Hannibal: Trou Normand Rewatch
October 24, 2014 9:12 AM - Season 1, Episode 9 - Subscribe
A shocking revelation in tonight's episode: Freddie is a vegetarian!
It's a weird moment. Will doesn't mention the dude Abigail killed, but after Abigail says, "I don't have anything to hide," she and Will make eye contact for a few seconds. This, I think, is the moment where Abigail realizes that Will knows. Hannibal and Freddie then discuss how best to protect Abigail, during which Abigail takes a bite of the meat; after putting it in her mouth, she looks intensely at Will again, but Will isn't doing anything right at that moment, so it doesn't seem to be in reaction to him, which to me is why it reads odd. But if she'd realized the meat was human, wouldn't she look to Hannibal?
posted by stebulus at 10:09 AM on October 24, 2014
posted by stebulus at 10:09 AM on October 24, 2014
Actually what struck me most during this episode is that the serial killers in the show are really quite unlike those in the books. With the exception of Hannibal himself, of course, Harris' serial killers are disturbed in very Freudian ways, and not very romanticizable. No one wants to be Jame Gumb, or Francis Dollarhyde. But in the show, Tobias last week and Lance Henriksen's character this week are very capable people, whose murderous inclinations don't seem to come out of disturbing Freudian dysfunction and suffering. At least, not as far as we're shown, which leaves us with a very romanticizable power-fantasy type of serial killer.
posted by stebulus at 1:12 PM on October 25, 2014
posted by stebulus at 1:12 PM on October 25, 2014
Yes, it seems that the problem isn't that Tobias was a pathetic boring loser (as serial killers actually tend to be) but that he just wasn't *as* fabulous as Hannibal. And Gideon's problem was posing as someone more fabulous than he really was.
No wonder everyone treats Hannibal like the captain of the high school football team, long past the point when you'd be expecting them to notice that it fucking rhymes.
posted by tel3path at 2:10 PM on October 25, 2014
No wonder everyone treats Hannibal like the captain of the high school football team, long past the point when you'd be expecting them to notice that it fucking rhymes.
posted by tel3path at 2:10 PM on October 25, 2014
Oh, also, what is Hannibal going to be for Halloween?
Well, he's going to be a homicidal maniac, they look just like everyone else!!!
Then he is going to be puzzled and crestfallen when he doesn't get the Addams Family reference. Makes a note to eat Christina Ricci at some point, for stealing his joke.
posted by tel3path at 3:43 PM on October 25, 2014 [1 favorite]
Well, he's going to be a homicidal maniac, they look just like everyone else!!!
Then he is going to be puzzled and crestfallen when he doesn't get the Addams Family reference. Makes a note to eat Christina Ricci at some point, for stealing his joke.
posted by tel3path at 3:43 PM on October 25, 2014 [1 favorite]
Also, he gives out homemade candy apples to kids, but the twist is they're not people. He tells himself this has nothing to do with principle.
Actually, we are led to believe that Hannibal wouldn't hurt a child (correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't read Hannibal Rising) and one reason he hates Mason is because Mason hurts a) his sister and b) secondarily, children.
But it's never stated outright and Hannibal would never do anything so crass as to have a Dexter-type principle like "never children". I think that given the chance, he would bring up a child with no illusions about life as he sees it, which means it's just as well that he doesn't often interact with children. However, I could believe him finding it distasteful to harm a child (for some value of harm, probably equating to his own maltreatment as a child) in part because a child is not yet a full-grown pig and can still be redeemed.
ON THE OTHER HAND Abigail is effectively a child when she enters the story. De facto if not de jure. And he wastes no time corrupting the shit out of her, and he does so BECAUSE she has a child's naivete and BECAUSE he can bring her up to be what he wants her to be. So that kinda bursts that bubble, doesn't it? Would he do the same if Abigail were fifteen? How about seventeen?
I doubt we'll find out because I don't think the show wants to go there. Though it did in Oeuf, just not with Hannibal.
posted by tel3path at 3:51 PM on October 25, 2014
Actually, we are led to believe that Hannibal wouldn't hurt a child (correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't read Hannibal Rising) and one reason he hates Mason is because Mason hurts a) his sister and b) secondarily, children.
But it's never stated outright and Hannibal would never do anything so crass as to have a Dexter-type principle like "never children". I think that given the chance, he would bring up a child with no illusions about life as he sees it, which means it's just as well that he doesn't often interact with children. However, I could believe him finding it distasteful to harm a child (for some value of harm, probably equating to his own maltreatment as a child) in part because a child is not yet a full-grown pig and can still be redeemed.
ON THE OTHER HAND Abigail is effectively a child when she enters the story. De facto if not de jure. And he wastes no time corrupting the shit out of her, and he does so BECAUSE she has a child's naivete and BECAUSE he can bring her up to be what he wants her to be. So that kinda bursts that bubble, doesn't it? Would he do the same if Abigail were fifteen? How about seventeen?
I doubt we'll find out because I don't think the show wants to go there. Though it did in Oeuf, just not with Hannibal.
posted by tel3path at 3:51 PM on October 25, 2014
Meant to say: if a trick-or-treater is rude he merely says "you've been very rude, young [costume]. No candy apple for you." And then he withholds the candy apple. He doesn't give out special cyanide or razor blade apples to offenders, out of what he tells himself is sentimentality.
posted by tel3path at 4:13 PM on October 25, 2014
posted by tel3path at 4:13 PM on October 25, 2014
the fading into the background of the procedural elements is hilarious in this episode cause a huge TOWER OF BODIES is resolved in one short scene cause we're much more into the ongoing Drama of Hannibal and Will (and Abigail). The second season turns that Killer of week focus onto the main characters, drawing them deep into their stories and integrating them better cause it has fewer of them while also having macabre one-offs like Bee Lady. (and the Killer Of The Week are more thematically tied to the main character's drama. the show loves mimics and mirrors, so we get Franklyn and Tobias as lesser reflections of our mains(.
Would Hannibal hurt a child? Well I think he'd do anything when you get down to it, that cultivated sense is just as much a part of his person suit as anything else, but Abigail had been involved in murder and coercion, and is apparently really good at it. Like with Will, he sees a lot of potential there and he loves to cultivate/vampire covert the rare people he finds with the right profile.
posted by The Whelk at 8:30 PM on October 26, 2014 [1 favorite]
Would Hannibal hurt a child? Well I think he'd do anything when you get down to it, that cultivated sense is just as much a part of his person suit as anything else, but Abigail had been involved in murder and coercion, and is apparently really good at it. Like with Will, he sees a lot of potential there and he loves to cultivate/vampire covert the rare people he finds with the right profile.
posted by The Whelk at 8:30 PM on October 26, 2014 [1 favorite]
I think that Hannibal would feel like a dumbass going after a child, the same way I think he would feel like a dumbass returning bottles and cans to collect the deposit. Or the same way I think he'd feel like a dumbass riding a kick scooter to work.* I dunno, if necessary I guess he could do it, but it's not exactly glamorous.
On the other hand, I don't feel like it would be some big deal to him if he did decide to kill a kid. He murdered Abigail's friend basically because she called her mom a bitch and because he felt like messing with Abigail, and she was what, a high schooler? Ultimately, I think that if he's curious about something or finds it convenient, he'll try it out to see what happens. He'll always be able to justify it to himself later, he's far from his own harshest critic. Odd for a perfectionist, but there you are.
*This gave me the fabulous idea of Hannibal roller skating through the park. Better yet, at a roller rink. I want him to go to the roller rink with Bedelia, and slip the DJ an extra $20 to play something classical for Couple's Skate, and they could do a really off-brand version of Torvill & Dean's famous ice dance.
But in the show, Tobias last week and Lance Henriksen's character this week are very capable people, whose murderous inclinations don't seem to come out of disturbing Freudian dysfunction and suffering. At least, not as far as we're shown, which leaves us with a very romanticizable power-fantasy type of serial killer.
That's interesting, I actually would have thought the opposite. Harris's serial killers are very gothic, their freakishness and sadness is part of their charm. What makes them horrible, imo, is that it's so easy to empathize and identify with them and to feel connected to them on a more emotional/human level, so you want SO BADLY for them to just stop with this monstrous stuff, or at least make it more ignorable or palatable (which imo is what Hannibal manages to do to a certain extent within the world of the show), but of course they don't. Like with Dolarhyde, it's very difficult (imo) not to root for the human being who started out as a deformed orphan and is just beginning a relationship, even as you root for people to come with pitchforks to kill the monster.
Villains like Tobias, on the other hand, are ciphers aside from their crimes. That seems extremely difficult to romanticize, to me, unless it's killing itself that's considered romantic.
Which on this show, it is, so...*shrug*
posted by rue72 at 11:42 PM on October 26, 2014 [2 favorites]
On the other hand, I don't feel like it would be some big deal to him if he did decide to kill a kid. He murdered Abigail's friend basically because she called her mom a bitch and because he felt like messing with Abigail, and she was what, a high schooler? Ultimately, I think that if he's curious about something or finds it convenient, he'll try it out to see what happens. He'll always be able to justify it to himself later, he's far from his own harshest critic. Odd for a perfectionist, but there you are.
*This gave me the fabulous idea of Hannibal roller skating through the park. Better yet, at a roller rink. I want him to go to the roller rink with Bedelia, and slip the DJ an extra $20 to play something classical for Couple's Skate, and they could do a really off-brand version of Torvill & Dean's famous ice dance.
But in the show, Tobias last week and Lance Henriksen's character this week are very capable people, whose murderous inclinations don't seem to come out of disturbing Freudian dysfunction and suffering. At least, not as far as we're shown, which leaves us with a very romanticizable power-fantasy type of serial killer.
That's interesting, I actually would have thought the opposite. Harris's serial killers are very gothic, their freakishness and sadness is part of their charm. What makes them horrible, imo, is that it's so easy to empathize and identify with them and to feel connected to them on a more emotional/human level, so you want SO BADLY for them to just stop with this monstrous stuff, or at least make it more ignorable or palatable (which imo is what Hannibal manages to do to a certain extent within the world of the show), but of course they don't. Like with Dolarhyde, it's very difficult (imo) not to root for the human being who started out as a deformed orphan and is just beginning a relationship, even as you root for people to come with pitchforks to kill the monster.
Villains like Tobias, on the other hand, are ciphers aside from their crimes. That seems extremely difficult to romanticize, to me, unless it's killing itself that's considered romantic.
Which on this show, it is, so...*shrug*
posted by rue72 at 11:42 PM on October 26, 2014 [2 favorites]
Yeah, that's a great point, rue72. I guess I didn't realize that I wasn't really thinking about romanticizability, but about suitability for a specific kind of fantasizing, namely about being powerful. I certainly agree that Dolarhyde is very sympathetic despite his crimes, but I don't find him an attractive basis for power fantasy at all; he's very much not in control of his life and problems, whereas Tobias, the tower of bodies guy, and Hannibal certainly are. (An exception is the slight touch of tragedy in the last shot of the tower of bodies guy.)
I thought briefly about going as a tower of bodies for Halloween, but I'm too lazy to do it.
posted by stebulus at 10:40 AM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]
I thought briefly about going as a tower of bodies for Halloween, but I'm too lazy to do it.
posted by stebulus at 10:40 AM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]
I realllllly hope my "blood on hands" dress gets here in time so I can go as Alana. I even have some black Ravenstag pumps to wear with it.
The tower of bodies guy - is he really in control? Murderating so you can socialize with the victims' families at the funerals sounds like desperate measures to me.
Tobias seems like he's doing pretty well for himself, though, I agree. He has his own business plus teaching, he clearly is really into what he's doing, it obviously pays well enough to get him into the Exclusive Insider Events club at the opera. And I'm sorry but there are plenty of other fish in the sea besides Franklyn for a successful, polished guy like Tobias, considering Maryland/Virginia are basically the Hellmouth. He's just fixating on someone unattainable, exactly like Hannibal is doing.
Dolarhyde, on the other hand - it's clear that he's a big powerful guy, that women find him impressive if not strictly speaking handsome, and that he could have had it in him to strike up a healthy relationship if he'd only thought enough of himself before he went down the wrong path. But he doesn't enjoy any of his clearly considerable achievements. He thinks he's a wimp and a laughing stock. He doesn't realize that the coworker who makes fun of him is quite likely *jealous*.
posted by tel3path at 12:17 PM on October 28, 2014
The tower of bodies guy - is he really in control? Murderating so you can socialize with the victims' families at the funerals sounds like desperate measures to me.
Tobias seems like he's doing pretty well for himself, though, I agree. He has his own business plus teaching, he clearly is really into what he's doing, it obviously pays well enough to get him into the Exclusive Insider Events club at the opera. And I'm sorry but there are plenty of other fish in the sea besides Franklyn for a successful, polished guy like Tobias, considering Maryland/Virginia are basically the Hellmouth. He's just fixating on someone unattainable, exactly like Hannibal is doing.
Dolarhyde, on the other hand - it's clear that he's a big powerful guy, that women find him impressive if not strictly speaking handsome, and that he could have had it in him to strike up a healthy relationship if he'd only thought enough of himself before he went down the wrong path. But he doesn't enjoy any of his clearly considerable achievements. He thinks he's a wimp and a laughing stock. He doesn't realize that the coworker who makes fun of him is quite likely *jealous*.
posted by tel3path at 12:17 PM on October 28, 2014
I guess it's hard to tell with tower of bodies guy because we get so little information about him — as the Whelk said above, this episode spends very little time on this Killer of the Week. But yeah, we could read into his claimed poverty that he wasn't professionally successful, and apparently he wasn't happy with the outcome of his romance with the kid's mother; maybe he pursued killing so that he'd have one aspect of his life where he felt in control. Then all his being a ghost and the "I let you find me" is — well, it's true, but it's also him presenting a persona to support his self-regard... Yeah, I like this reading.
And yeah, I didn't quite get what Tobias got out of his relationship with Franklyn.
posted by stebulus at 1:04 PM on October 28, 2014
And yeah, I didn't quite get what Tobias got out of his relationship with Franklyn.
posted by stebulus at 1:04 PM on October 28, 2014
The thing that struck me on rewatch was setting up the callback we get in the S2 finale, with Abigail as the instrument of Will being gutted in his reconstruction of the Boyle murder. Will normally sees through the eyes of the killer, but he sees as the victim in this reconstruction -- I'd argue it's definitely foreshadowing.
Also, Hannibal is too refined to put his hands in his pockets like a casual lout. Except when he's deciding (several times over) if he needs to kill Will or not. There are two or three times that he gets back in that right pocket. We don't see the scalpel slide in there, but I have to assume it is there.
posted by bfranklin at 1:01 PM on November 4, 2014 [1 favorite]
Also, Hannibal is too refined to put his hands in his pockets like a casual lout. Except when he's deciding (several times over) if he needs to kill Will or not. There are two or three times that he gets back in that right pocket. We don't see the scalpel slide in there, but I have to assume it is there.
posted by bfranklin at 1:01 PM on November 4, 2014 [1 favorite]
I wonder if at this point they were planning to have Abigail gut Will in the finale?
I think nothing works except Hannibal doing it, but since he won't evrn be caught until s3 and since "I let him kill me" is how he was caught, maybe at this point they were planning ahead to having Abigail wield the linoleum knife. Fortunately they just had her as the lure, though.
posted by tel3path at 12:25 AM on November 5, 2014
I think nothing works except Hannibal doing it, but since he won't evrn be caught until s3 and since "I let him kill me" is how he was caught, maybe at this point they were planning ahead to having Abigail wield the linoleum knife. Fortunately they just had her as the lure, though.
posted by tel3path at 12:25 AM on November 5, 2014
Or we're setting up why Will being gutted is inevitable -- his empathy for the people around him, even the severely broken, leaves him very very vulnerable to those same people.
posted by bfranklin at 2:04 PM on November 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by bfranklin at 2:04 PM on November 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
I remember being excited the first time I viewed this because it was a nice little hat tip to Lance Hendrikson's old show Millennium. If you haven't seen it, you should - it was light-years ahead of it's time and it's visual style owed a lot to Silence of the Lambs and Seven. Trust Bryan Fuller to figure out a way to bring that into the mix.
posted by echolalia67 at 7:21 PM on November 7, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by echolalia67 at 7:21 PM on November 7, 2014 [1 favorite]
Did anyone else notice Alana's brief moment of clarity during the confrontation with Jack after Abagail identified the body? You see her start to put 2+2 together, only to shut down cold. That is a brilliant bit of acting Caroline Dhavernas pulled off.
posted by echolalia67 at 10:47 PM on November 7, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by echolalia67 at 10:47 PM on November 7, 2014 [1 favorite]
I was just thinking last night that CD is quite the genius. As I've said before, MM gets a lot of credit for his microexpressions, but the way CD handles her megaexpressions is pretty goshdarn impressive too. She's far more of a match for her two leads than even her fans give her credit for.
And the overall way they're presenting the character is genius too. First of all you have the normal-guy opinion, which is "gee, I just feel so bad for Alana. She's going to be so devastated when she finally finds out the truth".
And they keep on and on saying that for 24 episodes. Then you've got the "goddammit Alana is dumb" faction vs the "how dare you Alana can't possibly be expected to know" faction. Which raises the question of what specifically is meant by "dumb", because it's definitely a bad decision to shut down your intuition at a moment like this, and clearly there WAS a possible way Alana could have known, otherwise this moment of intuition couldn't have happened. But OTOH the decision is mostly bad for other people right up until the very end of S2, so by becoming the character who for the longest time manages to suffer the least amount of grievous consequences to herself maybe she ISN'T so stupid.
On rewatch the not-so-micro-expressions recur at crucial moments. I saw a still from Mukozuke, from the opening sequence which is supposed to be a montage of characters' emotional reactions to Beverly's death. At first glance, Alana is the one character whose emotional reaction seems to be missing from all this. Then you get a look at this still, which is Jack and Alana giving Will the news. And Alana is giving Jack the anxious side-eye, watching for his reaction. It's the same look I've seen her give him on two other occasions. First when Jack is explaining to Will the rationale for having Hannibal do his evaluation instead of Alana (Will and Alana already have a personal relationship). The rationale makes no sense because Hannibal was AT the traumatic incident for which Will is being evaluated. And Alana is looking up at Jack like "is he buying it? have I gotten this one past him?" And again, when they find Hannibal's fingerprint on the cherry blossom in Yakimono, and Alana is there, and Jack is doing mental gymnastics to justify why the presence of Hannibal's fingerprint incriminates Chilton instead. In that scene, too, Alana is looking anxiously up at Jack like "is he buying it? has Hannibal gotten this one past him?"
And THEN you have the way CD herself talks about her own character, which is "she never gave up on Will" when she quite explicitly did do so, saying Alana wasn't really as into Hannibal as all *that*, saying Alana never really blamed Will (except in all those scenes with Alana saying to Will "I blame you!!! your actions are blameworthy and you should feel blamed!!!" which I guess were just hallucinations and never really happened?). CD is rewriting history about her character in a way that is completely consistent with that character, which amuses me to no end. What CD says tends to be consistent with what BF says, which is that oh everyone forgets that Alana didn't have the right information and couldn't have known, which really is true only in detail, and ignores that she also had information the other characters didn't have. (Like Hannibal taking Abigail out of the asylum in S1E4 and giving her "half a valium", which would probably seem like very interesting information to Jack if he were told about it right at this moment.)
So on the one hand we have CD talking about Alana naively, and managing to make Alana look naive on the surface, but underneath that we have CD playing Alana in an incredibly sophisticated way that both enriches and contradicts the surface presentation of the character.
And then we have the complaints from fans that Alana is a strong badass female character with her own identity, who has been incorrectly written so that she's weak and stupid. As if the character has any existence outside of the way she's written. Some people say she's only a plot device and needs her own storyline, 1) but I'm not sure that she really does need that as a minor character who is in fact there as support to the main characters and not a main character in herself, and 2) as explained above, I think Alana's characterization is much richer and more consistent than it superficially appears, and I can't imagine any way in which CD or the writers or directors could have done this unwittingly. It HAS to be intentional.
You could argue about how successful they've been - CD has said she didnt feel the need to imagine a backstory for Alana, and one of the complaints about her is that she doesn't have a backstory, and who knows what CD's reasons were - but I also think the result of that is that her character is something of a Rorschach test, as echolalia67 has said. This is supported by BF
saying that Alana is the bearer of the audience's point of view and our way into the story - if we know too much about her we might lose our identification with her. Maybe there's no backstory because you can take the character at face value as a privileged girl who grew up to have a conventional career path, or (if your idea or "face value" is more like ours, lol) as echolalia67 speculated in an earlier thread, someone who grew up in an Ordinary People kind of family where her role was to be the perfect cheerleader to cover up some traumatic reality by making the family look good. Or maybe we'll find out some super dramatic thing in S3 that will permanently change our view of who she is. I personally think she is most interesting the way she's been characterized so far.
And for a "bland" "boring" "disappointingly written" "plot device" who was "reduced to a love interest" that the writers "forgot to characterize" she sure does elicit strong emotional reactions from the audience, and this is BECAUSE of the cognitive dissonance of the contradictory things she does and the contradictory way she's played. If she's really such a crap character why does she inspire such intense admiration and devotion (Alana Bloom is an absolute angel and the prettiest princess and I want to be just like her) and such intense scorn (Alana is teh dumbest lol I hope Hannibal eats her soon) and such protective and critical fan reactions (Alana's not bad she's just written that way Bryan UR a bad feminist).
What does it say about the show that the arguably most craply written character is this fascinating to this many people? If it's an accident and they really haven't done as good a job with her as they intended, well, I can only dream of being as bad a writer (and actor) on my best days as these folks allegedly are on their worst days.
I think all her characterization so far has been a buildup to S3 when we'll see what emerges from the chrysalis. My guess is it could turn out to be both pleasing and dangerous to Hannibal.
posted by tel3path at 3:09 AM on November 8, 2014 [1 favorite]
And the overall way they're presenting the character is genius too. First of all you have the normal-guy opinion, which is "gee, I just feel so bad for Alana. She's going to be so devastated when she finally finds out the truth".
And they keep on and on saying that for 24 episodes. Then you've got the "goddammit Alana is dumb" faction vs the "how dare you Alana can't possibly be expected to know" faction. Which raises the question of what specifically is meant by "dumb", because it's definitely a bad decision to shut down your intuition at a moment like this, and clearly there WAS a possible way Alana could have known, otherwise this moment of intuition couldn't have happened. But OTOH the decision is mostly bad for other people right up until the very end of S2, so by becoming the character who for the longest time manages to suffer the least amount of grievous consequences to herself maybe she ISN'T so stupid.
On rewatch the not-so-micro-expressions recur at crucial moments. I saw a still from Mukozuke, from the opening sequence which is supposed to be a montage of characters' emotional reactions to Beverly's death. At first glance, Alana is the one character whose emotional reaction seems to be missing from all this. Then you get a look at this still, which is Jack and Alana giving Will the news. And Alana is giving Jack the anxious side-eye, watching for his reaction. It's the same look I've seen her give him on two other occasions. First when Jack is explaining to Will the rationale for having Hannibal do his evaluation instead of Alana (Will and Alana already have a personal relationship). The rationale makes no sense because Hannibal was AT the traumatic incident for which Will is being evaluated. And Alana is looking up at Jack like "is he buying it? have I gotten this one past him?" And again, when they find Hannibal's fingerprint on the cherry blossom in Yakimono, and Alana is there, and Jack is doing mental gymnastics to justify why the presence of Hannibal's fingerprint incriminates Chilton instead. In that scene, too, Alana is looking anxiously up at Jack like "is he buying it? has Hannibal gotten this one past him?"
And THEN you have the way CD herself talks about her own character, which is "she never gave up on Will" when she quite explicitly did do so, saying Alana wasn't really as into Hannibal as all *that*, saying Alana never really blamed Will (except in all those scenes with Alana saying to Will "I blame you!!! your actions are blameworthy and you should feel blamed!!!" which I guess were just hallucinations and never really happened?). CD is rewriting history about her character in a way that is completely consistent with that character, which amuses me to no end. What CD says tends to be consistent with what BF says, which is that oh everyone forgets that Alana didn't have the right information and couldn't have known, which really is true only in detail, and ignores that she also had information the other characters didn't have. (Like Hannibal taking Abigail out of the asylum in S1E4 and giving her "half a valium", which would probably seem like very interesting information to Jack if he were told about it right at this moment.)
So on the one hand we have CD talking about Alana naively, and managing to make Alana look naive on the surface, but underneath that we have CD playing Alana in an incredibly sophisticated way that both enriches and contradicts the surface presentation of the character.
And then we have the complaints from fans that Alana is a strong badass female character with her own identity, who has been incorrectly written so that she's weak and stupid. As if the character has any existence outside of the way she's written. Some people say she's only a plot device and needs her own storyline, 1) but I'm not sure that she really does need that as a minor character who is in fact there as support to the main characters and not a main character in herself, and 2) as explained above, I think Alana's characterization is much richer and more consistent than it superficially appears, and I can't imagine any way in which CD or the writers or directors could have done this unwittingly. It HAS to be intentional.
You could argue about how successful they've been - CD has said she didnt feel the need to imagine a backstory for Alana, and one of the complaints about her is that she doesn't have a backstory, and who knows what CD's reasons were - but I also think the result of that is that her character is something of a Rorschach test, as echolalia67 has said. This is supported by BF
saying that Alana is the bearer of the audience's point of view and our way into the story - if we know too much about her we might lose our identification with her. Maybe there's no backstory because you can take the character at face value as a privileged girl who grew up to have a conventional career path, or (if your idea or "face value" is more like ours, lol) as echolalia67 speculated in an earlier thread, someone who grew up in an Ordinary People kind of family where her role was to be the perfect cheerleader to cover up some traumatic reality by making the family look good. Or maybe we'll find out some super dramatic thing in S3 that will permanently change our view of who she is. I personally think she is most interesting the way she's been characterized so far.
And for a "bland" "boring" "disappointingly written" "plot device" who was "reduced to a love interest" that the writers "forgot to characterize" she sure does elicit strong emotional reactions from the audience, and this is BECAUSE of the cognitive dissonance of the contradictory things she does and the contradictory way she's played. If she's really such a crap character why does she inspire such intense admiration and devotion (Alana Bloom is an absolute angel and the prettiest princess and I want to be just like her) and such intense scorn (Alana is teh dumbest lol I hope Hannibal eats her soon) and such protective and critical fan reactions (Alana's not bad she's just written that way Bryan UR a bad feminist).
What does it say about the show that the arguably most craply written character is this fascinating to this many people? If it's an accident and they really haven't done as good a job with her as they intended, well, I can only dream of being as bad a writer (and actor) on my best days as these folks allegedly are on their worst days.
I think all her characterization so far has been a buildup to S3 when we'll see what emerges from the chrysalis. My guess is it could turn out to be both pleasing and dangerous to Hannibal.
posted by tel3path at 3:09 AM on November 8, 2014 [1 favorite]
Also, the character is named Abigail Hobbs to connote the idea of a witch-hunt; supposedly this girl is the focus of so much public suspicion and rage because her father, who should be the real focus of people's rage, is not here any more.
They've already touched (in Oeuf) of children who would not be violent on their own but became so only under the coercion of an adult parent figure.
This scene, while mainly a dangerous corner for the incrimination of Abigail, is ALSO a moment where, potentially, the father's guilt could be uncovered and he could at last be held properly to account. Didn't think about that, did you, Hannibal, when you were setting yourself up as the father figure in Abigail's mind?
imagine if Alana hadn't shut down her intuition here, we know from experience that she is lightning-fast at spotting what's really going on when she wants to, especially in matters of caregivers abusing their charges (cf. chilton's psychic driving of Gideon). She could have taken her "it's not his fault he committed these murders poor bby he was driven to it by a corrupt authority figure" attitude that she had towards Will, and directed it at its PROPER target - Hannibal. It might even have had some hope of being an effective defense in Abigail's case, even though that's a long shot in this merciless world, but still.
As confused as Abigail was, I think that's ultimately what was driving her to dig up Nicholas Boyle - she was conflicted between wanting to seem innocent and wanting to confess, and if she did get caught she didn't want it to happen without Hannibal's guilt being exposed in the process.
This is such a great turning point in the narrative, such a J B Priestley type "Dangerous Corner", and it's yet more refutation of the idea that Alana "isn't given enough to do". BF says that CD is able to convey so much with so very very little and he is right.
posted by tel3path at 5:41 AM on November 8, 2014
They've already touched (in Oeuf) of children who would not be violent on their own but became so only under the coercion of an adult parent figure.
This scene, while mainly a dangerous corner for the incrimination of Abigail, is ALSO a moment where, potentially, the father's guilt could be uncovered and he could at last be held properly to account. Didn't think about that, did you, Hannibal, when you were setting yourself up as the father figure in Abigail's mind?
imagine if Alana hadn't shut down her intuition here, we know from experience that she is lightning-fast at spotting what's really going on when she wants to, especially in matters of caregivers abusing their charges (cf. chilton's psychic driving of Gideon). She could have taken her "it's not his fault he committed these murders poor bby he was driven to it by a corrupt authority figure" attitude that she had towards Will, and directed it at its PROPER target - Hannibal. It might even have had some hope of being an effective defense in Abigail's case, even though that's a long shot in this merciless world, but still.
As confused as Abigail was, I think that's ultimately what was driving her to dig up Nicholas Boyle - she was conflicted between wanting to seem innocent and wanting to confess, and if she did get caught she didn't want it to happen without Hannibal's guilt being exposed in the process.
This is such a great turning point in the narrative, such a J B Priestley type "Dangerous Corner", and it's yet more refutation of the idea that Alana "isn't given enough to do". BF says that CD is able to convey so much with so very very little and he is right.
posted by tel3path at 5:41 AM on November 8, 2014
That Alana's reaction to her own insight is to shut down reminds me a lot of the current Jian Gomeshi scandal going on in Toronto. Although so many people were aware of his reputation, the minute he claimed that the allegations were the result of a jilted girlfriend people believed him. A few of the women who were assaulted by him went out with him on a second date. I don't think it was because they were masochists or because they were so hungry for fame that they were willing to be put up choked & beaten, I think it was because something like that is such an affront to one's consciousness that the only response you can have is to shut down.
It's like having an orca walk up to you in the middle the street, hit you with a baseball bat and walk into the nearest bar - you're seeing it with your own two eyes but you just can't get your mind to believe what's actually happening right in front of you. And so it is with Alana. She knows, how could she not know, but she cannot believe what her own instincts are telling her is true, so she shoves that awareness deep down where she thinks it won't be able to resurface.
posted by echolalia67 at 9:15 AM on November 8, 2014 [1 favorite]
It's like having an orca walk up to you in the middle the street, hit you with a baseball bat and walk into the nearest bar - you're seeing it with your own two eyes but you just can't get your mind to believe what's actually happening right in front of you. And so it is with Alana. She knows, how could she not know, but she cannot believe what her own instincts are telling her is true, so she shoves that awareness deep down where she thinks it won't be able to resurface.
posted by echolalia67 at 9:15 AM on November 8, 2014 [1 favorite]
Yeah, I agree. Cleolinda was shocked to find that Abigail knew all along, given Abigail's horrified response to opening up the pillow and finding human hair inside, which she did when she was alone and therefore couldn't have been faked for manipulative effect. But that whole episode was about how Abigail is just then having light bulbs go on about how *pervasive* it all was, in contrast to when she was living it, which probably involved her compartmentalizing all this stuff to stay sane. But, at the same time, she knew that if she opened up the pillow she might find something scary inside. (And there was a knife just conveniently there on the table - and she never stops to wonder how it got there.) The terror of a lucid moment and realizing that you saw it all happening right in front of you but never understood the significance until it was too late. With her whole world warping and changing around her, it's no wonder Abigail made a clutch for the familiar in the form of Hannibal, even though it was the worst thing for her.
And shoving stuff down where it won't be able to resurface is a theme here, innit?
And I have to wonder how many people ARE aware of Hannibal's reputation. Is it possible he's one of those guys who has two reputations, but you only find out about the other reputation when you come into conflict with him?
And actually, nothing an orca might do would surprise me. They're assholes.
posted by tel3path at 10:50 AM on November 8, 2014 [1 favorite]
And shoving stuff down where it won't be able to resurface is a theme here, innit?
And I have to wonder how many people ARE aware of Hannibal's reputation. Is it possible he's one of those guys who has two reputations, but you only find out about the other reputation when you come into conflict with him?
And actually, nothing an orca might do would surprise me. They're assholes.
posted by tel3path at 10:50 AM on November 8, 2014 [1 favorite]
And of course, Alana is wearing red in that scene, the colour worn by characters who are trying to maintain truthfulness. The whole "brief moment of intuition" which gets immediately shut down is self-deception, but it's still in the realm of "honest" self-deception as it were - not because she's not lying to herself, but because it's just too much for any reasonable person to cope with in the moment. The transition from red to blue happens over time as she sticks to her guns beyond all reason.
And of course this is the episode where Hannibal tells Will he helped Abigail hide the body to protect her. This is a more straightforward kind of deception where you convince someone to do the wrong thing for the right reasons, and of course it doesn't hold water for long, but by the time Will sees through it he'll be too busy hallucinating and being hospitalized and then arrested to be able to do much about it.
If he hadn't been emotionally enmeshed with (his idea of) Abigail (and wasn't being cognitively beaten up by encephalitis), he would have responded to Hannibal's account of "yeah this teenage girl killed a dude in self defense and I helped her hide the body" with "DA FUQ? You have the right to remain silent..."
posted by tel3path at 11:12 AM on November 8, 2014
And of course this is the episode where Hannibal tells Will he helped Abigail hide the body to protect her. This is a more straightforward kind of deception where you convince someone to do the wrong thing for the right reasons, and of course it doesn't hold water for long, but by the time Will sees through it he'll be too busy hallucinating and being hospitalized and then arrested to be able to do much about it.
If he hadn't been emotionally enmeshed with (his idea of) Abigail (and wasn't being cognitively beaten up by encephalitis), he would have responded to Hannibal's account of "yeah this teenage girl killed a dude in self defense and I helped her hide the body" with "DA FUQ? You have the right to remain silent..."
posted by tel3path at 11:12 AM on November 8, 2014
The Abigail's dream sequence is interesting, too. It's as if she's stuffed the truth down so deep that even her subconscious is an unreliable narrator.
posted by echolalia67 at 4:58 PM on November 8, 2014
posted by echolalia67 at 4:58 PM on November 8, 2014
What must it feel like to a teenage girl to know that the only right thing to do is to be killed?
posted by tel3path at 5:10 PM on November 8, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by tel3path at 5:10 PM on November 8, 2014 [1 favorite]
She's probably surrounded by people who are telling her that she's got her whole life ahead of her and the world at her feet, at the exact same time that her father is killing girls at the schools she's applying to.
People talk to teenagers in platitudes, so much, not knowing that they could just be twisting the knife.
posted by tel3path at 7:22 AM on November 9, 2014
People talk to teenagers in platitudes, so much, not knowing that they could just be twisting the knife.
posted by tel3path at 7:22 AM on November 9, 2014
The thing where Will really falls down on the job isn't even that he knows for a fact that Hannibal helped Abigail cover up a murder, but that he HELPED HER HIDE THE BODY.
He's focussed on Abigail and the need to protect her from jail and the loss of his idealized notion of her, and he is NOT NOTICING WHAT HANNIBAL JUST TOLD HIM ABOUT HIMSELF, which is
I HELPED HER HIDE THE BODY.
As you do.
Who the fuck just knows how to hide a body like that? Who the fuck just knows how to hide a body in a crowded house surrounded by police and press?
I mean, anyone would think he'd done it before.
And the moral of the story is that it's better not to let personal attachment tempt you into ignoring due process.
posted by tel3path at 7:31 AM on November 19, 2014
He's focussed on Abigail and the need to protect her from jail and the loss of his idealized notion of her, and he is NOT NOTICING WHAT HANNIBAL JUST TOLD HIM ABOUT HIMSELF, which is
I HELPED HER HIDE THE BODY.
As you do.
Who the fuck just knows how to hide a body like that? Who the fuck just knows how to hide a body in a crowded house surrounded by police and press?
I mean, anyone would think he'd done it before.
And the moral of the story is that it's better not to let personal attachment tempt you into ignoring due process.
posted by tel3path at 7:31 AM on November 19, 2014
Meanwhile, and not to overlook the obvious, if Alana had Hannibal as an example of what it's like to be a practising psychiatrist while she was training, the reality of her life two years later was bound to seem kind of dreary just because anyone's would. She lives in what would seem to be a fairly nondescript apartment, etc.
While BF is something of a trickster when he talks about the show I think the actors are reliably talking from their characters' POV. CD said Alana saw Hannibal as someone who was her equal. If. you thought you were in Hannibal's league why would you settle for anything less than he appeared to be offering? He had to be a sort of mirage of the perfect lifestyle just up ahead in the distance.
posted by tel3path at 2:06 AM on November 22, 2014
While BF is something of a trickster when he talks about the show I think the actors are reliably talking from their characters' POV. CD said Alana saw Hannibal as someone who was her equal. If. you thought you were in Hannibal's league why would you settle for anything less than he appeared to be offering? He had to be a sort of mirage of the perfect lifestyle just up ahead in the distance.
posted by tel3path at 2:06 AM on November 22, 2014
OMG
I just really listened to what Alana is watching Abigail say. Alana was there when this went down, Jack wasn't:
"Dr Bloom... and Dr Lecter saved me. He saved me."
Well not only does Alana know she didn't save Abigail from Nicholas Boyle that night, because she was out cold, but now Abigail is saying that Hannibal saved her? The story, that night, was that Boyle struck Hannibal on the head and then escaped. Nobody said anything about Hannibal "saving" Abigail.
Now there's a body in front of them, Abigail saying "I thought I was going to die in that house, but I didn't, I survived" together with "he [Dr Lecter] saved me", well, that is pointing a finger at Hannibal in a much more direct way than I realized.
No wonder Alana shuts that shit down. I Trust Hannibal. He certainly doesn't go around "saving" little girls in ways that result in dead bodies.
It's really kind of heartbreaking because this is the glass-case example of an abused child going "Dr Bloom... save me" in this roundabout way.
It can't be true that Alana specializes in family trauma. That has to be something she was saying to hide the fact from Abigail that she was really there as an FBI evaluator. It doesn't seem like Alana's had even the very basic training in recognizing abuse that you have to go through if you have any responsiblity for minors at all. Or maybe there's just literally no such thing as child protection in the Hanniverse at all, and the age of criminal responsibility is, like, 3. On current evidence that seems to be the case.
posted by tel3path at 3:01 PM on February 7, 2016 [1 favorite]
I just really listened to what Alana is watching Abigail say. Alana was there when this went down, Jack wasn't:
"Dr Bloom... and Dr Lecter saved me. He saved me."
Well not only does Alana know she didn't save Abigail from Nicholas Boyle that night, because she was out cold, but now Abigail is saying that Hannibal saved her? The story, that night, was that Boyle struck Hannibal on the head and then escaped. Nobody said anything about Hannibal "saving" Abigail.
Now there's a body in front of them, Abigail saying "I thought I was going to die in that house, but I didn't, I survived" together with "he [Dr Lecter] saved me", well, that is pointing a finger at Hannibal in a much more direct way than I realized.
No wonder Alana shuts that shit down. I Trust Hannibal. He certainly doesn't go around "saving" little girls in ways that result in dead bodies.
It's really kind of heartbreaking because this is the glass-case example of an abused child going "Dr Bloom... save me" in this roundabout way.
It can't be true that Alana specializes in family trauma. That has to be something she was saying to hide the fact from Abigail that she was really there as an FBI evaluator. It doesn't seem like Alana's had even the very basic training in recognizing abuse that you have to go through if you have any responsiblity for minors at all. Or maybe there's just literally no such thing as child protection in the Hanniverse at all, and the age of criminal responsibility is, like, 3. On current evidence that seems to be the case.
posted by tel3path at 3:01 PM on February 7, 2016 [1 favorite]
And I'm now afraid that in S4, Will is going to unwittingly kill his own son (Morgan Verger). As his one act as a father.
I mean, that would definitely be the inversion of S1 that we were promised.
I just. The kid will still be a child in the timeline and I find it unimaginable that any version of Will would straight up murder a child. I was going to say "or even do less than everything to make sure a child stayed out of harm's way," but Molly and Walter were not in protective custody, which, y'know, IDK how foreseeable it was that they would get doxxed, but I have to think it can't have been as unforeseeable as all that. OTOH apparently Freddie didn't pop up at Will's family home - thankfully she is more careful than that by now. So maybe nothing at all about Will's home life is in the public domain. (Well, no, or Hannibal would already know it, you know he's an obsessive Facebook stalker.)
Anyway... that's what I'm now seriously afraid of for S4. I don't imagine that Will could go so extremely dark as to do it deliberately, but the whole thing just seems way too foreshadowy to ignore. Judge not lest ye be judged and all that.
posted by tel3path at 5:12 PM on February 7, 2016
I mean, that would definitely be the inversion of S1 that we were promised.
I just. The kid will still be a child in the timeline and I find it unimaginable that any version of Will would straight up murder a child. I was going to say "or even do less than everything to make sure a child stayed out of harm's way," but Molly and Walter were not in protective custody, which, y'know, IDK how foreseeable it was that they would get doxxed, but I have to think it can't have been as unforeseeable as all that. OTOH apparently Freddie didn't pop up at Will's family home - thankfully she is more careful than that by now. So maybe nothing at all about Will's home life is in the public domain. (Well, no, or Hannibal would already know it, you know he's an obsessive Facebook stalker.)
Anyway... that's what I'm now seriously afraid of for S4. I don't imagine that Will could go so extremely dark as to do it deliberately, but the whole thing just seems way too foreshadowy to ignore. Judge not lest ye be judged and all that.
posted by tel3path at 5:12 PM on February 7, 2016
How do you figure that Morgan Verger is Will's son? Are you referring to the baby Margot and Alana pull from the pig in Digestivo? Or are you suggesting that they didn't use Mason's sperm from his cattle-prod milking to inseminate?
posted by fancyoats at 2:55 PM on February 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by fancyoats at 2:55 PM on February 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
Well, we know apocryphally from tweets by the production staff that the pig baby is Will's son. There is a lot of fan speculation, which I think is correct (the kid that's leaving with Marlana at the end definitely looks to be 3 years old if he's a day) that Morgan Verger IS the pig-baby, who survived (we don't have absolute proof that he was stillborn) and therefore Alana didn't actually grow him herself.
posted by tel3path at 3:30 PM on February 8, 2016
posted by tel3path at 3:30 PM on February 8, 2016
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posted by yellowbinder at 9:35 AM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]