4:48 PM on July 31, 2015 [2 favorites]

Will Headspace Hannibal saw the Wendigo reflected in one of the mirror shards. Wendigo is most definitely coming.
posted by Bringer Tom at 4:59 PM on July 31, 2015

I new intellectually, bitchy Hannibal was coming but I wasn't expected to be so delighted by it.

Also the haircut is making him look younger, unburdened, oh why must I be a young cannibal in love-ish.
posted by The Whelk at 5:02 PM on July 31, 2015 [5 favorites]

He's a newly divorced young cannibal with the rest of his life ahead of him.
posted by sparkletone at 5:23 PM on July 31, 2015 [4 favorites]

Hannibal's hair is boyish, but they lit his face like a skull in all the "real cell" scenes, so they're really linking him visually with Francis and Will. Eeesh. I'm not sure Will is letting Hannibal in, but he's getting in a little. All those little digs about "go smell yourself if you want to get the murderer mindset" and reminders of murdered children etc. were probably more responsible than the crime scenes for Will's pissy "I don't have a criminal mind" comment to Molly and his bloodsoaked dream about her.

Boy, if you want to have a fleshcrawly experience on these family themes, go watch 1x04 right after 3x09, which I just did accidentally. So dang creepy!
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:10 PM on July 31, 2015 [2 favorites]

He's a newly divorced young cannibal with the rest of his life ahead of him.

Ah but his old flame's back in town, and he has a new secret admirer.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:32 PM on July 31, 2015

DEAR ABBY my murder ex dumped me three years ago but now he's lurking again, coming to me with little "problems" and hanging around and generally reminding me of all the reasons I'm in such a bad place now.

But lately I've met a new person who is young and vibrant and has a whole future in front of him, and I want to move forward. But I need advice. Should I serve him my murder ex a milliliter of living brain at a time as we listen to his consciousness disintegrate? Or perhaps as a dramatic flaming rolling entree? Or just as a rich blood sorbet for dessert? My usually sharp culinary senses are failing me here. -- Dumped Cannibal
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:40 PM on July 31, 2015 [9 favorites]

She'll have had a C-section. Meaning she and Margot now have matching scars!


Both of which match the scar Hannibal gave Will at the end of Season 2. Purely coincidental, I'm sure.
posted by Kinbote at 7:26 PM on July 31, 2015 [1 favorite]

Dear Dumped Cannibal,

DTMFA. The "D" is for "deep fry".
posted by crossoverman at 8:48 PM on July 31, 2015 [2 favorites]

I see Freddie's hair is much less Rebekah Brooks
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:15 AM on August 1, 2015 [4 favorites]

Getting everything ready to watch it proper like on the TV instead of the tablet. Does it make me a bad person that I just like 15 minutes before the broadcast finished watching The Hundred Foot Journey? And that FEELSSS???
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:45 PM on August 1, 2015

We got a nice full moon for it tonight too
posted by The Whelk at 6:46 PM on August 1, 2015

Alas the true Blue Moon was last night, Friday. Moon is now waning. Somewhere there may be a dead family waiting to be found.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:54 PM on August 1, 2015

In the alternate nice! Universe Francis finds perfect families ...and then donates to charity in thier name!
posted by The Whelk at 6:56 PM on August 1, 2015

I'm getting a Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin vibe from the scene with Hannibal and Will going over the evidence. No orchids in sight, however.
posted by detachd at 7:15 PM on August 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

I love that inside Will's mind Hannibal is in his most demonic season one get up
posted by The Whelk at 7:18 PM on August 1, 2015

Dinner tonight. 10oz burger, bacon, slow-cooked pork shoulder, BBQ sauce, cheddar, pickles. I am, like, 85% sure the pork parts didn't come from a Verger family farm...
posted by sparkletone at 7:18 PM on August 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Celolinda noting how different these lines sound coming out of Alana rather then Chiton
posted by The Whelk at 7:24 PM on August 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Oh, and dinner, just snacks cause Will is an unrepentant watermelon thief
posted by The Whelk at 7:27 PM on August 1, 2015

Not at all, Bryan... Not at all...
posted by sparkletone at 7:35 PM on August 1, 2015

I AM EMOTIONS
posted by poffin boffin at 7:59 PM on August 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Cats crave immortality too, and they can't write weird Singularity stories.
posted by Bringer Tom at 8:03 PM on August 1, 2015

Sepinwall is a bit iffy on this episode, though he likes Rutina Wesley a lot.
posted by sparkletone at 8:11 PM on August 1, 2015

Abigail's Murder Internship delights me utterly.
posted by Stacey at 8:14 PM on August 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Strangely erotic crime scene faking is new for this series but only just
posted by The Whelk at 8:16 PM on August 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

AV Club was pretty into it.
posted by sparkletone at 9:18 PM on August 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yes, AV Club, murder husbands does sound adorable.
posted by crossoverman at 9:25 PM on August 1, 2015

Get with the program AV Club we've had them picking out curtains since that ladder scene they're murder divorcees by now
posted by The Whelk at 9:33 PM on August 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Oh man, Alana's outfit as the Jailer in this episode, the stripes are a roatated version of a cartoon prisoner stripes.
posted by The Whelk at 9:40 PM on August 1, 2015 [3 favorites]

Commentor space robot on the AV Club

Clingy jealous ex-boyfriend Hannibal is some comedy gold. He's just so petulant about everything. "Why aren't we on first-name basis anymore?" "I gave you a child once!" "You don't smell as nice as you used to!"

posted by The Whelk at 9:57 PM on August 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

Oh lord the idea to do the background fading to black as end pieces came from AUNTIE MAME
posted by The Whelk at 10:07 PM on August 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

BRYAN, NO.
posted by sparkletone at 10:37 PM on August 1, 2015

We are getting a promo, just later in the week? Since NBC has decided to not bother anymore apparently.
posted by sparkletone at 11:15 PM on August 1, 2015

Wow. That was exquisite and flawless.
posted by homunculus at 11:29 PM on August 1, 2015

Sepinwall:

It was startling to see Will watching the home movies on an iPad. The show has never tried to be a period piece, but this story in particular is maintaining some of the more period-specific details from a book originally published in 1981, like Dolarhyde's place of employment. It's not that photo processing labs no longer exist, but that they're far more rare in this digital age. Similarly, to support Dolarhyde's love of saving his own clippings, we see that Freddie's TattleCrime website now has a glossy print spin-off magazine, which isn't generally the direction things travel in media these days.

This is interesting. The iPad did seem a little out-of-place, an anti-anachronism. But I also thought that it could work very well as a time-window effect for Will's viewing, the same sort of thing they were playing with last weel with the flashlight beam.

He's right though: TattleCrime now being a magazine does feel like it's entirely to make it scrapbook-able for Francis.

(And my theory: Francis's breakroom with the four big deco letters covering the street windows? TV station callsign.)
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:08 AM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

So we've talked about Alana, Margot and Will all having matching scars. C-section and hysterectomy for the women. And, it occurs to me, the gutting of Will is symbolic getting rid of their child, too. I mean, Abigail dies in that same scene - and Will is both figuratively and literally gutted.

Also, I loved the little shout out to Silence of the Lambs: Alana says to Hannibal "I've been courteous and you've been receptive to courtesy." Hannibal says a similar thing to Clarice during their first interview.
posted by crossoverman at 1:23 AM on August 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

He's a newly divorced young cannibal with the rest of his life ahead of him.

...well, I was thinking that we've gone from Persona in the first half of the season to the middle bit of Scenes from a Marriage...
posted by ubersturm at 1:30 AM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I wanted to dig into the thing Cleolinda said ant how different it feels for Alana to be saying these things rather then Chilton, even if she has his job she's not him -- Those lines coming out of Chilly would be seem petulant, lording, the pulling of petty power for disgraces. with Alana there's more weight, it feels like a threat and a negotiation. Doctor Alana Bloom, head of the Baltimore State Dungeon For the Criminally Fascinating is a very different character then book Chilton or movie Chilton, and has a very different relationship to Hannibal all locked up.

I mean they used to be a couple and now she's his jailer/co-prisoner, her warnings all seem more " look we're trapped here forever anyway let's just keep things pleasant and civil and no one hatch any plans that kills other people, okay?" Then Chilton's gleeful boorishness.
posted by The Whelk at 1:31 AM on August 2, 2015 [4 favorites]

And I like that she does this partly cause Chilton is off like, doing the talk show gauntlet and reveling in his fleeting fame.

It's so Chilton.
posted by The Whelk at 1:34 AM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

This is interesting. The iPad did seem a little out-of-place, an anti-anachronism.

I don't find it that interesting a detail at all. Maybe at first when Hannibal was chilling in his office reading about Eddie Izzard and getting murderously annoyed in S1, but at this point? Yes, the show's generally gone for a timeless look/feel, but they all have cellphones and stuff.

I do like the move of pushing Tattle Crime into the analog world. For practical reasons, it makes the scrap booking possible, but it also for me helps cement Tattle Crime as exactly the kind of publication it's always been: A worthless, terrible, super market rag that's so cheap to print it can still turn a bit of profit even in modernity... Especially with something as hot as Hannibal Lecter going on the last few years. Bet Chilton wasn't the only one to come out of that a bit richer.

But the iPad itself in Will's hands? Meh.
posted by sparkletone at 2:00 AM on August 2, 2015

The only time it's seemed a little bit jarring to me was in episode 5 this season where we go straight from Chiyoh pushing Will off the train (in the bizarro noir retro Europe where steam trains with cabooses ply the rails) to Mason's face on a laptop with a big glowing Apple logo. It's quite a flexible and pliable reality that the show operates in - and I'm generally delighted to go with it into strange and unreal places - but on that occasion it snapped back to something more akin to the "real" world like overtight underpant elastic against tender buttock.
posted by sobarel at 3:43 AM on August 2, 2015

WHO SAID IT WAS ACCEPTABLE FOR THOMAS HARRIS TO LOOK LIKE YOUR CHEERFUL, BOAT-IN-A-BOTTLE-BUILDING GRAND DAD???

Also, fitting in with that image is the Macbook Pro on the left that is pushing ten years old at this point.

(This is apparently from the August edition of a monthly newsletter DeLaurentiis Co. puts out, which I tried to confirm but their website isn't loading for me at the moment).
posted by sparkletone at 4:21 AM on August 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

Although I've been quite enjoying the anachronisms, I actually assumed that what Freddie got out of the Lecter affair was a promotion from blogging to actual paid journalism.

I know this is awful, but I'm kind of curious how they're going to off her, seeing as how the wheelchair thing's already been done.
posted by Grangousier at 5:13 AM on August 2, 2015

Maybe she won't die? She doesn't necessarily have to for the narrative to work.
posted by crossoverman at 5:15 AM on August 2, 2015

Freddy's death was a fairly important branch in the plot of book:RD. At that point Will had just figured out that the Tooth Fairy tests his potential victims by pet murder to watch how they react, and Freddy dies believing that Will deliberately cast him in the role of pet for purposes of their little baited trap. (It's never made clear whether Will really intended that.) But instead of helping their cause it sends Dolarhyde into a rage that makes things much worse, foreshadowing the danger which approaches at the book's end.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:07 AM on August 2, 2015

They could wiggle things around so that someone else dies or almost dies instead of Freddie (I have a particular candidate in mind based on a promo blurb sentence), and I kind of think they will because all the regulars who are most likely to die in this arc are women or kid, and it seems un-Fullerlike to do that after Beverly and Abigail.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:41 AM on August 2, 2015

But I'm probably wrong.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:41 AM on August 2, 2015

Well they also already did the "feeding a false and deliberately inflammatory profile to a reporter" angle in season 2 so they can't really go there again.
posted by wabbittwax at 6:52 AM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

When Will approaches Hannibal's cell the score sounds like an orchestra tuning up.

Will is right that Hannibal's shtick is getting old. And he's getting nearer to the overtly mean captive!Hannibal of the original material.

Abigail in the kitchen is the overtly happy Abigail that appeared in Will's fishing fantasy in S2. That is a clear cue that the Abigail we're seeing in this flashback is a projection of Hannibal's. As well, her sweater is not the same one she was wearing in S1 - and I'm pretty sure they keep wardrobe and props until the bitter end, nor would it have been that hard to find something closer to Abigail's real outfit.
posted by tel3path at 7:21 AM on August 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

Also, as for a future Francis kills a regular cast member thing, I can't see this Freddie pleading for thier life but I can see a certain wormy ex shrink who wants to write a book about him getting the treatment.
posted by The Whelk at 7:34 AM on August 2, 2015 [7 favorites]

Hannibal is kind of failing at being the Big Bad, to me, at this point. He's really coming across as a fatuous twit.

Will, just because Hannibal says stuff at you doesn't mean you have to believe it. That's something that really bugs me about this fandom actually - one character says something about another, and it's taken as gospel truth about the character about whom it's said.

All that stuff about not breeding because you don't want to pass on those traits? At last count, Will's done more breeding than you, Hannibal. I think you're talking about yourself again. The way you do. Hope you've enjoyed having Chilton as your press officer, he's just about at your level.

I think this is the first episode where (so far) I haven't had any sense at all that Alana is putting on a show. Nothing about the way she talks to Will is incongruent.

I just can't even with that outfit though. She's dressing like Hannibal at the nadir of his Italian decompensation phase.

I notice that the red lipstick seems to be a permanent fixture - the red of truth. Yeah, she sees herself as a vampire and undead and all that, but remember way back in Ko No Mono they put visible blue eyeshadow on her? (It's a shame you can't get two-step long-wearing midnight blue lipstick because I'd love that; but I don't think it's something Alana's likely to wear.) In general she's keeping to the same sartorial style. The sartorial style is a sign of Hannibal's influence, I just hope she's as impervious to it as she wants to be. I guess my assessment of her motives in taking the BSHCI job was correct, because she confirms it right here.
posted by tel3path at 7:35 AM on August 2, 2015

I dunno, if someone I loved dumped me and then showed up again a few years later solely because they wanted to use me for something and they were like, "Hello, I haven't dealt with any of the emotional fallout of our break-up, I'm just hiding from it and myself in another relationship and fucking up the life of a very sweet lovely other person in the process, so I will refuse to call you by your first name, like a giant baby," I'd be a little bitter and petty too.
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:45 AM on August 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

Also, being mean and threatening and occasionally crackling lewd jokes (oh god the sex jokes in this episode) is pretty much the only way Hannibal can save face as Big Scary Cannibal King now that he's stuck in a box and has to wait for people to come to him.

Its just got to sting - he partly did all of this cause he was bored treating the Franklyns of the world and now he's got no one fun to play with.
posted by The Whelk at 7:47 AM on August 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

"every family loves differently" -> "all happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"

What I said about Alana being integrated and not putting on a show? That sure changes when she confronts Hannibal. She is actually closer to hopkins!Lecter than tv!Lecter has ever been. This is worrying because the staginess is a sign of not believing in what she's doing.

I do feel like he missed the mark about having Will in moral dignity pants, how stuff is not his fault etc. I think it's pretty clear that Alana has moved on from that mindset, and it's also pretty clear that Hannibal has spent so much time in his own company that his tendency to project himself onto others has gotten so overt as to be unmistakable.

And Hannibal has sunk almost down to Mason levels of crudeness with that pun about finger-wagging. All that stuff about how this Hannibal would never do that? Yeah.

Also the quip about the aftershave AGAIN, though they don't say it has a ship on the bottle this time.

Imagine alt!nice!Hannibal hating Will's Old Spice, yet at the same time getting fixated and swooning over it - but only on him; on someone else it's as offensive as ever. Imagine alt!nice!Hannibal taking offence at some waiter or other serving the food while smelling of Old Spice, and not only does it interfere with the food aroma but it does and does not smell like Will Graham all at once, and the conflict is annoying, and alt!nice!Hannibal's head is filled with visions of this waiter pinned to a board as though in a knife-throwing act. He is often bothered by thoughts like these - well, he used to be bothered, but over time he came to understand that thoughts are only thoughts, it doesn't mean you'd act on them.
posted by tel3path at 7:47 AM on August 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

p.u. Abigail must have been able to smell her father from across the room, and probably in the next room. I don't understand how he could have been that well preserved TBH. yuch
posted by tel3path at 7:52 AM on August 2, 2015

"Hello, I haven't dealt with any of the emotional fallout of our break-up, I'm just hiding from it and myself in another relationship and fucking up the life of a very sweet lovely other person in the process, so I will refuse to call you by your first name, like a giant baby,"

This is a point of view I see everywhere in the fandom, and it's basically Hannibal's view of Will, and looked at from this angle Will just cannot ever do anything right.

The entire first half of the season, in which everyone complained about Will having the wrong attitude, was him dealing with the emotional fallout of the breakup. By the time the breakup came Will had already worked through it.

I just can't agree that Will is despicable for ever moving on, and that just by having other people in his life he is guilty of ruining them. Just because Will takes a very black view of his own nature, and just because Hannibal endorses and encourages that, doesn't mean it's the truth.

Yeah his decision to go back in the field, and in particular to revisit Hannibal, is pretty darn questionable, but he's not a villain yet.
posted by tel3path at 7:57 AM on August 2, 2015

Also, "Dr. Lecter"? He hasn't been stripped of his medical licence yet? That shouldn't surprise anyone, you have to do worse than just kill the majority of your patients to achieve getting struck off. I believe Harold Shipman had to rack up a total in the hundreds.
posted by tel3path at 7:58 AM on August 2, 2015

I don't think Will is despicable; he's intensely sympathetic and in a very bad position. I wish he had been left alone at the beginning of the series since teaching and hanging with his dogs was a pretty good healthy setting for him.
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:00 AM on August 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

I just can't agree that Will is despicable for ever moving on, and that just by having other people in his life he is guilty of ruining them. Just because Will takes a very black view of his own nature, and just because Hannibal endorses and encourages that, doesn't mean it's the truth.

Do people really argue that Will is despicable? He dealt with his demons face to face, went in knowing the psychic damage it would cause and how risky it was and almost managed to stab said demon in the gut in the Uffezi Plaza if it wasn't for a meddling fairy tale sharpshooter -- and then made a clean break, started a new life, and is seemingly happy and content while Hannibal is into year three of a sullen tantrum that he couldn't kill and eat someone who didn't like him like him back.
posted by The Whelk at 8:03 AM on August 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

Hmmm, ok, I actually think that it was good for Will to go back in the field, or would have been other things being equal (had Hannibal provided the kind of help he actually needed, etc). I think his life at the beginning of the series was "stable" but it wasn't really living. Even as he deteriorated physically, he was improving emotionally in visible ways.

And yeah, people are out there arguing that Will is despicable in various ways, including this one.

Anyway... the Leeds or Jacobi house is in the same style as Manhunter! I love that. Manhunter is still one of my favourite films. When SOTL came out, of course there were people arguing that Manhunter was better (because you probably hadn't heard of it). Now we have the opposite case where everyone is going "oh it's so 80s" or the much more on-the-nose critique that it's a standard procedural... but it isn't, quite, because of the atmosphere, even though part of that atmosphere is being so very 80s.
posted by tel3path at 8:10 AM on August 2, 2015

I think the important moment was the conversation between Molly and Will after Jack arrived. Up to that point, if Will preferred not to think about the past or share the horrible parts of it with her and just wanted to try to reinvent himself and move on, fine, good, having a lovely marriage, happy happy, all's well.

But when Molly starts encouraging him to take the case, if Will had actually moved on and more or less dealt with all his shit and made peace with it, then he should have told her, "I can't go back, and here's exactly why I can't go back." Or "OK, if you want me to go back, then I will, but you need to know why that's risky so we can make an informed choice about this." I get why he can't/doesn't do that, and it's not like he's trying to be a jerk or doesn't care for her -- but that's really the point when the relationship is clearly doomed one way or another because from then on out he's actively concealing stuff from Molly that's directly relevant to her future and her and Walter's safety.

Will and Hannibal treat each other like dicks, as ex-friends or lovers often do, and they're both also sympathetic to me in lots of ways. I know a lot of people are Team Will or Team Hannibal or whatever, but I think Fuller draws them both as easy to relate to and identify with. Except for, y'know, the brutal violence.
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:15 AM on August 2, 2015

(Oh yeah, and above, the tail reveal was a little limp? Just compared to the intensity and tension in every other scene it's just kinda oh hey he has a mind tail )
posted by The Whelk at 8:20 AM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

REBA

Reba Reba Reba

OMG I LOVE what Rutina Wesley has done with this character. She is as wonderful as she's meant to be. I always loved Reba and I love this version of Reba. Love love love.

The thing is, I always thought it was supposed to be plausible that Dolarhyde could have been in Reba's league and that he just didn't know his own beauty and impressiveness. This one, because of his body language in her presence - she's observably so far above him that he can't even see her ankles. That's the single criticism I would make so far, actually.

And that white blouse Reba has on? The cardigan? Nearly identical to something Bella was wearing in S1. And with those ringlets in her hair? Reba is visually linked to Bella; Reba is the angelic one now.

Also, that scene with Dolarhyde in his van? Completely bashed me in the eye as being straight out of Manhunter.
posted by tel3path at 8:23 AM on August 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

In NiceUniverse, Francis's rich but disengaged mother sent him off to the same school for kids with disabilities that Reba attended, and they became childhood pals and high school sweethearts and then got married and she became a speech therapist and he became a director of adorable indie rom-coms.
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:34 AM on August 2, 2015 [4 favorites]

Having finally seen Molly's conversation with Will, I don't know how much I'd characterize it as clueless.

I realize I'm showing my deficiencies here, but when I'm reaching out to someone I know is going through something hard, I test the waters with quasi-cheerful small talk and try to adjust to their cues. They may not always want to rehash what they're going through so I kind of try to give them an opening while also giving them the option to keep it light. I'm always aware of how easily I could be getting it wrong with this approach, though.

What I did think was clueless was the way she teased him about his "criminal mind". Molly don't say that. That's the clearest indication that he's opaque to her right now.

And Hannibal? I just thought of this thing and I have to get it out: in one of his Perelandra novels the devil appears in some form IIRC, and I think there's an Eve-equivalent on the planet, and the main character Ransom realizes that the arguments the devil is making to Eve-alike are "always very nearly true". Hannibal is doing the same thing.

Also, Hannibal was genuinely taken aback and pissed when he learned his letter had been intercepted. Oooh. Indignity. It does get to him.
posted by tel3path at 8:35 AM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

Uh I think Reba lost her sight in adulthood? She was thinking of teaching kids, but I don't believe she was among them.

But yeah, in the nice!Verse Francis' mother packed him off to boarding school where he didn't have to suffer the influence of his family, and while the boarding school wasn't perfect the teachers were overall nicer and the kids were overall nicer and more accepting, so he grew up a bit socially anxious but nothing worse than that. Actually, his biggest problem is social anxiety. He doesn't like people very much, but he wouldn't want to see one harmed.

And so instead of the storyline where Francis gives himself up, Francis begins to have intrusive thoughts of harming others and he is so worried that he approaches the authorities and tries to get himself arrested in a disruptive but ultimately harmless way. Jack passes him on to Hannibal, who treats him effectively.

(I'm pretty sure schizophrenia is physiological, so I guess he would have been saddled with that whichever way you slice it, but in the nice!verse he successfully manages it with a top-notch treatment regime, and he and Reba get married and have the cutest little children. The children have vestigial tails, but nobody seems to mind.)
posted by tel3path at 8:41 AM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

OMG

I JUST HAD TO PAUSE WHEN I HEARD HANNIBAL SAY 'I'M ON MY HONOR TO PROTECT YOU'

WELL NOW WE KNOW WHAT HANNIBAL'S HONOR IS WORTH IN CASE WE GOT IN ANY WAY CONFUSED ABOUT IT LATELY

I ALWAYS KEEP MY PROMISES, MY ASS

NO YOU ASS, HANNIBAL

YOU ASS, HANNIBAL

ooh it makes me so mad
posted by tel3path at 8:47 AM on August 2, 2015

Also, Reba is kind of part of the argument for nurture vs. nature, here.

Hannibal is taunting Will about how terrible it would be to pass on his genes to a kid. Yet, Marlana had a kid that's half Mason's, and do you think they're going to bring him up to be like Mason? I seriously doubt it. Do you think he'll turn out to be another Mason under their influence? Again, not likely.

They used Freddie to clarify, in case it wasn't clear, that Freddie is a flinger of false accusations. We should understand, by now, that Alana isn't with Margot for the money or for any base motive, and that the "arrangement" she has with Hannibal is driven by noble motives on Alana's part. I'm guessing most of Tumblr will believe the accusations she flings at Will, but the things she says about Alana should tell us to take her with a pinch of salt.
posted by tel3path at 8:51 AM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

OMG, I was not at all expecting that the phone call would be from Dolarhyde.

Hannibal learns, after all. He learned that his mail gets intercepted.

Hannibal, a millstone round your neck. Corruptor of children. This is so much worse than anything I could have imagined.

This part of the story is much more convincing being parcelled out to Abigail than it is to a grown woman in her mid-30s.

Poor Abigail, she never stood a chance.
posted by tel3path at 8:55 AM on August 2, 2015

...actually you know what Jimmy's remark reminded me of?

There's a story called "Come around again" by hito where there's a killer who kills a cat or something, and Will isn't too upset because he "doesn't much care for cats". I'm certain that BF reads all the fanfic and I think that he has read this one.

I didn't quite get the insinuation that it's Freddie Jack is dating now, but if it were her, that would say an awful lot, mostly that he's thrown his conscience away. Or, maybe he's just met with her to try to move the case along, in which case he probably sent her to goad Will. So actually, even if that's what it is it still proves he's thrown his conscience away.
posted by tel3path at 9:01 AM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

You know I really like the way they handled Alana's transformation. They started with her denying, defensive and theatrical; then they made it clear she was still the old Alana posing as a villainess but also that she wasn't really intellectually up to this kind of skulduggery and had once again bollocksed everything up as a direct result of having the best of intentions; and then they immediately had her turn it around and save the day in a way that meant the final sacrifice of all her cherished illusions. And now we have this purified Alana that stands before us now. We can finally see in her a character to admire.

I don't think it's coincidental that she did this in the same breath as asking Hannibal "could I have ever understood you?" Admitting her limitations in that way is the opposite of hubris. What did she say about peacocks in the second episode? That they're really stupid birds. It was always pride that made Alana stupid. Pride is making Chilton stupid now. oooo
posted by tel3path at 9:06 AM on August 2, 2015

Oooh, and when Hannibal said to Abigail "now you're going to hunt with me" and talked about how it was the best time she ever had with her father...

he KNEW he was going to kill her when he said that.

FUCKING ASSHOLE

he does NOT always keep his promises

fuck you hannibal fuck you sideways with a rusty garden rake (except you'd probably enjoy it)
posted by tel3path at 9:17 AM on August 2, 2015

Yeeeeah can we talk about Abigal?

Cause I read that whole thing, Calrice brainwashing aside, as Hannibal running his "let's be a murder family" on Abigal as a test run and it goes so well * that's he can't wait to try it out on Will and then, oh the crushing disappointment.

*She really seems to take to the murder interning well but I will be charitable and assume she's being both brainwashed and convinced she doesn't have a choice., which was pretty much where she was stuck before except Fancy Dad wants her to like killing for killing's sake.
posted by The Whelk at 9:26 AM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

Well, the thing is, the Abigail we're seeing is pretty clearly Hannibal's projection; there are several clues to that including that her sweater is different from the one she actually had at the time (and they didn't find a similar one to try to pass off; given that they spent over $1600 on Margot's shirt a couple weeks ago you can't tell me they couldn't have matched it if they wanted to).

I think this episode did a good job of providing a bridge between the Abigail that followed Will round Europe (and according to BF might have been there in earnest) and the terrified Abigail of Mizumono, and the Abigail we knew who hated killing but would do it if it was her or you. It also kind of explains the mystery of that Abigail - in Will's mind, the Abigail he was relating to was part of the crime reconstruction that he was enacting during the first seven episodes. Given that he was truly trying to understand what had happened, this episode broadly validates his estimation. (I really like that, instead of checking himself into the loony bin for eight months, this Will spent months on end reconstructing the crime and thereby conducted very effective therapy on himself.)

Hannibal wanted to see a sociopath in Abigail and therefore, that's what he saw. I very very much doubt that she took to it with anything like the glee we are seeing in her through Hannibal's eyes; if she was displaying that my guess is it was part of an act for him and for her.

Did the Abigail we saw in Mizumono delight in killing? No. Maybe she convinced herself she would be able to. But in the end, she simply could not delight in it. I don't believe she would have delighted in the Murder Family, regardless of what she told herself during her training.
posted by tel3path at 9:37 AM on August 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

And now we have this purified Alana that stands before us now. We can finally see in her a character to admire.

Yes, I'm really liking where she is now (and I'm glad I wasn't wrong about you liking it). Even though Hannibal has some level of "corrupting" influence on everybody in his circle (except maybe Jack, who's the same bastard he always was, just more up front about it), Alana seems to have found a nice equilibrium where she can be a normal human level of imperfect without devolving into really being Chilton. Unlike Will, she can embrace personal happiness with Margot + VergerBoy while also fulfilling her sense of duty and responsibility without it destroying her psychologically.

I really like how this episode presented her not as being a compromised creature in Hannibal's thrall and unable to extricate herself but as someone who logically decided that of all her imperfect options, the best way to protect herself and others was to be the person in charge of containing him. And that the niceties she has given him are less about what he holds over her than another form of containment: if you give the guy some dignity, he's less likely to push at boundaries, and you also then have a thing to use as incentive if he starts to act up.
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:45 AM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, any time Baigal appears, even in flashback, thats going to be an issue, either a projection or deliberate act - the Abigal seen in the kitchen in Mizumono seems "real" tho, flush with panic and all.
posted by The Whelk at 9:46 AM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm sure Jack was the one who told Freddie, "It takes one to catch one," but the more I think about it, the more it just seems like another element of his manipulation of Will, like making sure he got Hannibal's card, rather than part of a Jack-Freddie relationship.

Someone said elsewhere that if Jack has taken up with anyone we've already met, it's probably Mrs. Pazzi.
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:53 AM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

Mrs. Pazzi had crossed my mind also.
posted by tel3path at 10:10 AM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

Hmmm, ok, I actually think that it was good for Will to go back in the field, or would have been other things being equal (had Hannibal provided the kind of help he actually needed, etc). I think his life at the beginning of the series was "stable" but it wasn't really living.

You're probably right -- the reason I think Will had such a sweet life at the beginning is that it's nearly identical to my life, except that my crappy farmhouse has a fenced yard that isn't always covered in snow.
posted by FelliniBlank at 10:24 AM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's fascinating to me that the show began by presenting the most romanticized version of Hannibal ever committed to screen, and has ultimately delivered the most despicable. The films (and Harris) seem to fall in love with Hannibal, making him gradually nobler and more heroic; Hannibal Rising feels like nothing so much as Doctor Lecter writing a Mary Sue fanfic novella about himself. (Which is part of what makes Fuller's implication that some of its events were...reframed by Hannibal so great.) But the show begins with a suave vampiric Frasier figure and by degrees shows us just how false a front that is. The manipulation of Abigail is unforgivable, and somehow the worst because she's so incredibly vulnerable and trusting and clearly in crazy dad issues love with Hannibal, but it's only slightly worse than the cruel joke he played on Bella. I guess basically what I'm saying is that we really only like Hannibal because he's cool, and we want him to like us because that would mean we were cool, but that would never happen because he is actually only a fan of himself and is in reality a total dickhead. Which makes this a show so replete with life lessons! I will miss it.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:37 AM on August 2, 2015 [14 favorites]

Ha! I am so glad that is coming through to at least part of the audience! I've been reading a lot of complaints about OMG it's the last straw to see Abigail's abuse romanticized this way. I don't think it is the least bit romanticized, I think we're SUPPOSED to take it as the last straw and all be screaming HANNIBAL I HATE YOU FOR ABUSING ABIGAIL. Of course a lot of fans are instead screaming BRYAN FULLER I HATE YOU FOR ABUSING ABIGAIL but whatta ya gonna do.

I think the Hannibal Is So Kewl Lol mindset is one reason why some of the fandom admired Alana so much - if you can be like this, Hannibal will "have genuine affection" for or "respect" you. A lot of the more sentimental and less experienced Tumblrteens idealized her for that reason, going by the things I was reading. Listen, kiddoes, Hannibal's esteem is not worth a plugged nickel and you do not need to be admired by a guy like that. Learn the lesson from TV before you have to learn it in real life.

Oh, and it's especially fitting that, in his usual way, Hannibal is framing this as "it's all for your own good, little Abbiekins", he promises to protect her, and then he fucking murders her. After saying "I want you [and Will] to be together" for good measure. (which implies that he at the very least didn't necessarily intend Will to live)

I also think it's good and solid that, in the eyes of some viewers, Alana now looks "older and less attractive" [1] at the moment when she's most admirable. You cannot understand Alana if you only look at the surface.

[1] I don't agree - well yeah she looks older, but it's been like 4-5 years and she's had a baby and a lot of stress so of course she looks older; and I'm not crazy about her wacky outfit this week; but you have to be a certain kind of person to think she's somehow "less attractive".
posted by tel3path at 11:52 AM on August 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

Also... it only took one little push of that button, Alana's saying that last time it didn't end with Will... for him to be having nightmares of Molly covered in blood and laid out like the Woman Clothed With the Sun.

I don't think he should have gone to see Hannibal. A taste of honey is worse than none at all.

And they really made it apparent that Hannibal is doing quite badly in prison. He's wearing the white coat and he's got the office so he can tell himself that it's really him running the BSHCI, but it doesn't seem like he's succeeding in controlling/influencing Alana the way he wants to.

And yeah, I did think that taking charge of Hannibal's care was a characteristically dubious move on Alana's part, but it doesn't seem as though it's worked out that way. Remember that bit in the SOTL book where two guys come to look after Lecter in Barney's place, and Barney whispers to Chilton "these guys don't know anything" and sure enough, they don't? Everyone in this show up to now has demonstrated that they might plausibly be good at handling dumb criminals who can't think their way out of a paper bag and aren't very deceptive, but anything with an IQ in triple figures and the security protocols are toast.

And now we know: Alana knows how easily Hannibal could get out, and she knows that last time it didn't end with her. She's finishing what she started.

Brava bravissima.
posted by tel3path at 12:30 PM on August 2, 2015

And... by giving the drugs/brainwashing storyline to Abigail (don't forget! Hannibal's "therapy" on Clarice involved lots of drugs!) and then having Hannibal kill her, I think - and with all due respect to Bringer Tom - that that particular storyline was shown to end the only way it could have ended. I also thought the Hannibal novel was self-insert Mary Sue fic and was unworthy because of exactly what was done to Clarice. Now, with Abigail, we've been shown how it "really" happened.
posted by tel3path at 12:34 PM on August 2, 2015

I've been reading a lot of complaints about OMG it's the last straw to see Abigail's abuse romanticized this way. I don't think it is the least bit romanticized, I think we're SUPPOSED to take it as the last straw and all be screaming HANNIBAL I HATE YOU FOR ABUSING ABIGAIL.

I agree -- the fact that Hannibal romanticizes and sentimentalizes his relationship with Abigail doesn't mean Fuller's authorial voice is suggesting we're supposed to see it the same way. All the memory palace and flashback scenes are like that; the version of Hannibal that Will sees when they're discussing the case looks like pre-frame-up "Dr. Lecter" collegial Hannibal, since that's the one he's comfortable dealing with and also probably the closest these two ever came to "the good old days."

All the Hannibal-Abigail murder intern scenes are super-gross, which wasn't too surprising since both Hannibal's and Will's somewhat different Abigail fixations were creeptastic from the beginning. Not only does Hannibal know in the kitchen that he's going to kill her (and I'm sure does think of it as protecting her); Abigail probably also knows it but as usual goes along with whatever Hannibal tells her. Even without the brainwashing, she's already been trained by her dad for years to be a compliant assistant, and she also has that whole fatalistic survivor guilt thing where she wishes her father had killed her rather than the other girls, so it's not like she's going to run or try to save herself. Poor kid.
posted by FelliniBlank at 1:29 PM on August 2, 2015 [5 favorites]

It honestly seems like a bunch of people learned the phrase 'romanticising abuse' without actually having any understanding of what it means.
posted by showbiz_liz at 2:06 PM on August 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

I guess basically what I'm saying is that we really only like Hannibal because he's cool, and we want him to like us because that would mean we were cool, but that would never happen because he is actually only a fan of himself and is in reality a total dickhead.

I dunno -- I found this Hannibal funny from the beginning but also impossible to relate to because he's so alien and stiff and seemingly vicious just for kicks, which was extra-terrifying because of his power and impunity and because of our (my) identification with Will. He's still loathsome and frightening but for me has also become a bit more like Francis -- pitiable, tragic -- since it became clear that he experiences genuine emotions. The latter part of Season 2 and all of Season 3 have really humanized Hannibal, which doesn't make me like him any better but definitely makes me sympathize since I don't like to see people suffer, even terrible people, and more of his actions have human (rather than aesthetic or detached-curiosity) motivations, which makes them more comprehensible if still horrible.
posted by FelliniBlank at 2:16 PM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

...where's Greg Nog? How will we know what happened if he doesn't recap it for us?
posted by tel3path at 2:22 PM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

It honestly seems like a bunch of people learned the phrase 'romanticising abuse' without actually having any understanding of what it means.

Amen to that. As far as that faction is concerned, portraying something is the same as endorsing it. So if Hannibal abuses Abigail, then Bryan Fuller abuses Abigail, and that's almost as bad as if he'd abused a real, living teenage girl.

I read something about Tumblr exposing the kiddies to complex and radical philosophies, but in snippets and without context so they end up parroting this stuff without understanding any of it.
posted by tel3path at 2:25 PM on August 2, 2015

Yeah, FelliniBlank, I can totally see that Hannibal has no friends, and that - despite what Alana says about him being able to tolerate loneliness, he actually can't - not if that loneliness consists of the absence of the one person he thinks he loves.

We all know that Hannibal doesn't *deserve* any friends, because he ate them. But it's still clear what a dreadful fate it is to be in his gilded cage, on display to people he doesn't want to see. He's a zoo animal. That's a sad state for anyone to be in. Whether they deserve it or not.
posted by tel3path at 2:28 PM on August 2, 2015

there's a nice visual breakdown over at Previously.tv
posted by The Whelk at 2:42 PM on August 2, 2015 [4 favorites]

despite what Alana says about him being able to tolerate loneliness, he actually can't - not if that loneliness consists of the absence of the one person he thinks he loves

I think it's important that Alana actually said he can tolerate solitude, not loneliness. Those aren't the same. And I think you're both right; Hannibal is fine with solitude but his relationship with Will has turned one into the other.
posted by Justinian at 2:54 PM on August 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

Hannibal believes only people like himself are human -- "It's not cannibalism unless it's an equal" -- and in this version Hannibal has now met his second prospect for friendship or love. In the book Hannibal's respect for Will is more intellectual than it is here; he knew with his uncanny insight that Will had the potential to be like him but Will had steadfastly resisted that Becoming. In this version Will got much further along and Hannibal therefore got much more fond of him. But now of course he finds Dolarhyde with that potential and not resisting it, which puts us back on track with the Red Dragon book.

There are suggestions throughout book RD and SOTL, and really especially in SOTL, that Hannibal is a shamanic figure. Fuller has dialed that stuff back so that series Hannibal is more of a garden variety sociopath with a sharp appetite and mad skills. Both versions are entirely self consistent but different in the ways they need to be. I thought the end of book Hannibal was a perfect conclusion, especially as a deliberate fuck-you since I doubt he intended for Clarice to be a major actor in the third book. I suspect the plan all along was that Hannibal would find a murder soulmate and make a dramatic impression on the world. It wasn't supposed to be Clarice, but hey you wanted a book about Clarice so he gave us a book about Clarice. What, you don't like it after you asked for it? That seems rude.

But in Fuller's version Abigail's fate is also a perfect conclusion because this is a different Hannibal, differently prefigured and differently motivated. Harris' Hannibal never captured a live victim to keep that way until he became enchanted with Clarice, but Fuller made this Hannibal a serial kidnapper and keeper of human pets even in his own story's prehistory.

(Incidentally, I would agree that Hannibal Rising feels like fanfic. That is just the extended version of the fuck you, the story having been satisfactorily concluded but the public and publisher wanting another book. So he gave them a book. What, you don't like it after you asked for it? That seems rude.)

In the book, Freddy's death was a linchpin of many different previously wandering threads. For example, there was the fact that he had a beautiful stripper girlfriend to whom he had been very generous and who genuinely loved this man everyone else found so loathesome. If you think about it that prefigures a lot of stuff between Hannibal, Will, and Francis.

I am not nervous at all though wondering how Fuller is going to refigure it. I am fully expecting that I will need a Viagra and a condom to watch the season finale.
posted by Bringer Tom at 2:54 PM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

I doubt that Hannibal would consider someone as psychotic as Francis a peer or potential companion, just a worthwhile project and useful tool, like a more interesting version of Randall Tier.
posted by FelliniBlank at 3:16 PM on August 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

Well it will be interesting to see Fuller's take but in the book Hannibal called Dolarhyde his "pilgrim" and clearly considered him a potential equal. This was starkly contrasted in SOTL by his contempt for Jame Gumb who "just wanted to rap." But that was Harris shaman-Hannibal, so who knows what Fuller Hannibal will do?
posted by Bringer Tom at 3:23 PM on August 2, 2015

I'm not sure he considered Dolarhyde his equal, tbh. I think he was just fucking him around and using him to fuck everyone else around.
posted by tel3path at 3:25 PM on August 2, 2015

Oh, and how did this Dolarhyde know to get in touch with him? How did he know the number and the way to get around the security protocols? Through encoded proactive ads in the Tattler. Through Freddie.
posted by tel3path at 3:26 PM on August 2, 2015

Well he knew Dolarhyde wasn't his equal at that time, but what was important was that Dolarhyde was becoming. Will was different because he was refusing to become. And Gumb was uninteresting because he was uninterested in becoming despite his superficial similarity and even apparent superiority to Dolarhyde. And in the book version, Clarice ascended because she became. As I once told a podcaster, it's the theme of the damn books.
posted by Bringer Tom at 3:29 PM on August 2, 2015

Hannibal helped a lot of his patients become, but as their therapist and coach, not as a partner. So of course he'd support Francis, but he's not going to eat foie gras or go to the opera or share his life with a guy who believes he's a dragon.

He thought of Will as another pet or project at first and was pretty surprised to find himself having an actual friendship. I think Hannibal only really started seeing Will as a peer after Will was in jail, regained his senses and agency, and started engaging in nasty gamesmanship on Hannibal's level, which inspired Hannibal to un-frame him.
posted by FelliniBlank at 4:01 PM on August 2, 2015 [5 favorites]

I'd argue he saw Will was different even earlier, but otherwise yeah, definitely.
posted by showbiz_liz at 4:03 PM on August 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

there's a nice visual breakdown over at Previously.tv

Oh, I'd forgotten about the BIG BITEY MOUTH advert at the bus stop.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 4:07 PM on August 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

Well, and even if Francis initially does seem like peer material, he's about to go full-on batshit delusional, so that will put the kibosh on that idea.
posted by FelliniBlank at 4:12 PM on August 2, 2015

he's about to go full-on batshit delusional, so that will put the kibosh on that idea

Except that in the book, it doesn't really. Hannibal isn't exactly a rational player himself here. In this version he has loved ahd lost, and in the book one might say that he beheld Dolarhyde and loved, respected, or something. Batshit excursions to eat Blake prints didn't really change that. This Hannibal might not be book Hannibal but he does know what he likes, and he has decided that he likes our shy boy, who might be a wendingo looking for some antlers.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:17 PM on August 2, 2015

So far, I don't think we've seen evidence that this Hannibal has much interest in the Dragon outside of as a tool to fuck with Will. That may change now that they've made direct contact, though.
posted by showbiz_liz at 6:32 PM on August 2, 2015

Oh, and how did this Dolarhyde know to get in touch with him? How did he know the number and the way to get around the security protocols?

Do Killers like Dolarhyde get murdar-wizard powers, or is that just for pulse-never-gets-above-60 art-murderers?
posted by The Legit Republic of Blanketsburg at 6:51 PM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

Okay, so I just caught up with the last couple episodes because I'm so not used to this whole watching TV on a schedule thing. Also, comcast is the devil, and I spent literally 1.5 hours earlier today trying to get this damn episode to play on my computer, because xfinity was all YOU NEED A SUBSCRIPTION and I was like I HAVE THE DAMN SUBSCRIPTION, and then after way too much time of logging in, troubleshooting, etc, I went to the NBC site and it played no problem, and I felt like an idiot.*

ANYWAY, this episode and the previous one were the first times where I really felt like I was missing a lot by having no knowledge about the rest of the canon (unless you count, "I think there was a movie or book with Red Dragon in the title," as background knowledge). It's not like it was hard to follow, so much as I could practically feel all the allusions and references that were probably popping up everywhere, but obviously they don't mean anything to me at the moment. And reading this thread backs up my hunch here.

Still, I'm using my self control not to go in and read wikipedia summaries of everything, because it's kind of a fun experiment to go through this whole thing mostly unspoiled, and then once this season wraps up, I can go in and read all the books/watch the movies, and then watch these episodes again and be like, "OH LOOK AT ALL THE REFERENCES YOU CLEVER CLEVER SHOW."

On that note, I know this idea was floated a couple episodes back, but I would really love it we did that Hannibal club movie watch/episode re-watch thing. This is a long shot, but maybe the powers that be (mods/pb) would let us do some sort of test run with fanfare books so that we can include a read along of the books with that as well. I'm really looking forward to diving into the rest of the canon, and it would be fun to make it a group thing.

*A family member who lives with me came into the room as I was cursing at my computer while trying to get the video to play, and they were like, "Can't you just watch something else?" and I was like, "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THERE IS NOTHING ELSE BUT THIS I MUST SEE WILL AND HANNIBAL REUNITE."
posted by litera scripta manet at 8:00 PM on August 2, 2015 [5 favorites]

I must say, Lab Geeks fell flat for me this time around. I just can't see Jimmy, even if he does vastly prefer pets to people, being like "I don't really care about these brutally murdered children."

Actually, that was one of my favorite lines this episode. Maybe that's because I'm usually like, "Eh, whatever," when I see murdered kids/adults, but then when it's a kitten or the horse in season 2 (or was it 1? It all blurs when you binge watch), I'm like, "NO NOT THE PRECIOUS ANIMAL." Also, in that episode where Mason is eating his own face in season 2, I was so terrified that Will was going to walk in and see Mason eating the dogs or feeding one of the dogs to the other dogs, so what a relief that Mason was just self-cannibalizing.
posted by litera scripta manet at 8:05 PM on August 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

Oh, and on the subject of animals, I think the comparison of Hannibal to a cat in this episode was very apt. You can lock him inside, and he'll eat your food, and maybe kill a mouse and gift it to you (and then sulk when you don't act like it's the best most nicest present ever), but inside he's never really tame, and you know he spends most of his time thinking about how many ways he could kill you.

This also reminded me of Chiyo describing young Hannibal as being like a baby wild cat, who you know will one day grow into something sort of monstrous, but isn't there yet. (I know I'm butchering the exact metaphor, but I don't have the patience to go back and track down that scene this moment.)

The progression of Hannibal from baby wild cat to full grown murderous wild cat and now to domesticated regular cat also really mirrors Hannibal's arc in the series from killer on the prowl to a caged and semi-domesticated shadow of his pre-imprisonment self.
posted by litera scripta manet at 8:12 PM on August 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

Except that in the book, it doesn't really. Hannibal isn't exactly a rational player himself here. In this version he has loved ahd lost, and in the book one might say that he beheld Dolarhyde and loved, respected, or something. Batshit excursions to eat Blake prints didn't really change that.

I actually thought Francis held it together pretty well to the end of the book, all things considered, and managed to more or less function and conceal his increasing psychosis, but he had to be heading toward decompensation. Look how pervasive and irresistible his delusions became just within the brief timeframe of the book; I'd give him months or, with enough stressors, maybe weeks before he's "RooooowwwRAWR, behold the Dragon"ing random women on the street. It's a mystery to me what BookLecter thinks about Francis since Lecter is a minor character who gets like 3 sentences of omniscient narration, which are about how annoyed he is by Graham.
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:39 PM on August 2, 2015

Oh man, the opening sequence with Hannibal lit from underneath {{shudder}}. The mask is off and here's Satan. Creeped me out as much as Brian Cox's open-mouthed stare in Manhunter.

Alana's suit + Garret Jacob Hobbs' corpse = Beetlejuice

Molly's "Of course not" to Will's "You think I have a criminal mind?" was delivered in such a way that you feel she does fear that deep down. Also, Molly and Will are animal hoarders.

Hannibal is wearing plaid, which is meant to communicate one's clan and kinship, when talking to Abigail about family.

My BF pointed out that the pie might the first "normal" non-gourmet, non-cannibal food we've seen on the show. It is aggressively middle-America, something you would see on the cover of a magazine at the grocery check-out stand. Tattler would be on the rack below.

I'm starting to wonder if Hannibal's cell really does look like how we see it, wood paneling, books, etc. rather than being a projection of his mind. Alana threatens to take his books away, so we know those are real. My first thought seeing it last week was that it was his actual cell and Alana was keeping him in a facsimile of his natural habitat like a zoo animal.

And Will, don't forget! It's not like he could give birth to Abigail naturally.

She was sprung from his head like Athena from Zeus.

posted by fozzie_bear at 9:57 PM on August 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'm starting to wonder if Hannibal's cell really does look like how we see it, wood paneling, books, etc. rather than being a projection of his mind.

Yes, that's what his cell looks like. My assumption is that Alana will take those books and things away this season.

If Fuller ever gets a chance to do Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal will be in a more traditionally spartan cell by then.
posted by crossoverman at 10:24 PM on August 2, 2015

I did like the idea from the previously.tv link that he has repurposed autopsy tables in his cell.
posted by The Whelk at 10:28 PM on August 2, 2015

it's kind of a fun experiment to go through this whole thing mostly unspoiled

Actually this makes your perspective incredibly valuable to me and probably others in these threads. Absolutely for us part of the joy of the show is appreciating how it compares/contrasts/redoes the earlier versions of these stories. It's why while I'm cool with not discussing literal show previews, I will argue hard against separating book and show the way GoT threads do. It just completely obviates what everyone is doing here.

BUT.

The show should be able to stand on its own. I've linked to the Sound On Sight podcast for the show a number of times generally because one of the hosts had great insights into the scoring of the show but also because that same person is cing at the show basically devoid of prior experience.

It's a valuable thing.
posted by sparkletone at 10:42 PM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's why while I'm cool with not discussing literal show previews, I will argue hard against separating book and show the way GoT threads do.

Yeah, I don't follow GoT, but this makes sense to me. Even though I don't know anything about the rest of the Hannibal canon, it's still interesting for me to get to read discussions from you guys who have read/watched the other stuff. I also don't really particularly care about spoilers, so there's that.

Anyway, I've been thinking a bit more about my impression of this episode and the last one and trying to pinpoint what feels different/seems to be missing for me. I think a big part of it is that we started the previous episode with a long focus on Dolarhyde at the beginning of the episode, and that section just didn't hold a lot of interest/importance to me, even though it was obvious that they were introducing the new murderer. It seemed like in all the other "case of the week" sort of episodes, we usually get a series of quick glimpses of the actual murderer, and the first prolonged "contact" comes from Will's examination/mental reenactment of the crime scene. This sort of helps build an interest/investment in the murderer as a character, and even if the reveal isn't suspenseful, it makes the confrontation or revelation feel more tense and meaningful.

The first scene with Dolarhyde that really resonated with me is the closing one of this episode, where he shows up at the studio of this woman who I gather is named Reba. (Did her name come up in the episode and I missed it, or is this only something you would know having read the books?). The acting in those scenes was really great, and I felt invested in Reba as a character pretty much right away, but these were also the first scenes involving Dolarhyde where the dramatic tension resonated with me.

I have to admit, the other thing is that during his other scenes pretty much all I was thinking was, "When are Will and Hannibal going to be reunited?" or just "WANT MORE HANNIGRAM."

Oh, and on the topic of names, does anyone know when we first heard Dolarhydes name? I know that Reba referenced it, but I didn't actually pick it up during the Red Dragon episode. I know it was mentioned here in fanfare during the Red Dragon discussion, but it's also entirely possible that it came up in that episode, and I missed it.
posted by litera scripta manet at 4:46 AM on August 3, 2015

I just noticed that I used a bunch of slashes in my last comment. Maybe my desire for more slash-y Hannigram goodness is manifesting in my writing.
posted by litera scripta manet at 5:12 AM on August 3, 2015

but he had to be heading toward decompensation. Look how pervasive and irresistible his delusions became just within the brief timeframe of the book; I'd give him months or, with enough stressors, maybe weeks before he's "RooooowwwRAWR, behold the Dragon"ing random women on the street.

Oh, for sure, but Hannibal wouldn't consider this a failure mode; he would consider it a triumph, like Randall Tier's expression of his inner self. The fact that it's a less sustainable state of being than Hannibal's would make it no less beautiful.
posted by Bringer Tom at 5:37 AM on August 3, 2015

Okay look

Reba is dressed and styled like Bella. Literally the SAME blouse with the ties undone. Very similar cardigan. Pants/leggings instead of a skirt so that's the token difference. Ringlets in her hair.

Jack no longer cares at all, it seems, about the damage he's doing.

Reba is Dolarhyde's inspiration to reject the Red Dragon.

Will is on a death spiral now he's left Molly's orbit.

See where this is going? The love of a good woman... and the loss of it, and the effect that has on a man's character.

Actually, I wonder if any putative future blowups happen when Alana is temporarily away, and not watching over Hannibal.
posted by tel3path at 8:25 AM on August 3, 2015

Oh, and on the topic of names, does anyone know when we first heard Dolarhydes name?

When he introduced himself to Reba in the infrared processing room. In fact, that's the first time we heard him speak words.
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:05 AM on August 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

Uh I think Reba lost her sight in adulthood? She was thinking of teaching kids, but I don't believe she was among them.

no, it was definitely when she was a kid. she mentions during the tiger scene that she could just barely remember having seen a puma at the zoo as a child and that's her only point of reference for a large cat.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:15 AM on August 3, 2015 [3 favorites]

I always wondered why Francis didn't start using Frank as soon as he got into the army and had his surgeries since it has no /s/ sounds.
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:30 AM on August 3, 2015

But I guess by that point he had already long felt doomed to a life of freakdom.
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:31 AM on August 3, 2015

it also felt hilariously anachronistic for him to make his ~mysterious asian journey~ to get the teeth and tattoo since he could easily have both done in any large US metro area.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:47 AM on August 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

I assumed he was just in a Chinatown
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:01 AM on August 3, 2015 [6 favorites]

i do like how they haven't really explained or handwaved or justified the fact that he's working at an actual film processing place other than reba's startled/amused "why not digital" comment.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:04 AM on August 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

It bugs me that everyone was/is so worried about how, omg, he simply can't work in a film lab in twenty fifteen, when film labs still freaking exist! They're less common but they haven't been outlawed or anything!
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:45 AM on August 3, 2015 [7 favorites]

You'd think this show would have trained people not to fixate on things that maybe aren't that important? It takes about a picosecond of Googling to verify that film labs still exist.

I mean I'm surprised someone out there in Internet-land hasn't asked "gee, do you think those 3-piece suits are real or in his mind palace? Do you think the suit was really appearing and disappearing like that? Maybe Will was hallucinating it? Oh well, dream logic!"

I had to spend fully five minutes listening to a podcast fixating on "but that didn't look like a guest room that Gideon's body was in, so why was Chilton saying he had a dead body in his guest room" FIVE. MINUTES. geez
posted by tel3path at 10:53 AM on August 3, 2015

And then last week they went on and on about the wineglass, about how is it possible that Hannibal would be allowed a wineglass in his cell? Was the wineglass real?

NO
posted by tel3path at 10:55 AM on August 3, 2015

Like... HD has said "if you believe this show then you have a problem" and of course it's not realistic, but it's never as far from reality as it should be, because the world is really substantially fucked up.

In an introduction to one of his books, Harris talks about meeting the guy who Lecter was based on, in the Mexican prison system. He claims the guy greeted him in his office, talked about one of the other inmates' psychological condition, and had a queue of patients waiting to see him. It turned out the guy Harris met was one of the inmates and was a convicted murderer. He had been a doctor; they were using him to treat indigent patients in exchange for privileges.

Add to that, the fact that power and wealth can buy you significantly better conditions in the US legal system - supposedly, no wealthy white man has ever gotten the death penalty [I have not fact checked this].

I mean, the bias of the system in favour of the powerful and privileged is one of the themes of the show. Mason was so wealthy and so deeply connected to organized crime as well as being the head of a corporation, that he was essentially outside the reach of law enforcement. They literally spell this out in Digestivo, and we get to watch Alana learning this lesson when she had been hoping for Jack and the FBI to come riding in at the last minute. I mean, given that an episode earlier she'd told Mason "better buy a whole department" I don't know why she would think any legal solution would work; or maybe she thought it only worked that way in Italy.

Look at this comment:

"The people are stupid in the show"

yep

"and this would never happen in real life"

alas, nope
posted by tel3path at 11:29 AM on August 3, 2015

And then last week they went on and on about the wineglass, about how is it possible that Hannibal would be allowed a wineglass in his cell? Was the wineglass real?

You know, I was thinking about this, and I realized that there is actually no real issue with allowing him to use a wine glass, unless you're worried about suicide.

The reason he wasn't allowed staples or pens is because they can be hidden and used as secret weapons or lockpicking devices. But an entire wine glass? If he breaks it, just fucking tranq him through the holes and take it away again. He's not going to be able to hurt you with it, you're on the other side of the glass, and he's not going to be able to hide any pieces, you're looking right at him and will obviously search his prone body and cell for the bits.

I had to spend fully five minutes listening to a podcast fixating on "but that didn't look like a guest room that Gideon's body was in, so why was Chilton saying he had a dead body in his guest room" FIVE. MINUTES. geez

That was SO OBVIOUSLY just a slip-up between the script and the production, geez
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:49 AM on August 3, 2015

Add to that, the fact that power and wealth can buy you significantly better conditions in the US legal system - supposedly, no wealthy white man has ever gotten the death penalty [I have not fact checked this].

Nope, although white people are underrepresented in terms of overall population
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:50 AM on August 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

I also don't worry too much about how Francis managed to call Hannibal. Google + BCHSI phone number + name of Hannibal's attorney's law firm. Apparently, Hannibal is the only serial killer ever not to attract a bevy of scary groupies who need to be screened out, but that doesn't require any more suspension of disbelief than anything else on this show.
posted by FelliniBlank at 11:51 AM on August 3, 2015

Yeah, but the keywords are "wealthy white" not just "white". Hannibal is pretty wealthy.
posted by tel3path at 11:54 AM on August 3, 2015

i am aware that film labs still exist because i am neither a newborn baby nor a moron! hooray for me im the best
posted by poffin boffin at 12:56 PM on August 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

That kind of quibbling has always driven me crazy though. I was watching, with my dad, a TV show about a lost space patrol, and they'd been adrift for three years, and his complaint was "those pyjamas are in much too good condition after 3 years"

- maybe they had spare pyjamas
- maybe they were futuristic, in-d-structo pyjamas
- they were supposed to be a closed-loop self-supporting settlement so maybe they had the ability to manufacture pyjamas
- WHO TF CARES because if one of the above isn't true, they clearly can't sustain themselves and will be dead soon from pyjama deficiency
posted by tel3path at 1:08 PM on August 3, 2015

Different people are taken out of a story by different details and aspects of the production. Hannibal is meticulously created and oh so serious so it can be jarring to have that veil torn away. Red Dwarf is the counter example that keeps coming to mind, a baldly absurd science fiction comedy that (for me) could get away with all kinds of nonsense.
posted by mountmccabe at 1:22 PM on August 3, 2015

I always think about the weird reactions people had to a straight forward horror story like The Lottery when this comes up
posted by The Whelk at 1:29 PM on August 3, 2015

i am aware that film labs still exist because i am neither a newborn baby nor a moron! hooray for me im the best

Oh sorry I wasn't talking about you - I was seeing people elsewhere insisting that there was no concievable way it made sense for him to work in a film lab no matter what.

I also love that the handwavey "eh, no one here likes digital, even though it would be much easier for you to use digital" line basically implies that Francis is the kind of hipster who only listens to music on vinyl
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:36 PM on August 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

Well he does have that film projector
posted by The Whelk at 1:48 PM on August 3, 2015

Also I was out at an opera Saturday night (but not Thursday!) and had to wait to watch until Sunday night via NBC.com. I watched an extra 220 seconds of commercials after the scene where Dolarhyde called Hannibal because I had no idea the episode was over. That scene was embarrassing.

And that is even ignoring any questions of how Dolarhyde was able to call in, something that actually has some dramatic use, showing how arrogant/wrong Alana is. Earlier in the episode Alana told Will she was at BSHCI because "there are five doors between Hannibal and the outside world, and I have the keys to all of them," which only matters so much if any old serial murderer can ring him up.
posted by mountmccabe at 1:49 PM on August 3, 2015

yeah but without spoiling the original material, there are quite a few maneuvers Dolarhyde and Lecter have to make to pass messages to and fro. I've yet to see evidence that Alana is arrogant/wrong in this matter, if at all.

Like, presumably the lawyer's office has some kind of password or authentication to get through to Lecter? alana's already seen Will do proactive interviews with Freddie Lounds to smoke out the Admirer, and we've also seen her reliving the memory of the bullet flying past her ear to hit Chilton. She knows Hannibal doesn't have to kill her by his own hand. It's been made pretty clear she's acutely aware of that. So my guess is that Hannibal has conveyed some details that Dolarhyde can use to authenticate himself as the lawyer.
posted by tel3path at 3:03 PM on August 3, 2015

Ha, The Lottery. And people used to ask Patrick McGoohan what the meaning of The Prisoner was. That's probably why he was so famously bad-tempered.

Yeah and the details of how Dolarhyde was able to call in, if you ever see Manhunter you'll get a chance to see an example of phone hacking combined with good old-fashioned social engineering. i always thought that maybe that film had been disproportionately influential because nowadays, you'd never disclose that kind of private info, because you could be talking to a serial killer for all you know.
posted by tel3path at 3:15 PM on August 3, 2015

The circa 1977 old school phone hacking in Manhunter was straight out of book:RD, and it was appropriate that they did something else for 2015 since most private exchanges such as you'd find in an institution like the BSHCI no longer understand rotary pulse signaling. I suppose it's believable that with modern online research tools and caller ID spoofing impersonating the lawer is now a lot easier than it would have been back then.

I actually have little trouble with Francis' film fetish, since he might have a jones to experience his images as a tangible physical object. This would actually be in line with the book scene where he eats the Blake print. It's a thing with him. The bigger question is how he gets accesss to the victims' movies, since they probably aren't shooting on film or asking for a film conversion. I suspect we'll get the answer to that in another episode or two.
posted by Bringer Tom at 4:08 PM on August 3, 2015

Well, another department could be handling digital processing. Or maybe they convert digital files to film reel so they can send them to Granny who only has a reel to reel projector?

The scene last week where he gets completely wound up in the film - agreed about the tangible physical object. Plus, some people really get attached to the experience of handling old media. Certain electronic music, like the work of Pousseur and his ilk, is intimately connected with its media.
posted by tel3path at 4:18 PM on August 3, 2015

MY TATTLE CRIME GIFTS HAVE ARRIVED
posted by The Whelk at 4:36 PM on August 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

yeah but without spoiling the original material, there are quite a few maneuvers Dolarhyde and Lecter have to make to pass messages to and fro.

Which they probably can't be doing in the show version since we know Hannibal's outgoing mail is screened. I really like that the show just said "Oh fuck it" and boiled it down to a phone call, as if to say, "the mechanics of how they make this happen aren't important." The Fullerverse in general seems to be a surreal one in which all sorts of perplexing and preposterous things can happen but where people's psychology and emotions are intensely realistic.
posted by FelliniBlank at 4:41 PM on August 3, 2015 [4 favorites]

And I think in the book also nobody figures out precisely how the original incoming message physically got to Hannibal.
posted by FelliniBlank at 4:42 PM on August 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

The bigger question is how he gets access to the victims' movies, since they probably aren't shooting on film or asking for a film conversion.

Actually, it would make perfect sense if that's the way they figure it out - someone in both families took up the hobby of shooting with film. Maybe Dolarhyde took their players when he left the houses in order to broom his tracks.
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:35 PM on August 3, 2015 [3 favorites]

In the book it is actually suggested, though never exposited, that Hannibal and Francis have been corresponding since before Will gets on the case. The real conversation is through ads in the Tattler which is an easy enough thing for Francis. How Francis determined that Hannibal could respond (that requiring the phone hack) and how they selected their code book are left to the reader's imagination. I think the intended implication was that, being so alike, they were able to synchronize through public correspondence in a way too subtle for Hannibal's keepers to follow.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:25 PM on August 3, 2015

In all the other versions of the story it's a very significant point that Francis chooses his victims because they are happy and well-adjusted, the kind of family he was denied and that making them worthy of sacrifice to his dragon. His point of contact has to give him access to the films of lots and lots of families or it seriously changes Francis' motivational dynamic in a way I don't think Fuller would consider right.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:28 PM on August 3, 2015

In the book it is actually suggested, though never exposited, that Hannibal and Francis have been corresponding since before Will gets on the case.

That's not the case. Like on the show, in the book Francis only learns about Lecter's "interest" in him from Lounds's Tattler story mentioning Will Graham and Lecter, and that inspires him to "dare" to write his first message to Hannibal on toilet paper asking if they can correspond. We never know how he gets that letter to Hannibal, but it appears that it was folded inside something printed, like a flier or magazine/news clipping and sent in a regular envelope, so apparently the hospital/FBI aren't checking Hannibal's mail at all.

When the guy cleaning Hannibal's cell finds the letter a few days later, the section mentioning the code is torn out. Francis sets up the Tattler code system himself in the torn portion of the note (the FBI can tell from the ends of letters); they surmise that he chose a book he'll know Hannibal has in his cell, which would be a medical or psychology book or cookbook. The ad from Hannibal that they intercept is the only one he could have sent in the timeframe since receiving the original note, which is:

Mon pm/Tue am -- Tattler with Lecter-Graham story comes out, Francis gets it and sends his letter. The Tattler comes out once a week.
Wed/Thu? -- Hannibal receives Francis's letter; sends his ad order to the Tattler.
Mon -- Francis's letter found in Hannibal's cell, FBI does their thing, finds Hannibal's Tattler ad, lets it run. Francis's note and Hannibal's ad in response are their entire correspondence.

There is no phone hack in the book, only the movie(s); the authorities in the book know that Hannibal made only one call in the relevant period, and we know but they don't that it was the one he used to get Will's address. Hannibal sent a letter with his ad order to the Tattler.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:22 AM on August 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Wait -- I could be wrong on that last part. Hannibal called Bloom's office to get Will's address on a Saturday, but it was the one before getting Francis's letter, so he could have called the Tattler on the following Saturday. It depends on which day Crawford's referring to.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:33 AM on August 4, 2015

But Lecter used the same social engineering in the book as in Manhunter. Only in Manhunter, though, did he hack the phone with the foil from a gum wrapper.
posted by tel3path at 7:15 AM on August 4, 2015

(Sorry -- I just reread the book last week, so my mindless pedantry apparently knows no bounds.)
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:31 AM on August 4, 2015

(I like the way that the piano music playing during the "They know" flashback manages to reference both the Dies Irae and Chopin's Funeral March.)
posted by Grangousier at 7:49 AM on August 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

I think even people who loved the first half would agree that it was an extended exercise in seeing just how much insane shit they could get away with.

This, though - while there are a few stumbling blocks for me (such as, why is THIS killer such a big deal, given all the killers-of-the-week with higher body counts we saw in the first one and a half seasons who were immediately shrugged off), I think they're doing a pretty amazing job of integrating the established canons of the show and the book. In the book, the crime reconstruction with Will and Hannibal has many of the same lines and includes Will's fear of being like the killer... but the depth of Will and Hannibal's relationship now and the extent of Will's fear is unique to this version, and the way they used the memory palace device to jump between parts of the crime made me think "this specific scene is what Bryan Fuller was imagining when he pitched this show four or five years ago."
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:33 AM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

So far, I don't think we've seen evidence that this Hannibal has much interest in the Dragon outside of as a tool to fuck with Will. That may change now that they've made direct contact, though.

I mean, even I, a fairly well-adjusted and kind person, wanted to screw with Dolarhyde and sic him on Will as a prank as soon as I heard him do that weirdo "THE RED DRAAAAAAAGON" thing on the phone. Something about it was so pathetically-yet-hilariously self-serious.

Dolarhyde is legitimately scary, and the creepiest villain the show has had so far imo. But he's also just such a...such a loser, I guess. He seems like a GIGANTIC loser.

You know who he's sort of like? Piggy from Lord of the Flies. Something about him just screams LOSER and OUTCAST. In the earlier seasons, it seemed like the show was trying to say that Will gave off that Gigantic Loser Outcast vibe, too. But it was always hard to buy imo, because something about Will is pretty appealing. And he isn't actually a Loser Outcast, he just has to hang around them for work and got the Loser Outcast scent on him that way. But in any case, Dolarhyde is much more repulsive and has a much more visible Kick Me sign on his back than Will has ever had! It's obvious that he's the real deal.

Maybe that's what attracts Hannibal to some of these "proteges" of his, though. He's a predator, so he's very good at sniffing out victims. And then he has fun hunting and tormenting and playing with them to death. I think that what attracts Hannibal to someone like Dolarhyde and what makes him want to play is the same thing that attracts a cat to a mouse. Which I guess the show has been hinting at, what with the cat metaphor they've been using for Hannibal, anyway. I don't think it's about Dolarhyde being an equal, I think it's about him being a fun toy.

You know how Mason would say things like, "we're going to have the funniest time!"? The thrilled, gleeful feeling that Mason seemed to get when he got a new victim or came up with a new "game" is the same feeling that I think that Hannibal gets when he gets a new fun toy (a "toy" like Dolarhyde). Will isn't a plaything to Hannibal, though, he's a playmate. That's the big difference between him and Dolarhyde or whoever in Hannibal's mind imo. But even as a playmate, obviously Will's going to get played with, too.

I think that Bedelia is also a playmate, to Hannibal. Except that she wouldn't actually join in the games. If Hannibal and Will are Miss Piggy and Kermit, then Bedelia is Statler or Waldorf. Thinking about it, I wonder what Bedelia is up to now that there's been a time jump?

Anyway, I think it's funny that Alana is the only character on the show who wasn't "too smart to breed," and that she not only was apparently "stupid" enough to have a baby, but she was so stupid as to have had it with MASON of all people. Mason and Alana are the only characters on this show who managed to ~create life.~ How crazy is that, especially since Alana says she's dead (and says it so convincingly that I almost believe her despite myself!) and...well, I won't go into why I find it ridiculous that the only man on this show to have successfully bred is MASON.

Perhaps I am just a bad fan or unappreciative of genius or something, but I am enjoying these 'new' episodes more than those at the beginning of this season.

I agree. Dreamscape!Europe got boring. Chinyo throwing Will from the train was the last straw for me. I thought I was just sick of the show altogether, but these last two episodes have been a lot of fun.

Maybe I'm a philistine, but I like when there's a plotline and some kind of suspense and forward momentum. It's just more fun that way.

Plus, I love Reba and I'm very interested in her story. The actress is one of my favorites and I was delighted to see her, too. This is embarrassingly superficial, but she's just so pretty. Even if she weren't also a good actress, I'd be happy to watch her all day (though luckily she is good!). I guess it's kind of a tragedy for a blind woman like Reba to be pretty like that, though. Talk about having a target or a Kick Me sign on your back. If only she were ugly, Dolarhyde probably wouldn't be bothering with her at all.

I hated hearing her say that she liked not feeling any pity from Dolarhyde, though. It's too bad that her options are apparently to either be pitied (by everyone aside from Dolarhyde) or to be abused (by Dolarhyde). There has to be a third option?!
posted by rue72 at 9:43 AM on August 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

There is only one railway line in Europe where steam locomotives regularly run, a regional line in Poland. Since Poland is en route from Lithuania to Italy, in theory they could have ridden on it, but it's well under 100km - so no need for a sleeper car. Not to mention the question of why they would have broken their journey to travel on that line.

Chiyoh's hair and red lipstick are good for about 1935. I think we're supposed to take the Hannibal Rising storyline as having taken place at about the same time it did in book canon - and she's a decade off even for that. Not to mention that she doesn't sleep with her hair in curlers (which she'd have to do in order to get that effect) nor remove her makeup before bed.

And of course the Jack Attack began with Hannibal being put through a glass cabinet - and not one made of safety glass either. That should have seriously injured Hannibal, and Jack shouldn't have been able to walk on the shards in sock feet.

And Will doing a double somersault off that caboose.

I'm pretty sure all that stuff was intended to be Looney Tunes. I mean, we were warned as soon as Hannibal said "let it be a fairy tale" in the opening episode. How much of that you can tolerate is a matter of taste, I guess.

It's gone more towards the pseudo-realistic end of the scale now Hannibal is in jail and gets to sit there chewing on the bitter taste of reality day after day. And Dolarhyde is visibly a man with a real illness that causes him to think he's a fantastical monster when he isn't, so the "reality" is necessary for that contrast to work.
posted by tel3path at 9:49 AM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

the sniper/assassin Chiyoh wearing red and flashy metallic buttons that would give away her position as soon as the sun shined

Only if you're looking for a sniper, and in downtown Florence who is?
posted by tel3path at 9:54 AM on August 4, 2015

I'm wondering whether they should've maybe pruned one or two episodes out of the Europe arc or whether it will later turn out that those episodes needed to be there.
posted by tel3path at 9:55 AM on August 4, 2015

I kind of like dreamscape! Europe more now that we moved on into this story, it's like a "I had to tell you that story to tell you this story" they contrast well.
posted by The Whelk at 10:07 AM on August 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

Exactly! We can sort of take all of season 3.1 as a fairy tale, and it concludes with a literal fairy tale ending - the (guy who thinks he's a) hero 'nobly' sacrificing himself for his beloved.

And now we've snapped back to reality and the full implications of doing so have become apparent, maybe he's starting to wonder if that was such a great fucking idea.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:11 AM on August 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

doesn't seem to care that if his actions result in misery, it is not just misery for him

Which actions?
posted by tel3path at 10:36 AM on August 4, 2015

Sorry that wasn't just a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely curious.
posted by tel3path at 10:37 AM on August 4, 2015

I mean, calling the house to warn Hannibal that Jack was coming didn't work out so hot
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:39 AM on August 4, 2015

And, he wasn't being entirely truthful to Jack when he said "he's given me nothing I can use!" He watched the man snap another guy's neck, after all.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:39 AM on August 4, 2015

AND, even if you say, forget all that stuff, everything was ultimately Hannibal's doing and not Will's - Will was still the catalyst for Hannibal to do it, and now he's back to being all catalyst-y.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:42 AM on August 4, 2015

I mean, calling the house to warn Hannibal that Jack was coming didn't work out so hot

It didn't work out well, but it was intended to spare Jack the misery of getting attacked by Hannibal. One reason it failed was because Jack had already deviated from the plan by going there early. So that one doesn't count as not caring about causing misery.

he wasn't being entirely truthful to Jack when he said "he's given me nothing I can use!" He watched the man snap another guy's neck, after all.

Definitely. However, he watched the man snap another guy's neck after that same man had strung Hannibal up and told Will to cut his throat, with the intent to feed Hannibal to the pigs, and then do the same to Will. This was also after Mason, who had been abusing Margot all her life, had seriously injured her and submitted her to a forced hysterectomy. Snapping someone's neck doesn't amount to a murder charge, which is what the mission was about. I mean I'm not arguing that all this was good clean recreation, but it also seems to come from the opposite of indifference to others' misery (except Mason's, which is understandable).
posted by tel3path at 10:45 AM on August 4, 2015

I mean I'm not arguing that all this was good clean recreation, but it also seems to come from the opposite of indifference to others' misery

But if Will had still been thinking clearly at that point, he would have realized that he had gone from trying to catch the cannibalistic mass murderer to actively protecting the cannibalistic mass murderer - which was, as he later admitted, because he was friends with the the cannibalistic mass murderer. I mean, we've all seen the show, so we get it, but it wasn't exactly smart.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:52 AM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, but he also said that he denied himself the thing he really wanted because "the right thing being the wrong thing to do was just too ugly a thought". I agree that warning Hannibal away was not exactly smart, but at that time all options had been eliminated - he and Jack were going in without even the protection of the law. I feel like Hannibal with a head start and Jack alive, was a genuinely preferable situation to Jack going in for a showdown completely on his own, and getting finely ground into patties. They ended up with the worst of both worlds, but that really isn't all on Will.

Will is kind of in an impossible situation once again, in the present, where he can do nothing right.

From one point of view - advocated by Jack and Molly - returning to the field is right, and that includes returning to Hannibal for "advice" and what are those holes in the cell wall for. If You Go Back, You Will Help People.

From another point of view - advocated by Hannibal, Alana and Freddie - it's a one-way ticket to crazytown. If You Go Back, You Will Hurt People.

Out of all these five people expressing opinions, only two have both Will's interests and the public good at heart - and only one is incisively correct. This one would be Alana.

Molly's view is also incisively correct - that Will is inevitably going to be drawn in - but the actual advice she gives him is "do it, it is right".

New!Alana is the one who really got through to Will, and after it was too late - he immediately started having nightmares about Molly being the one getting killed.

Now I'm not implying Will can't think for himself - those points of view were being expressed to help the audience think about it, not to help Will think about it.

Will is drawn in because Will is drawn in; concern for the public good isn't all of it, but it is part of it. I feel like denying that is as unbalanced as saying that he really only wants to go back to his ex. He has multiple motives and conflicts. One of those motives definitely is protecting the families, since it was Jack showing him the photos that was the decisive manipulative move.
posted by tel3path at 11:00 AM on August 4, 2015

Starting with the clownishly nouveau-riche outfits and ostentatious 'this is what a non-artistocratic person thinks an aristocrat acts like' episodes at the beginning of the season, to his comments now he is locked away often coming across as petulant, or at the very least not as stinging as he thought them to be.

I agree. I think that Hannibal was going for "Becky Sharp, but as a Murderous Cannibal" but ended up acting more like a caricature from an early 2000s rap video. LOOK MY DRINKS ARE OVERLY EXPENSIVE, LOOK I GO TO THE MOST EXCLUSIVE PARTIES, AND LOOK I DRESS BETTER THAN ANYBODY ELSE THERE, etc etc etc. I felt like the show spent too long ruminating on the ideas that Hannibal is tacky and Europe is in a time warp. But eh, there's no accounting for taste! :P

Personally, I prefer Hannibal in this zoo-like prison where his cell is made up as an artificial version of his "natural habitat." His boredom and isolation will force him to be cleverer than he was in the first half of the season. And I also like Alana as she is now, which seems to be as a sort of good!vampire.

It's like we've turned a corner in the story, and now Hannibal is Nosferatu and Alana is Edward Cullen. I'm intrigued!
posted by rue72 at 11:05 AM on August 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

...another point about snapping Mason's neck is that Will had to have told Jack something, because Jack paid Mason a visit the next day. And Mason's testimony was that he had fallen into the pigpen.

A living witness is necessary to the mission because Will's testimony is considered a priori worthless - any testimony has to come from a third party.
posted by tel3path at 11:07 AM on August 4, 2015

Don't forget the "dance floor parts like the Red Sea as cool guy busts incredible moves" scene.

Twice, if you include reciting Dante at Sogliato.
posted by tel3path at 11:09 AM on August 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

I guess my basic objection to the "Will causes drama for everyone" argument is that his overall trajectory has been pushing for the world to be put back to a legal state. One where Hannibal is recognized as a monster, and appropriately contained. One where Abigail is protected.

He kind of ends up being the one who walks off the glass cliff every time *because* of this persistence. You can point out all the things that were wrong with the undercover mission but it was still Jack's job to keep things ship-shape so that the options for investigating Hannibal never deteriorated to a dubious Mr Big situation in the first place. So Will plays the cards he has, which are also the ones that expose him to the greatest danger of identifying with his target. Anybody in an undercover investigation can wind up identifying with the target, and that's an especial hazard for Will. And he had no real support in his mission, because Jack isn't into properly supporting his agents, you know like Beverly.
posted by tel3path at 11:19 AM on August 4, 2015

If Hannibal and Will are Miss Piggy and Kermit, then Bedelia is Statler or Waldorf.

Quoted for awesome!

Hannibal and Will are also a little like Lucy and Schroeder, but to extend your analogy, this would mean Alana is now Sam the Eagle! And Jack is . . . maybe Dr. Bunsen Honeydew with Preller as Beaker? Francis is probably the Swedish chef or one of the human guest stars, I suppose.
posted by FelliniBlank at 11:21 AM on August 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Alana as Sam the Eagle! LOL that cracks me up.
posted by rue72 at 11:24 AM on August 4, 2015

I think Mason is the Swedish Chef, though. Francis is definitely a human guest star.
posted by rue72 at 11:25 AM on August 4, 2015

Hello, Dr. Lecter
posted by FelliniBlank at 11:26 AM on August 4, 2015

I'd say the Swedish Chef was Chilton.
posted by tel3path at 11:27 AM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Or maybe Chilton is Lou Zealand and his Amazing Juggling Fish Act.
posted by tel3path at 11:29 AM on August 4, 2015

the pie might the first "normal" non-gourmet, non-cannibal food we've seen on the show.

We have very rarely seen anyone eat anywhere else than at Hannibal's table; Jack at the Pazzi's is the only instance I can remember. Jack and Bella, maybe? Will basically doesn't ever eat unless Hannibal's feeding him.

Reba using the toothpick to mark the center of the pie was a nice detail. I can't recall now if it's from the book or the movies or both. But I liked the way that here it was shown only incidentally as a natural part of her process: not lingered on as a "life is more difficult because she's blind" signifier.

(It always bugs me a bit that Manhunter portrays Reba as confident and competent until the ending, which is very much "helpless blind woman needs rescue.")
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 11:29 AM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

The pie toothpick is in the book; it describes the whole "how a blind person cuts a pie" procedure.
posted by FelliniBlank at 11:31 AM on August 4, 2015

Well if it's any consolation, I think enough people have pointed out "Hey Will, you're a catalyst for bad things happening" that he's no longer oblivious to it. He's having nightmares and everything.
posted by tel3path at 11:31 AM on August 4, 2015

And it describes how Francis is thinking about biting off her fingers as she uses them to measure the pie.
posted by tel3path at 11:32 AM on August 4, 2015

That's where having read the book is helpful. Armitage is doing a great job of projecting Francis's general creepy attitudes, but knowing precisely what he's thinking when he's with Reba is extra-scarifying.
posted by FelliniBlank at 11:34 AM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, but I still think they've gone too far in portraying him as a loser, rather than as someone who walks a line between being loserly and impressive.
posted by tel3path at 11:36 AM on August 4, 2015

(It always bugs me a bit that Manhunter portrays Reba as confident and competent until the ending, which is very much "helpless blind woman needs rescue.")

Yeah, a big part of me is rooting, probably in vain, that this Reba will get to do something extremely painful to him at some point.
posted by FelliniBlank at 11:36 AM on August 4, 2015

I had forgotten that detail until someone else brought it up! The scene was still super unsettling for me even having forgotten it.
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:37 AM on August 4, 2015

It's horrible, though -- I feel so sad for Francis, but I also want her to hit him a lot with a fireplace poker.
posted by FelliniBlank at 11:38 AM on August 4, 2015 [4 favorites]

You know... maybe I'm defending Will too much. It does seem as though he's failed at every single thing he's tried since episode 1. By their fruits shall ye know them and all that. Red Dragon is in essence a book about how Will fails at the most basic task of any given amino acid - to protect his family. We certainly pity him, but in the end, the Green Machine doesn't care.

He failed to protect Abigail, and you could argue that Abigail died three times because of him when she only really needed to die once. And since the world seems to be overall a happier place despite, or even because of, Hannibal munching his way through Baltimore society - maybe he should have just left well enough alone. No wonder they wanted him in jail!
posted by tel3path at 11:48 AM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

But I liked the way that here it was shown only incidentally as a natural part of her process: not lingered on as a "life is more difficult because she's blind" signifier.

Me too, and I liked how Wesley's performance and dialogue (even more than the book) emphasized her backbone and take-no-shit-ness rather than her vulnerability in this situation, so it's probably for the best that we weren't privy to Francis's thoughts since it sort of helps dismantle that "we share killer's perspective as they enjoy looking at a [physically or situationally] blind or unknowing female potential victim from a position of power" thing a bit.

I mean, I love Jonathan Demme, but I HATED his choice to shoot that one chunk of the Silence of the Lambs basement scene using Gumb's visual perspective. Totally gratuitous and exploitive.
posted by FelliniBlank at 11:53 AM on August 4, 2015

Alana's lips are that colour naturally now, which is how she's able to hold down a busy life as a mom, a Hannibal jailer and a pig farmer. Also her hair is held in that faux-bob by a greater force and she hasn't needed to style it in 3 years.
posted by tel3path at 12:18 PM on August 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

Well it ties in with Hannibal's jibes about "ready-made family because you knew better than to breed with your defective genes" (gay double entendres aside).

Francis is disabled and lives his life in shame and total self-loathing because that's how he was brought up. Reba is disabled and lives her life in love and confidence because that's how she was brought up.

Do you think Marlana are wangsting about Mason's defective genes? Maybe, but I hope not. My assumption is that they'll bring him up in a new regime.
posted by tel3path at 12:26 PM on August 4, 2015

Mason is Animal.
posted by tel3path at 12:33 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Red Dragon is in essence a book about how Will fails at the most basic task of any given amino acid - to protect his family. We certainly pity him, but in the end, the Green Machine doesn't care.

In the book, Will couldn't be expected to know or predict that his family would be at risk, but in ShowUniverse I'm really hoping we learn later that he and/or Jack have had Molly and Walter under invisible but comprehensive protection ever since Jack showed up in the driveway. If all the events of the past two episodes have occurred without Will taking care of that, he's pretty negligent. When Hannibal goes, "[sniff sniff] I see you have a wife and stepson now in the piny woods; remember Abigail?" your next step should be to get on the fucking phone to the FBI unless you've already got it covered. About the least awful thing that could happen is Freddie Lounds appearing on Molly's doorstep to ask for her take on the reunited murder husbands.
posted by FelliniBlank at 12:35 PM on August 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm guessing that that's why Will is so terrified - in his mind, protection from the FBI is no protection at all, so his family are now completely at the mercy of both Hannibal and the Tooth Fairy. I don't know what resources Will has, but I'm guessing he basically has nothing.

As for Jack - I think that one reason he's so readily turned to Will is because he will be able to use Will's perfect family as bait. To be certain of having the opportunity to do this, he needs to triangulate Hannibal into all this.

As to why Jack would be so ruthless - Old Testament revenge. If you take the view that everything since mid-S2 is Will's fault, if not before, then it's Jack's turn to destroy Will and have him killed the same way Will destroyed Jack and had him killed.

Admittedly, Will is only guilty of *wanting* to run away with Hannibal, but it seems like in this show, and in the prevailing worldview about this show, thoughtcrime has the same status as actual crime. For example, Cleolinda talks about how "the two of them" - as in, Hannibal and Will - ruined Abigail's life, and there is also a lot of talk about how Will's memory of Abigail is inaccurate, and what this adds up to is a prevailing worldview that Will is just as much Abigail's murderer as Hannibal is. That Will is both guilty of wanting to run away with Hannibal (Hannibal, Abigail's murderer) and also provoked Hannibal to kill Abigail by not running away with Hannibal, seems to make this logic completely inescapable if you subscribe to it.

I have to say that I totally disagree with this view, though. Alana was the one with formal responsibility for Abigail, Alana was the one who advertised herself as Abigail's protector, Alana was the one who chose Hannibal over Abigail when the chips were down despite having personally witnessed Hannibal lying about the nature and quantity of the drugs he gave Abigail. So I held and continue to hold Alana as the person who is the most culpable for Abigail's death apart from Hannibal himself. ISTM Alana took to heart Chilton's jibe that "you got yourself to that window, if not through it" and part of the reason she's locked herself up in the BSHCI with Hannibal is because she's taking responsibility for acting as Hannibal's lure all that time. I say "responsibility" in a practical sense because I don't think she would be in that role if she didn't think her knowledge of Hannibal made her the only person competent to contain him. Alana is not like Chiyoh, she is pragmatic to the core, and I think if Alana thought her job could be done by basically anyone - and if Chilton weren't a candidate - she'd be outta there without so much as a postcard.

But yeah, anyway, Will has somewhat belatedly faced up to the fact that he has signed his family's death warrant and has literally no possible means of protecting them.

Oops.
posted by tel3path at 1:57 PM on August 4, 2015

Hmmm, pine trees, that narrows it down to pretty much all of Canada
posted by tel3path at 3:23 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

If Will does think he can't protect his family, it probably comes out of the abuse-survivor thing he shares with Bedelia ("he'll find me wherever I go, so I may as well go to Florence with him"), but geez, dude, doing something is better than doing nothing.

But actually, it's probably just another function of the usual "people in this world are pretty dense" rule that prevented them from suspecting the sinister theremin guy. Everyone (except Alana) blithely assumes Hannibal isn't a threat while he's locked up, to the point where they're like "Oh, yawn, why bother with caller ID? This is just a prison chock full of sly homicidal maniacs, after all. Why should we care who people are talking to?"
posted by FelliniBlank at 3:28 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

yeah, only Jack intercepted his mail so it seems like they've taken a level in not being completely gormless
posted by tel3path at 3:35 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

yeah, only Jack intercepted his mail so it seems like they've taken a level in not being completely gormless

And the great part about that is it actually assisted Hannibal in getting his card to Will!
posted by FelliniBlank at 3:43 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah! They're now fucking Will over knowingly instead of unconsciously!

You know what country still has all its steam rolling stock? Iceland. On another show I'd say they probably didn't travel from Lithuania to Italy via Iceland but on this show it could have happened.
posted by tel3path at 4:12 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

i love how the Hannibal we were first introduced to was all badass and incisive and powerful, and the Hannibal we're getting now is just a rude ineffectual dweeb.
posted by tel3path at 4:13 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

However, to a guy like Dolarhyde, he seems pretty effectual...
posted by tel3path at 4:14 PM on August 4, 2015

What the Flick review. They generally quite liked it, and have some nice insights, love Molly like all right-thinking people.

The only thing I didn't quite get: Not quite sure why they're mystified by Abi's relevance to the episode (mentioned right at the start not so much as a criticism but as a question mark). They're contrasting the family home life Will has now with the home life he might've had with Hannibal with the home life Dolarhyde never got to have and is now murderously destroying. There was the heavy implication of it at the end of S2 and such but since they were keeping Abigail's not-dead status a secret until the finale, they've never dramatized it or shown it to us before and filling that in a little here was a good idea imo.
posted by sparkletone at 4:20 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

yeah, and another reason to keep Kacey Rohl around, and making the point that not only is Hannibal not funny and a dweeb and all that, but he is also the actual worst and deserves to be in jail and not to have us feel too bad for him, he murders his own children on a whim, he murders Will's children on a whim, he fattens you up to believe you are his very own and then he slashes your throat, ASKRUGEHIUERHGIUWHKUREGHIWUHREIUHIHHATEYOUHANNIBAL

Strange that Hannibal adopting a kid and murdering her, as an explanation for how he's bad, is too subtle for some people. On another show, for example, this would not be considered a subtle clue to whether someone is a villain or not.
posted by tel3path at 4:32 PM on August 4, 2015

I tellya, all these reviewers need to be more careful about getting the episode titles right. I kind of can't wait until the utter chaos of this week when everyone starts calling Ep 10 by Ep 9's title and vice versa, or some bastardization of the two, or thinks Ep 10 is a vicious NBC re-run or something.

Meanwhile, so excited for Episode 10 since back in June we were promised a Very Special Non-SpoilerizedThing in that episode!
posted by FelliniBlank at 4:33 PM on August 4, 2015

And Fuller has been working up to this for all. Three. Years.

Hannibal goes from a fairytale cartoon universe where he can get branded and feel no pain, to a realiverse where even the plushest conditions are no consolation for the fact that he's screwed.
posted by tel3path at 4:34 PM on August 4, 2015

Special thing?
posted by tel3path at 4:34 PM on August 4, 2015

Where's Greg Nog? Probably on vacation neglecting his life's work or something
posted by tel3path at 4:35 PM on August 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

Honestly, that absence is more upsetting to me than the lack of previews if only because [redacted thing we kinda already knew was coming but which Bryan confirmed is coming in an @ reply on twitter which sated my desire for a preview clip].
posted by sparkletone at 9:38 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Anyway, I've been thinking a bit more about my impression of this episode and the last one and trying to pinpoint what feels different/seems to be missing for me. I think a big part of it is that we started the previous episode with a long focus on Dolarhyde at the beginning of the episode, and that section just didn't hold a lot of interest/importance to me, even though it was obvious that they were introducing the new murderer.

Hmm, thinking about this - also from the perspective of someone who hasn't read the books/seen the movies - I have a bunch of disjointed thoughts on what I feel is a change of tone that I actually find more marked than either season transition, in ways that are both good and a little frustrating:

-One part (that I am entirely on board with) is that they have, I think, sold the time jump rather well, and that's necessarily going to affect the tone. (And actually - beyond the obvious awkward/acrimonious reunion of exes bit - I think this might be one of the other reasons I was thinking of Scenes from a Marriage after seeing this episode. It's one of the better examples I can think of that manages not just to communicate that time has passed, but, also, to illustrate without necessarily stating outright the ways that the people involved have grown and changed over that time period, and how that affects interpersonal dynamics.) But all this means that we're (or at least I am) very invested in figuring out what's changed with the main characters.

-At the same time, Dolarhyde wasn't directly connected to any of the heretofore main characters until the very end of the second episode of this arc. While it was clear he would intersect with them eventually, of course, it's a slow intro. And while he's definitely compelling, it wasn't clear at the outset (particularly before all the focus on the idea of family became apparent) why he's different in significance than the previous killers-of-the-week. Some of them killed quite a few people, and some of them had vividly, compellingly mad motivations, so it was (and to some extent is) unclear why this guy, of all the other Art Murderers presumably at work in the past 3 years, will be the one that catalyzes the next chunk of Plot. Perhaps Fuller et al were too good at coming up with Art Murderers, and so Dolarhyde stands out less than he does in the books/movies, at least so far?

-Finally, I do feel like they might be leaning a bit on viewers' knowledge of the canon here. If I hadn't caught "Dolarhyde" and "Reba" in reviews and comments here, I'm pretty sure I still wouldn't have names for them, either, beyond "Mr. D" for Dolarhyde. (Maybe I missed something? Or maybe it's because neither character has spoken to anyone else or been spoken about by a third party, by name?) That's fine for a serial-killer-of-the-week, but a little odd for a character (and now two characters) who I have reason to assume will be pretty important.

Now, I still do find the Dolarhyde/Reba stuff engaging and am confident it'll pay off. But to me, it almost feels like their scenes are on a slightly different/parallel show at this point, given the lack of two and a half seasons of history & direct connections to the main characters (until that call). While a lot of the book/movie references so far have (as far as I can tell based on reactions) been clever bonuses for people who're familiar with the story, this is probably one of the few points where I do think familiarity with the canon is more than just a bonus, but actually something that helps give the new characters and their story the weight that they are intended to have.
posted by ubersturm at 1:34 AM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

i just

It has gradually sunk in with me that, after seeing Hannibal strung up and tortured and bribing him with Will to let him go...

Alana now thinks that threatening to take Hannibal's toilet away will stop him from messing with Will.

Oh God I overestimated her again

On the other hand, I don't exactly have a better idea.
posted by tel3path at 4:25 AM on August 5, 2015

you know I often find that on TV shows you're just expected to know a character's name without being told. Irks the hell out of me.
posted by tel3path at 4:27 AM on August 5, 2015

Oh dear.

It isn't Hannibal whose greatest fear is the loss of dignity. It's Alana.
posted by tel3path at 11:22 AM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

As a writer, the most awkward thing is introducing people's names into the script. Especially in this situation of Dolarhyde, when he is existing parallel to the main action. When do you give his name without it seeming like exposition? "Hi, I'd like to buy some false teeth, my name is Dolarhyde. Franics Dolarhyde". People don't use each other's names, especially if they already know each other.

So in this case, maybe we are expected to know his name without actually saying it on the show. But I'm okay with that. Even when people introduce themselves IRL, I often forget.
posted by crossoverman at 5:15 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

The first words we hear Dolarhyde say are him introducing himself to Reba. She recognizes the name from inter-office communications of one kind or another and calls him Mr D.
posted by wabbittwax at 5:36 PM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

I think we maybe saw his name written down in the previous episode.

The giant letters in the cafeteria are part of the name that Reba mentions: Gateway.

I can totally rationalize that the families (at least one of whom live in Dwell-esque modernist luxury) are the kind of rich folks who do their home movies on film because they can. I am also happy to further rationalize that in Fuller's version of reality, there are plenty such families doing the same thing.
posted by ocherdraco at 9:12 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

horrible thought

horrible horrible thought

what if

Bedelia's warning: Hannibal will convince you to kill someone you love, and you will think it is the only choice you have

Hannibal's warning: I will kill you, Alana

Supposing Will gets maneuvered into killing Alana, somehow?

It won't have the same emotional resonance for him anymore, is the thing. The main effect it would have would be to make the audience see Will as irredeemable.
posted by tel3path at 8:26 AM on August 6, 2015

...from the start of this season at least, Alana has focussed on Hannibal's tastes as the most important thing about him.

She used his tastes to track him down in Florence. But she also said "the first step in the development of taste is to be willing to credit your own opinion" and then immediately negated that by saying that, in matters of taste, she had to follow Hannibal's lead. One of the two meanings of that statement is accounted for by literally "following his lead" for investigative purposes, but the other implies that Hannibal remains her thought leader in defining what good taste is and is not. Her changed manner of dress reinforces that idea, though it doesn't seem to be particularly consequential, like who cares if Alana puts on a Hannibaly suit if she does so while on a mission to capture him. I'm still not sure what the significance of this will ultimately prove to be but...

Now she's saying to his face that the cessation of her pandering to his material preferences, to the point of outright removing his dignity, are the punishment that will disincentivize him from messing with Will Graham.

I don't know what punishment would disincentivize him, but that isn't it.

Alana, having known Hannibal longer than anyone else, knows *his* tastes - not necessarily her own, the only wine we see her drinking is his choice of wine, and she's drinking it at him. Having known Hannibal longer than anyone else, she seems to really believe that material comfort overrides Hannigram for him. Which makes sense because Hannigram changed everything for Hannibal and made taste not the deal-breaking thing in his life any more. Yet, she relied on his taste for Will to undo the Gordian knot at Muskrat Farm. Does she think he's gone back to his old self?

Of course Alana isn't awash with choices here, since violence won't bother him (short of a credible threat to kill him, which Alana would have to be very careful about making) and confiscating his toys is the one threat she has over him other than violence.
posted by tel3path at 10:46 AM on August 6, 2015

We're saved! Greg Nog is back!
posted by tel3path at 2:38 PM on August 6, 2015 [9 favorites]

Oh wow, that's the real Baltimore FBI office number. There's some attention to detail.
posted by figurant at 6:20 PM on August 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

that was a tour de force
posted by showbiz_liz at 6:46 PM on August 6, 2015

RE the Dolarhyde name issue, in the very first shot of him at work in the previous ep he's wearing his name tag that says "F. Dolarhyde".
posted by carsonb at 7:01 PM on August 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

I knew we'd seen it onscreen.
posted by ocherdraco at 7:53 PM on August 6, 2015

RE the Dolarhyde name issue, in the very first shot of him at work in the previous ep he's wearing his name tag that says "F. Dolarhyde".

Man, I would have totally thought I paid more attention to text, but apparently I pick out more TV/movie information from spoken content than I realized. Perhaps the more numerous sets of conversational pairings among the heretofore main characters provided more opportunities for name repetition, allowing me to better solidify my grasp on who's who? But that aside (and it only was meant to be a side comment on the show having not quite sold me yet on Dolarhyde as part of the main story vs. an interesting side story), definitely looking forward to the (ahem) upcoming episode, not mention Greg Nog's helpful recap.
posted by ubersturm at 11:50 PM on August 6, 2015

We're saved! Greg Nog is back!

FUCK. Could Amazon at least pick this up even if the actual show isn't going to work?
posted by sparkletone at 2:12 AM on August 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

Greg's work is not going unnoticed.
posted by sparkletone at 2:15 AM on August 7, 2015 [8 favorites]

Greg's gonna regret that missing "L" when Lil' Friendys takes off I bet.
posted by carsonb at 1:55 PM on August 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

IT'S TIME FOR NOG TO SHINE
posted by The Whelk at 2:01 PM on August 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

I knew we'd seen it onscreen.

As mentioned above, there's a ridiculous amount of non-verbal exposition that goes into the Dolarhyde introduction. It's been a few decades since I read the book, so I'm sure I'm missing a lot of the little hints, but even in my memory's decrepit state I was impressed at how they introduced him without any dialog. And yeah, it makes his first words, his 'introduction' to Reba, that much more powerful for all of the (black blood-soaked howling) non-talking beforehand.
posted by carsonb at 2:06 PM on August 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

Commenting here because I haven't seen the new ep yet (tonight!).

Had a very nice conversation with a Hulu publicist a moment ago who informed me they just this week cast Hugh Dancy for a new series. And, of course, they're not picking up Hannibal. Not looking good for ssn 4. =/
posted by carsonb at 4:44 PM on August 7, 2015

The show is called 'The Way' and co-stars Aaron Paul. Dancy will play Cal Roberts, a cult leader. Harumph.
posted by carsonb at 5:03 PM on August 7, 2015

At this point, any potential fourth season would be seriously delayed regardless, because of American Gods. If we get it, it will be well after that series shoots (apparently they're starting next month and airing in January!)
posted by showbiz_liz at 6:56 PM on August 7, 2015

Also, even if this show is terrible I will enjoy seeing more of Dancy's Intense Glowering Face. And I feel like he and Aaron Paul could have a truly memorable cryingscreaming contest.
posted by showbiz_liz at 6:57 PM on August 7, 2015

Cult husbands!

Coupla more thoughts on re-watch of this episode:

The difference between hunting with your father and hunting with Hannibal, Abigail, is the difference between being the predator and being his prey. You'll have the time of your life!

"The Great Red Dragon" would be a fun thing to utter if you had a problem making lips and tongue work properly.
posted by carsonb at 7:31 PM on August 7, 2015

(No 's' sounds, which is hard to say/type without making 's' sounds.)
posted by carsonb at 7:33 PM on August 7, 2015

I'm intrigued by the thing Dancy was cast for, though it's too far in the future for me to feel excited about it really. And we already knew Hulu was a no-go, so no harrumphing from me. Can't expect him to sit around waiting, he's done other projects during Hannibal's off season too. He's got that Claire Danes and a kid to help feed!
posted by sparkletone at 7:39 PM on August 7, 2015

guys guys guys

someone in the AV club mentioned that dignity pants are the term for underpants for managing incontinence

MORAL DIGNITY PANTS INDEED, HOW FORESHADOWING OF YOU LECTER.

layers this show has, layers.
posted by The Whelk at 3:13 PM on August 22, 2015

I know Will lives in the Land of Perpetual Winter but he wouldn't always be waking up drenched in sweat if he didn't sleep in a long shirt and pantaloons. They look like trousers! And I swear it looks like he was wearing shoes. If you have regular night terrors about your murder husband and other terrible murdery things, maybe invest in some breathable underwear. How often does he wash his sheets? Maybe he should just sleep in the bathtub.
posted by guiseroom at 3:44 PM on November 17, 2017