I would have been upset prior to this season, but if these first three episodes were any judge they were going in a direction I didn't care about. I guess there's no reason to stop watching now though, so i'll see the rest of the season through unless it gets exceptionally worse.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Another deep, rich episode. I feel bad that you guys don't seem to be enjoying them. To me this is, like, pure, unadulterated Hannibal being injected right into my brain.
While trying not to define Hannibal so strictly, this episode does go a long way towards explaining some of the psychology behind his MO. This dichotomy of approach goes directly to the heart of the show's origins. Thomas Harris based the characters of Will Graham and Jack Crawford in part on FBI profiler John Douglas, who helped pioneer the modern FBI Behavioral Sciences division; he really did jet around the country to different murder scenes in order to offer his profiling expertise to local law enforcement (and at one point, like Will, suffered a bout of encephalitis that almost killed him). Profiling is baked into the foundations of the Harrisverse and by extension this show, which has explored the many ways in which Will uses his imagination and empathy to put himself into the mindsets of killers. At the heart of profiling is the idea that a person's actions speak volumes about who they are--or, to put it another way, the idea that who a person is defines and predicts their behavior. We've seen throughout the show that Will will often pick up on specific details about a crime scene that lead to clues to the identity of the killer; and in reverse, knowing more about the killer, can make inferences predicting what they'll do next in order to catch them.
So on the one hand Hannibal ascribes to the viewpoint that, like cooking and art, murder is an expressive act, a 'text' that can be 'read' in order to determine information about the 'author'. On the other hand, we have Hannibal Lector, a character designed to be difficult, if not impossible, to fully understand or predict. As Will put it in episode 2 of this season, Hannibal has multiple trains of thought at any given time to which he gives equal attention. This is surely an impossibility, but so is Hannibal himself. To a certain extent, even for Will Graham, Lector defies analysis. Perhaps even for Lector himself--especially now, in Europe, where he is killing more impulsively. Our focus in season 2 was Will Graham, and the ways in which he was changing through his relationship with Hannibal; Will claimed in the finale of season, though, that he changed Hannibal, too. In a sense the two have rubbed off on one another. Will has grown colder and more intellectual--it's possible that the repeated shocks of engaging with serial killers have somewhat cauterized his nerve endings--watch here as he mutilates a corpse almost casually, in a way that he never would have at the beginning of the show. But on the other side of the coin, Hannibal has grown more emotional, his generally placid interior roiling with pain and rage over Will's betrayal and the destruction of his glorious dream of a European murder spree with his BFF. His resentments seem pettier, his cruelty quicker and less intellectualized. The "peace" Hannibal talks of in Florence, if it existed at all, was brief, and the result of denying his emotions rather than any true contentment.
In keeping with this very subtle disintegration (a devolvement in Hannibal's perfection that Bedelia predicts will lead to his capture), the show is now willing to delve a little into Hannibal's past. For all that Lector insists that "nothing happened to me. I happened," this episode still goes a long way toward demystifying him. One way the show exhibits parallel reluctance to explain Hannibal, though, is by giving us a multiple choice question about Mischa's fate which is not actually answered. In the novels, Hannibal's sister is killed and eaten in front of him by others. Without actually discounting this possibility, the show's vague discussion of the event suggests that Hannibal killed and ate her himself--possibly because the love he felt for her made his own nature and behavior uncomfortably chaotic and unpredictable. Hannibal prefers order in all things (the impeccable suits, the impeccable clothes, the fanatically clean home and office, the exactingly careful body manipulations) but is attracted to disorder (his delight in the sudden godly betrayal of a church collapse, for instance, or his desire to meddle and manipulate with others), and this is reflected in his relationship with Will and, I'm assuming, Mischa, and further with all of his other victims. When Hannibal eats the "rude", the offense they've given him tends to be an invasion of either his own ordered self and image or of the social order in general. Killing them (and often using them as artistic media) restores that order--remakes the teacup, as it were, reversing (emotional) entropy. (It's telling that Hannibal, who has been quietly very, very upset all season, admits despairingly to Bedelia this week that entropy's advance cannot be halted. That's despair and depression talking.)
Regarding Mischa, the show only leaves us with two real possibilities. That Hannibal killed her and lied about it; or that he saw her killed and, to make some order from that chaos, took the crime upon himself. Either way, it was the first production of a machine made for exchanging disorder for order and back again in equal measure, for making a fetish of horrors. Either way, the machine runs and will not stop running, to Europe and farther and over person after person, until someone shuts it down.
Forgot I had this review piece up in drafts. Anyway, this is terrible news. I know it's always been assumed that a cancelation would lead to Hannibal continuing on Amazon or some other service... but if Hannibal was going to end, now would be the time. This season will probably having them wrapping up Will's arc in anticipation of moving onto Clarice's, and if they can't get the rights to her, Fuller may just decide to say fuck it... Plus he may be involved over on the new American Gods show.
Regardless of what happens, this is depressing news, as much as we should celebrate that such an odd and beautiful and subtle and horrifyingly violent show managed to survive three years on network television. I raise my glass of people-wine to you, Hannibal.
+11
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MalReynoldsThe Hunter S Thompson of incredibly mild medicinesRegistered Userregular
Another deep, rich episode. I feel bad that you guys don't seem to be enjoying them. To me this is, like, pure, unadulterated Hannibal being injected right into my brain.
While trying not to define Hannibal so strictly, this episode does go a long way towards explaining some of the psychology behind his MO. This dichotomy of approach goes directly to the heart of the show's origins. Thomas Harris based the characters of Will Graham and Jack Crawford in part on FBI profiler John Douglas, who helped pioneer the modern FBI Behavioral Sciences division; he really did jet around the country to different murder scenes in order to offer his profiling expertise to local law enforcement (and at one point, like Will, suffered a bout of encephalitis that almost killed him). Profiling is baked into the foundations of the Harrisverse and by extension this show, which has explored the many ways in which Will uses his imagination and empathy to put himself into the mindsets of killers. At the heart of profiling is the idea that a person's actions speak volumes about who they are--or, to put it another way, the idea that who a person is defines and predicts their behavior. We've seen throughout the show that Will will often pick up on specific details about a crime scene that lead to clues to the identity of the killer; and in reverse, knowing more about the killer, can make inferences predicting what they'll do next in order to catch them.
So on the one hand Hannibal ascribes to the viewpoint that, like cooking and art, murder is an expressive act, a 'text' that can be 'read' in order to determine information about the 'author'. On the other hand, we have Hannibal Lector, a character designed to be difficult, if not impossible, to fully understand or predict. As Will put it in episode 2 of this season, Hannibal has multiple trains of thought at any given time to which he gives equal attention. This is surely an impossibility, but so is Hannibal himself. To a certain extent, even for Will Graham, Lector defies analysis. Perhaps even for Lector himself--especially now, in Europe, where he is killing more impulsively. Our focus in season 2 was Will Graham, and the ways in which he was changing through his relationship with Hannibal; Will claimed in the finale of season, though, that he changed Hannibal, too. In a sense the two have rubbed off on one another. Will has grown colder and more intellectual--it's possible that the repeated shocks of engaging with serial killers have somewhat cauterized his nerve endings--watch here as he mutilates a corpse almost casually, in a way that he never would have at the beginning of the show. But on the other side of the coin, Hannibal has grown more emotional, his generally placid interior roiling with pain and rage over Will's betrayal and the destruction of his glorious dream of a European murder spree with his BFF. His resentments seem pettier, his cruelty quicker and less intellectualized. The "peace" Hannibal talks of in Florence, if it existed at all, was brief, and the result of denying his emotions rather than any true contentment.
In keeping with this very subtle disintegration (a devolvement in Hannibal's perfection that Bedelia predicts will lead to his capture), the show is now willing to delve a little into Hannibal's past. For all that Lector insists that "nothing happened to me. I happened," this episode still goes a long way toward demystifying him. One way the show exhibits parallel reluctance to explain Hannibal, though, is by giving us a multiple choice question about Mischa's fate which is not actually answered. In the novels, Hannibal's sister is killed and eaten in front of him by others. Without actually discounting this possibility, the show's vague discussion of the event suggests that Hannibal killed and ate her himself--possibly because the love he felt for her made his own nature and behavior uncomfortably chaotic and unpredictable. Hannibal prefers order in all things (the impeccable suits, the impeccable clothes, the fanatically clean home and office, the exactingly careful body manipulations) but is attracted to disorder (his delight in the sudden godly betrayal of a church collapse, for instance, or his desire to meddle and manipulate with others), and this is reflected in his relationship with Will and, I'm assuming, Mischa, and further with all of his other victims. When Hannibal eats the "rude", the offense they've given him tends to be an invasion of either his own ordered self and image or of the social order in general. Killing them (and often using them as artistic media) restores that order--remakes the teacup, as it were, reversing (emotional) entropy. (It's telling that Hannibal, who has been quietly very, very upset all season, admits despairingly to Bedelia this week that entropy's advance cannot be halted. That's despair and depression talking.)
Regarding Mischa, the show only leaves us with two real possibilities. That Hannibal killed her and lied about it; or that he saw her killed and, to make some order from that chaos, took the crime upon himself. Either way, it was the first production of a machine made for exchanging disorder for order and back again in equal measure, for making a fetish of horrors. Either way, the machine runs and will not stop running, to Europe and farther and over person after person, until someone shuts it down.
Forgot I had this review piece up in drafts. Anyway, this is terrible news. I know it's always been assumed that a cancelation would lead to Hannibal continuing on Amazon or some other service... but if Hannibal was going to end, now would be the time. This season will probably having them wrapping up Will's arc in anticipation of moving onto Clarice's, and if they can't get the rights to her, Fuller may just decide to say fuck it... Plus he may be involved over on the new American Gods show.
Regardless of what happens, this is depressing news, as much as we should celebrate that such an odd and beautiful and subtle and horrifyingly violent show managed to survive three years on network television. I raise my glass of people-wine to you, Hannibal.
My interpretation:
The man killed Mischa and fed her to Hannibal. That's kind of how it went in the source material.
"A new take on the epic fantasy genre... Darkly comic, relatable characters... twisted storyline."
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Another deep, rich episode. I feel bad that you guys don't seem to be enjoying them. To me this is, like, pure, unadulterated Hannibal being injected right into my brain.
While trying not to define Hannibal so strictly, this episode does go a long way towards explaining some of the psychology behind his MO. This dichotomy of approach goes directly to the heart of the show's origins. Thomas Harris based the characters of Will Graham and Jack Crawford in part on FBI profiler John Douglas, who helped pioneer the modern FBI Behavioral Sciences division; he really did jet around the country to different murder scenes in order to offer his profiling expertise to local law enforcement (and at one point, like Will, suffered a bout of encephalitis that almost killed him). Profiling is baked into the foundations of the Harrisverse and by extension this show, which has explored the many ways in which Will uses his imagination and empathy to put himself into the mindsets of killers. At the heart of profiling is the idea that a person's actions speak volumes about who they are--or, to put it another way, the idea that who a person is defines and predicts their behavior. We've seen throughout the show that Will will often pick up on specific details about a crime scene that lead to clues to the identity of the killer; and in reverse, knowing more about the killer, can make inferences predicting what they'll do next in order to catch them.
So on the one hand Hannibal ascribes to the viewpoint that, like cooking and art, murder is an expressive act, a 'text' that can be 'read' in order to determine information about the 'author'. On the other hand, we have Hannibal Lector, a character designed to be difficult, if not impossible, to fully understand or predict. As Will put it in episode 2 of this season, Hannibal has multiple trains of thought at any given time to which he gives equal attention. This is surely an impossibility, but so is Hannibal himself. To a certain extent, even for Will Graham, Lector defies analysis. Perhaps even for Lector himself--especially now, in Europe, where he is killing more impulsively. Our focus in season 2 was Will Graham, and the ways in which he was changing through his relationship with Hannibal; Will claimed in the finale of season, though, that he changed Hannibal, too. In a sense the two have rubbed off on one another. Will has grown colder and more intellectual--it's possible that the repeated shocks of engaging with serial killers have somewhat cauterized his nerve endings--watch here as he mutilates a corpse almost casually, in a way that he never would have at the beginning of the show. But on the other side of the coin, Hannibal has grown more emotional, his generally placid interior roiling with pain and rage over Will's betrayal and the destruction of his glorious dream of a European murder spree with his BFF. His resentments seem pettier, his cruelty quicker and less intellectualized. The "peace" Hannibal talks of in Florence, if it existed at all, was brief, and the result of denying his emotions rather than any true contentment.
In keeping with this very subtle disintegration (a devolvement in Hannibal's perfection that Bedelia predicts will lead to his capture), the show is now willing to delve a little into Hannibal's past. For all that Lector insists that "nothing happened to me. I happened," this episode still goes a long way toward demystifying him. One way the show exhibits parallel reluctance to explain Hannibal, though, is by giving us a multiple choice question about Mischa's fate which is not actually answered. In the novels, Hannibal's sister is killed and eaten in front of him by others. Without actually discounting this possibility, the show's vague discussion of the event suggests that Hannibal killed and ate her himself--possibly because the love he felt for her made his own nature and behavior uncomfortably chaotic and unpredictable. Hannibal prefers order in all things (the impeccable suits, the impeccable clothes, the fanatically clean home and office, the exactingly careful body manipulations) but is attracted to disorder (his delight in the sudden godly betrayal of a church collapse, for instance, or his desire to meddle and manipulate with others), and this is reflected in his relationship with Will and, I'm assuming, Mischa, and further with all of his other victims. When Hannibal eats the "rude", the offense they've given him tends to be an invasion of either his own ordered self and image or of the social order in general. Killing them (and often using them as artistic media) restores that order--remakes the teacup, as it were, reversing (emotional) entropy. (It's telling that Hannibal, who has been quietly very, very upset all season, admits despairingly to Bedelia this week that entropy's advance cannot be halted. That's despair and depression talking.)
Regarding Mischa, the show only leaves us with two real possibilities. That Hannibal killed her and lied about it; or that he saw her killed and, to make some order from that chaos, took the crime upon himself. Either way, it was the first production of a machine made for exchanging disorder for order and back again in equal measure, for making a fetish of horrors. Either way, the machine runs and will not stop running, to Europe and farther and over person after person, until someone shuts it down.
Forgot I had this review piece up in drafts. Anyway, this is terrible news. I know it's always been assumed that a cancelation would lead to Hannibal continuing on Amazon or some other service... but if Hannibal was going to end, now would be the time. This season will probably having them wrapping up Will's arc in anticipation of moving onto Clarice's, and if they can't get the rights to her, Fuller may just decide to say fuck it... Plus he may be involved over on the new American Gods show.
Regardless of what happens, this is depressing news, as much as we should celebrate that such an odd and beautiful and subtle and horrifyingly violent show managed to survive three years on network television. I raise my glass of people-wine to you, Hannibal.
Well, the idea that you can tell what a person is like by their actions isn't particularly complex. That's the only way we can infer how someone thinks and feels since none of us have psychic powers.
And the science behind criminal profiling is actually pretty questionable. A lot of it is based on anecdotal evidence but there's not much empirical evidence. Plus there was a study done a couple years ago where they had criminal profilers write profiles of criminals from crimes that had been solved. They also had a bunch of other people in other professions write profiles of those criminals. The criminal profilers did no better than the other groups.
However, even though criminal profiling is based on really crappy/bastardized versions of real behavioral science, it is still based on behavioral science. There's really none of that on the show. There's no behavior analysis involved.
Another deep, rich episode. I feel bad that you guys don't seem to be enjoying them. To me this is, like, pure, unadulterated Hannibal being injected right into my brain.
While trying not to define Hannibal so strictly, this episode does go a long way towards explaining some of the psychology behind his MO. This dichotomy of approach goes directly to the heart of the show's origins. Thomas Harris based the characters of Will Graham and Jack Crawford in part on FBI profiler John Douglas, who helped pioneer the modern FBI Behavioral Sciences division; he really did jet around the country to different murder scenes in order to offer his profiling expertise to local law enforcement (and at one point, like Will, suffered a bout of encephalitis that almost killed him). Profiling is baked into the foundations of the Harrisverse and by extension this show, which has explored the many ways in which Will uses his imagination and empathy to put himself into the mindsets of killers. At the heart of profiling is the idea that a person's actions speak volumes about who they are--or, to put it another way, the idea that who a person is defines and predicts their behavior. We've seen throughout the show that Will will often pick up on specific details about a crime scene that lead to clues to the identity of the killer; and in reverse, knowing more about the killer, can make inferences predicting what they'll do next in order to catch them.
So on the one hand Hannibal ascribes to the viewpoint that, like cooking and art, murder is an expressive act, a 'text' that can be 'read' in order to determine information about the 'author'. On the other hand, we have Hannibal Lector, a character designed to be difficult, if not impossible, to fully understand or predict. As Will put it in episode 2 of this season, Hannibal has multiple trains of thought at any given time to which he gives equal attention. This is surely an impossibility, but so is Hannibal himself. To a certain extent, even for Will Graham, Lector defies analysis. Perhaps even for Lector himself--especially now, in Europe, where he is killing more impulsively. Our focus in season 2 was Will Graham, and the ways in which he was changing through his relationship with Hannibal; Will claimed in the finale of season, though, that he changed Hannibal, too. In a sense the two have rubbed off on one another. Will has grown colder and more intellectual--it's possible that the repeated shocks of engaging with serial killers have somewhat cauterized his nerve endings--watch here as he mutilates a corpse almost casually, in a way that he never would have at the beginning of the show. But on the other side of the coin, Hannibal has grown more emotional, his generally placid interior roiling with pain and rage over Will's betrayal and the destruction of his glorious dream of a European murder spree with his BFF. His resentments seem pettier, his cruelty quicker and less intellectualized. The "peace" Hannibal talks of in Florence, if it existed at all, was brief, and the result of denying his emotions rather than any true contentment.
In keeping with this very subtle disintegration (a devolvement in Hannibal's perfection that Bedelia predicts will lead to his capture), the show is now willing to delve a little into Hannibal's past. For all that Lector insists that "nothing happened to me. I happened," this episode still goes a long way toward demystifying him. One way the show exhibits parallel reluctance to explain Hannibal, though, is by giving us a multiple choice question about Mischa's fate which is not actually answered. In the novels, Hannibal's sister is killed and eaten in front of him by others. Without actually discounting this possibility, the show's vague discussion of the event suggests that Hannibal killed and ate her himself--possibly because the love he felt for her made his own nature and behavior uncomfortably chaotic and unpredictable. Hannibal prefers order in all things (the impeccable suits, the impeccable clothes, the fanatically clean home and office, the exactingly careful body manipulations) but is attracted to disorder (his delight in the sudden godly betrayal of a church collapse, for instance, or his desire to meddle and manipulate with others), and this is reflected in his relationship with Will and, I'm assuming, Mischa, and further with all of his other victims. When Hannibal eats the "rude", the offense they've given him tends to be an invasion of either his own ordered self and image or of the social order in general. Killing them (and often using them as artistic media) restores that order--remakes the teacup, as it were, reversing (emotional) entropy. (It's telling that Hannibal, who has been quietly very, very upset all season, admits despairingly to Bedelia this week that entropy's advance cannot be halted. That's despair and depression talking.)
Regarding Mischa, the show only leaves us with two real possibilities. That Hannibal killed her and lied about it; or that he saw her killed and, to make some order from that chaos, took the crime upon himself. Either way, it was the first production of a machine made for exchanging disorder for order and back again in equal measure, for making a fetish of horrors. Either way, the machine runs and will not stop running, to Europe and farther and over person after person, until someone shuts it down.
Forgot I had this review piece up in drafts. Anyway, this is terrible news. I know it's always been assumed that a cancelation would lead to Hannibal continuing on Amazon or some other service... but if Hannibal was going to end, now would be the time. This season will probably having them wrapping up Will's arc in anticipation of moving onto Clarice's, and if they can't get the rights to her, Fuller may just decide to say fuck it... Plus he may be involved over on the new American Gods show.
Regardless of what happens, this is depressing news, as much as we should celebrate that such an odd and beautiful and subtle and horrifyingly violent show managed to survive three years on network television. I raise my glass of people-wine to you, Hannibal.
Now I want a Hannibal/Criminal Minds cross-over.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Another deep, rich episode. I feel bad that you guys don't seem to be enjoying them. To me this is, like, pure, unadulterated Hannibal being injected right into my brain.
While trying not to define Hannibal so strictly, this episode does go a long way towards explaining some of the psychology behind his MO. This dichotomy of approach goes directly to the heart of the show's origins. Thomas Harris based the characters of Will Graham and Jack Crawford in part on FBI profiler John Douglas, who helped pioneer the modern FBI Behavioral Sciences division; he really did jet around the country to different murder scenes in order to offer his profiling expertise to local law enforcement (and at one point, like Will, suffered a bout of encephalitis that almost killed him). Profiling is baked into the foundations of the Harrisverse and by extension this show, which has explored the many ways in which Will uses his imagination and empathy to put himself into the mindsets of killers. At the heart of profiling is the idea that a person's actions speak volumes about who they are--or, to put it another way, the idea that who a person is defines and predicts their behavior. We've seen throughout the show that Will will often pick up on specific details about a crime scene that lead to clues to the identity of the killer; and in reverse, knowing more about the killer, can make inferences predicting what they'll do next in order to catch them.
So on the one hand Hannibal ascribes to the viewpoint that, like cooking and art, murder is an expressive act, a 'text' that can be 'read' in order to determine information about the 'author'. On the other hand, we have Hannibal Lector, a character designed to be difficult, if not impossible, to fully understand or predict. As Will put it in episode 2 of this season, Hannibal has multiple trains of thought at any given time to which he gives equal attention. This is surely an impossibility, but so is Hannibal himself. To a certain extent, even for Will Graham, Lector defies analysis. Perhaps even for Lector himself--especially now, in Europe, where he is killing more impulsively. Our focus in season 2 was Will Graham, and the ways in which he was changing through his relationship with Hannibal; Will claimed in the finale of season, though, that he changed Hannibal, too. In a sense the two have rubbed off on one another. Will has grown colder and more intellectual--it's possible that the repeated shocks of engaging with serial killers have somewhat cauterized his nerve endings--watch here as he mutilates a corpse almost casually, in a way that he never would have at the beginning of the show. But on the other side of the coin, Hannibal has grown more emotional, his generally placid interior roiling with pain and rage over Will's betrayal and the destruction of his glorious dream of a European murder spree with his BFF. His resentments seem pettier, his cruelty quicker and less intellectualized. The "peace" Hannibal talks of in Florence, if it existed at all, was brief, and the result of denying his emotions rather than any true contentment.
In keeping with this very subtle disintegration (a devolvement in Hannibal's perfection that Bedelia predicts will lead to his capture), the show is now willing to delve a little into Hannibal's past. For all that Lector insists that "nothing happened to me. I happened," this episode still goes a long way toward demystifying him. One way the show exhibits parallel reluctance to explain Hannibal, though, is by giving us a multiple choice question about Mischa's fate which is not actually answered. In the novels, Hannibal's sister is killed and eaten in front of him by others. Without actually discounting this possibility, the show's vague discussion of the event suggests that Hannibal killed and ate her himself--possibly because the love he felt for her made his own nature and behavior uncomfortably chaotic and unpredictable. Hannibal prefers order in all things (the impeccable suits, the impeccable clothes, the fanatically clean home and office, the exactingly careful body manipulations) but is attracted to disorder (his delight in the sudden godly betrayal of a church collapse, for instance, or his desire to meddle and manipulate with others), and this is reflected in his relationship with Will and, I'm assuming, Mischa, and further with all of his other victims. When Hannibal eats the "rude", the offense they've given him tends to be an invasion of either his own ordered self and image or of the social order in general. Killing them (and often using them as artistic media) restores that order--remakes the teacup, as it were, reversing (emotional) entropy. (It's telling that Hannibal, who has been quietly very, very upset all season, admits despairingly to Bedelia this week that entropy's advance cannot be halted. That's despair and depression talking.)
Regarding Mischa, the show only leaves us with two real possibilities. That Hannibal killed her and lied about it; or that he saw her killed and, to make some order from that chaos, took the crime upon himself. Either way, it was the first production of a machine made for exchanging disorder for order and back again in equal measure, for making a fetish of horrors. Either way, the machine runs and will not stop running, to Europe and farther and over person after person, until someone shuts it down.
Forgot I had this review piece up in drafts. Anyway, this is terrible news. I know it's always been assumed that a cancelation would lead to Hannibal continuing on Amazon or some other service... but if Hannibal was going to end, now would be the time. This season will probably having them wrapping up Will's arc in anticipation of moving onto Clarice's, and if they can't get the rights to her, Fuller may just decide to say fuck it... Plus he may be involved over on the new American Gods show.
Regardless of what happens, this is depressing news, as much as we should celebrate that such an odd and beautiful and subtle and horrifyingly violent show managed to survive three years on network television. I raise my glass of people-wine to you, Hannibal.
Well, the idea that you can tell what a person is like by their actions isn't particularly complex. That's the only way we can infer how someone thinks and feels since none of us have psychic powers.
You can also infer how someone thinks and feels by asking them (or in terms of the show, the opposite of profiling, therapy). Judging behavior alone is a necessity when dealing with people who aren't there or aren't willing to talk.
And the science behind criminal profiling is actually pretty questionable. A lot of it is based on anecdotal evidence but there's not much empirical evidence. Plus there was a study done a couple years ago where they had criminal profilers write profiles of criminals from crimes that had been solved. They also had a bunch of other people in other professions write profiles of those criminals. The criminal profilers did no better than the other groups.
However, even though criminal profiling is based on really crappy/bastardized versions of real behavioral science, it is still based on behavioral science. There's really none of that on the show. There's no behavior analysis involved.
Although it's presented in a hazy kind of way, I'd say that when Will views a crime scene and puts himself in it and imagines how he would have to acted in order to create the present conditions of the scene, he is basically intuiting character from behavior.
0
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Another deep, rich episode. I feel bad that you guys don't seem to be enjoying them. To me this is, like, pure, unadulterated Hannibal being injected right into my brain.
While trying not to define Hannibal so strictly, this episode does go a long way towards explaining some of the psychology behind his MO. This dichotomy of approach goes directly to the heart of the show's origins. Thomas Harris based the characters of Will Graham and Jack Crawford in part on FBI profiler John Douglas, who helped pioneer the modern FBI Behavioral Sciences division; he really did jet around the country to different murder scenes in order to offer his profiling expertise to local law enforcement (and at one point, like Will, suffered a bout of encephalitis that almost killed him). Profiling is baked into the foundations of the Harrisverse and by extension this show, which has explored the many ways in which Will uses his imagination and empathy to put himself into the mindsets of killers. At the heart of profiling is the idea that a person's actions speak volumes about who they are--or, to put it another way, the idea that who a person is defines and predicts their behavior. We've seen throughout the show that Will will often pick up on specific details about a crime scene that lead to clues to the identity of the killer; and in reverse, knowing more about the killer, can make inferences predicting what they'll do next in order to catch them.
So on the one hand Hannibal ascribes to the viewpoint that, like cooking and art, murder is an expressive act, a 'text' that can be 'read' in order to determine information about the 'author'. On the other hand, we have Hannibal Lector, a character designed to be difficult, if not impossible, to fully understand or predict. As Will put it in episode 2 of this season, Hannibal has multiple trains of thought at any given time to which he gives equal attention. This is surely an impossibility, but so is Hannibal himself. To a certain extent, even for Will Graham, Lector defies analysis. Perhaps even for Lector himself--especially now, in Europe, where he is killing more impulsively. Our focus in season 2 was Will Graham, and the ways in which he was changing through his relationship with Hannibal; Will claimed in the finale of season, though, that he changed Hannibal, too. In a sense the two have rubbed off on one another. Will has grown colder and more intellectual--it's possible that the repeated shocks of engaging with serial killers have somewhat cauterized his nerve endings--watch here as he mutilates a corpse almost casually, in a way that he never would have at the beginning of the show. But on the other side of the coin, Hannibal has grown more emotional, his generally placid interior roiling with pain and rage over Will's betrayal and the destruction of his glorious dream of a European murder spree with his BFF. His resentments seem pettier, his cruelty quicker and less intellectualized. The "peace" Hannibal talks of in Florence, if it existed at all, was brief, and the result of denying his emotions rather than any true contentment.
In keeping with this very subtle disintegration (a devolvement in Hannibal's perfection that Bedelia predicts will lead to his capture), the show is now willing to delve a little into Hannibal's past. For all that Lector insists that "nothing happened to me. I happened," this episode still goes a long way toward demystifying him. One way the show exhibits parallel reluctance to explain Hannibal, though, is by giving us a multiple choice question about Mischa's fate which is not actually answered. In the novels, Hannibal's sister is killed and eaten in front of him by others. Without actually discounting this possibility, the show's vague discussion of the event suggests that Hannibal killed and ate her himself--possibly because the love he felt for her made his own nature and behavior uncomfortably chaotic and unpredictable. Hannibal prefers order in all things (the impeccable suits, the impeccable clothes, the fanatically clean home and office, the exactingly careful body manipulations) but is attracted to disorder (his delight in the sudden godly betrayal of a church collapse, for instance, or his desire to meddle and manipulate with others), and this is reflected in his relationship with Will and, I'm assuming, Mischa, and further with all of his other victims. When Hannibal eats the "rude", the offense they've given him tends to be an invasion of either his own ordered self and image or of the social order in general. Killing them (and often using them as artistic media) restores that order--remakes the teacup, as it were, reversing (emotional) entropy. (It's telling that Hannibal, who has been quietly very, very upset all season, admits despairingly to Bedelia this week that entropy's advance cannot be halted. That's despair and depression talking.)
Regarding Mischa, the show only leaves us with two real possibilities. That Hannibal killed her and lied about it; or that he saw her killed and, to make some order from that chaos, took the crime upon himself. Either way, it was the first production of a machine made for exchanging disorder for order and back again in equal measure, for making a fetish of horrors. Either way, the machine runs and will not stop running, to Europe and farther and over person after person, until someone shuts it down.
Forgot I had this review piece up in drafts. Anyway, this is terrible news. I know it's always been assumed that a cancelation would lead to Hannibal continuing on Amazon or some other service... but if Hannibal was going to end, now would be the time. This season will probably having them wrapping up Will's arc in anticipation of moving onto Clarice's, and if they can't get the rights to her, Fuller may just decide to say fuck it... Plus he may be involved over on the new American Gods show.
Regardless of what happens, this is depressing news, as much as we should celebrate that such an odd and beautiful and subtle and horrifyingly violent show managed to survive three years on network television. I raise my glass of people-wine to you, Hannibal.
Now I want a Hannibal/Criminal Minds cross-over.
Anybody who's really interested in this stuff should totally read John Douglas's book, Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit. It's pretty fascinating. Basically a very accessible description of what he actually did, illustrated with lots of creepy/interesting anecdotes.
Another deep, rich episode. I feel bad that you guys don't seem to be enjoying them. To me this is, like, pure, unadulterated Hannibal being injected right into my brain.
While trying not to define Hannibal so strictly, this episode does go a long way towards explaining some of the psychology behind his MO. This dichotomy of approach goes directly to the heart of the show's origins. Thomas Harris based the characters of Will Graham and Jack Crawford in part on FBI profiler John Douglas, who helped pioneer the modern FBI Behavioral Sciences division; he really did jet around the country to different murder scenes in order to offer his profiling expertise to local law enforcement (and at one point, like Will, suffered a bout of encephalitis that almost killed him). Profiling is baked into the foundations of the Harrisverse and by extension this show, which has explored the many ways in which Will uses his imagination and empathy to put himself into the mindsets of killers. At the heart of profiling is the idea that a person's actions speak volumes about who they are--or, to put it another way, the idea that who a person is defines and predicts their behavior. We've seen throughout the show that Will will often pick up on specific details about a crime scene that lead to clues to the identity of the killer; and in reverse, knowing more about the killer, can make inferences predicting what they'll do next in order to catch them.
So on the one hand Hannibal ascribes to the viewpoint that, like cooking and art, murder is an expressive act, a 'text' that can be 'read' in order to determine information about the 'author'. On the other hand, we have Hannibal Lector, a character designed to be difficult, if not impossible, to fully understand or predict. As Will put it in episode 2 of this season, Hannibal has multiple trains of thought at any given time to which he gives equal attention. This is surely an impossibility, but so is Hannibal himself. To a certain extent, even for Will Graham, Lector defies analysis. Perhaps even for Lector himself--especially now, in Europe, where he is killing more impulsively. Our focus in season 2 was Will Graham, and the ways in which he was changing through his relationship with Hannibal; Will claimed in the finale of season, though, that he changed Hannibal, too. In a sense the two have rubbed off on one another. Will has grown colder and more intellectual--it's possible that the repeated shocks of engaging with serial killers have somewhat cauterized his nerve endings--watch here as he mutilates a corpse almost casually, in a way that he never would have at the beginning of the show. But on the other side of the coin, Hannibal has grown more emotional, his generally placid interior roiling with pain and rage over Will's betrayal and the destruction of his glorious dream of a European murder spree with his BFF. His resentments seem pettier, his cruelty quicker and less intellectualized. The "peace" Hannibal talks of in Florence, if it existed at all, was brief, and the result of denying his emotions rather than any true contentment.
In keeping with this very subtle disintegration (a devolvement in Hannibal's perfection that Bedelia predicts will lead to his capture), the show is now willing to delve a little into Hannibal's past. For all that Lector insists that "nothing happened to me. I happened," this episode still goes a long way toward demystifying him. One way the show exhibits parallel reluctance to explain Hannibal, though, is by giving us a multiple choice question about Mischa's fate which is not actually answered. In the novels, Hannibal's sister is killed and eaten in front of him by others. Without actually discounting this possibility, the show's vague discussion of the event suggests that Hannibal killed and ate her himself--possibly because the love he felt for her made his own nature and behavior uncomfortably chaotic and unpredictable. Hannibal prefers order in all things (the impeccable suits, the impeccable clothes, the fanatically clean home and office, the exactingly careful body manipulations) but is attracted to disorder (his delight in the sudden godly betrayal of a church collapse, for instance, or his desire to meddle and manipulate with others), and this is reflected in his relationship with Will and, I'm assuming, Mischa, and further with all of his other victims. When Hannibal eats the "rude", the offense they've given him tends to be an invasion of either his own ordered self and image or of the social order in general. Killing them (and often using them as artistic media) restores that order--remakes the teacup, as it were, reversing (emotional) entropy. (It's telling that Hannibal, who has been quietly very, very upset all season, admits despairingly to Bedelia this week that entropy's advance cannot be halted. That's despair and depression talking.)
Regarding Mischa, the show only leaves us with two real possibilities. That Hannibal killed her and lied about it; or that he saw her killed and, to make some order from that chaos, took the crime upon himself. Either way, it was the first production of a machine made for exchanging disorder for order and back again in equal measure, for making a fetish of horrors. Either way, the machine runs and will not stop running, to Europe and farther and over person after person, until someone shuts it down.
Forgot I had this review piece up in drafts. Anyway, this is terrible news. I know it's always been assumed that a cancelation would lead to Hannibal continuing on Amazon or some other service... but if Hannibal was going to end, now would be the time. This season will probably having them wrapping up Will's arc in anticipation of moving onto Clarice's, and if they can't get the rights to her, Fuller may just decide to say fuck it... Plus he may be involved over on the new American Gods show.
Regardless of what happens, this is depressing news, as much as we should celebrate that such an odd and beautiful and subtle and horrifyingly violent show managed to survive three years on network television. I raise my glass of people-wine to you, Hannibal.
Well, the idea that you can tell what a person is like by their actions isn't particularly complex. That's the only way we can infer how someone thinks and feels since none of us have psychic powers.
You can also infer how someone thinks and feels by asking them (or in terms of the show, the opposite of profiling, therapy). Judging behavior alone is a necessity when dealing with people who aren't there or aren't willing to talk.
In psychology, a behavior is defined as a response to a stimuli (either internal or external). Although some psychologists, like behaviorists, are mainly interested in observable responses. So talking is considered a behavior in psychology. In fact, some psychologists lump talking together with other forms of communication that uses symbols.
And the science behind criminal profiling is actually pretty questionable. A lot of it is based on anecdotal evidence but there's not much empirical evidence. Plus there was a study done a couple years ago where they had criminal profilers write profiles of criminals from crimes that had been solved. They also had a bunch of other people in other professions write profiles of those criminals. The criminal profilers did no better than the other groups.
However, even though criminal profiling is based on really crappy/bastardized versions of real behavioral science, it is still based on behavioral science. There's really none of that on the show. There's no behavior analysis involved.
Although it's presented in a hazy kind of way, I'd say that when Will views a crime scene and puts himself in it and imagines how he would have to acted in order to create the present conditions of the scene, he is basically intuiting character from behavior.
Behavior analysis takes the whole environment-person-behavior relationship into consideration. It's not just about intuiting the person's character. It's about figuring out how the behavior arose, how the environment contributed to the behavior, whether the behavior is sustained by environmental factors or if the stimuli that trigger the behavior have been internalized within the person.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
So apparently there's this amazing new trailer for Season 3 up. I'm told it features spoilers for the next 5 episodes or so (so I haven't seen it), BUT apparently people are super pumped about it, so if you're one of those in this thread who are bored so far and on the fence about continuing, maybe give this a watch?
There's a short interview on Hitfix where Fuller says it's a 50/50 chance that the bill for future seasons of Hannibal will be picked up by someone else. Crossing my fingers (so it's more difficult to cut them off, bread them, fry them in butter and eat them with a Pinot Gris).
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
So apparently there's this amazing new trailer for Season 3 up. I'm told it features spoilers for the next 5 episodes or so (so I haven't seen it), BUT apparently people are super pumped about it, so if you're one of those in this thread who are bored so far and on the fence about continuing, maybe give this a watch?
Yeah that has some major spoilers in it, though who knows what's fake imaginary stuff and what's real.
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
There's a short interview on Hitfix where Fuller says it's a 50/50 chance that the bill for future seasons of Hannibal will be picked up by someone else. Crossing my fingers (so it's more difficult to cut them off, bread them, fry them in butter and eat them with a Pinot Gris).
This makes me nervous that it'll not be ending on anything resembling closure. :I
Also I watched that super spoilery trailer!
That shot of Hannibal walking around covered in blood in broad daylight is awesome.
There's a short interview on Hitfix where Fuller says it's a 50/50 chance that the bill for future seasons of Hannibal will be picked up by someone else. Crossing my fingers (so it's more difficult to cut them off, bread them, fry them in butter and eat them with a Pinot Gris).
This makes me nervous that it'll not be ending on anything resembling closure. :I
Fuller has said that the season finale (much like the others) does function as a series finale if necessary.
They shouldn't have left all this stuff for the fourth episode of the season. I mostly enjoyed it, though there were some unnecessarily drawn out sequences. I do like the new actor they got for whatshisface, as well.
The pace of this season is so slow. I've never seen anything so glacial. The psychological navel gazing isn't revealing anything new at this point. Yes, Will was obsessed with Hannibal, we get it. The endless flashbacks, slo-mo, and languid dialogue feel like pure padding because they need to fill time. I also wish someone would say just something a real person would say, like Jack shaking Will by the shoulders with a furious "What the hell is wrong with you?" after he said he thought Hannibal was his friend.
At least we got some moments with Verger and Chilton.
I also wish someone would say just something a real person would say, like Jack shaking Will by the shoulders with a furious "What the hell is wrong with you?" after he said he thought Hannibal was his friend.
I was going to write that if you're expecting realism, Hannibal is the wrong series to watch - that's just not what it's doing with its heightened, operatic style - but I have to say that it works better for me if there's a certain realistic baseline to characters like Jack or Alana, and then there are those outside this realism, the Hannibals, Wills and Bedelias. S1 often worked with this contrast, but S2 moved away from this to some extent, which is why while S2 impressed me, I enjoyed S1 more. I think the aesthetic and artistic ambition loses something if there's no counterpoint that's more grounded in some form of realism.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I also wish someone would say just something a real person would say, like Jack shaking Will by the shoulders with a furious "What the hell is wrong with you?" after he said he thought Hannibal was his friend.
I was going to write that if you're expecting realism, Hannibal is the wrong series to watch - that's just not what it's doing with its heightened, operatic style - but I have to say that it works better for me if there's a certain realistic baseline to characters like Jack or Alana, and then there are those outside this realism, the Hannibals, Wills and Bedelias. S1 often worked with this contrast, but S2 moved away from this to some extent, which is why while S2 impressed me, I enjoyed S1 more. I think the aesthetic and artistic ambition loses something if there's no counterpoint that's more grounded in some form of realism.
Yeah, I mean I know it's mainly a very operatic and unrealistic show but it all becomes froth when even the dialogue is constantly untethered from reality. Jack has traditionally been the one person to bring things back to some kind of reality yet his attitude towards Will here was very bizarre.
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
edited June 2015
Noticed something about the upcoming episode titles;
7 is "Digestivo" and after that they drop the food related naming convention. Episodes 8 through 11 are all named for variations on the Red Dragon painting, 12 and 13 are TBA.
Digestivo kinda feels 'final' like the end of meal time, y'know? Guessing Hannibal is captured there, and episode 8 begins the Red Dragon arc.
Noticed something about the upcoming episode titles;
7 is "Digestivo" and after that they drop the food related naming convention. Episodes 8 through 11 are all named for variations on the Red Dragon painting, 12 and 13 are TBA.
Digestivo kinda feels 'final' like the end of meal time, y'know? Guessing Hannibal is captured there, and episode 8 begins the Red Dragon arc.
Fuller said in a recent interview that the last 6 episodes are basically a
Red Dragon miniseries.
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Mike Danger"Diane..."a place both wonderful and strangeRegistered Userregular
I'm so pleased that they kept the "nobody beats the Riz" line.
Anyone who was in the "Hannibal has gone way too far up its own ass" camp check out the latest ep? Seems like season 3 has finally hit the gas pedal a bit. I myself was enjoying the slow, weird, self-indulgent, moody pace but I freely acknowledge that's a justifiably minority position. If you dropped it after the first couple of eps this season you might want to give it another go.
It's looking less and less likely that there's going to be a renewal somewhere else: Hugh and Mads' contracts both just expired on the 1st with no renewal, meaning that an interested party would now have to renegotiate new contracts along with coordinating with the schedules of whatever new jobs they get (on top of having to work around Fuller's American Gods schedule).
It's a shame, but at least we're getting
Red Dragon
before the end.
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MalReynoldsThe Hunter S Thompson of incredibly mild medicinesRegistered Userregular
That was so satisfying
"A new take on the epic fantasy genre... Darkly comic, relatable characters... twisted storyline."
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
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Johnny ChopsockyScootaloo! We have to cook!Grillin' HaysenburgersRegistered Userregular
edited July 2015
That episode was so great.
Just the maximum levels of catharsis from Jack just Brock Lesnaring Hannibal all over the room.
It's not surprising that people like the episode where something actually happens. If NBC hadn't cancelled it it'd have signed it's death warrant with those first four episodes.
Still hopingit gets picked up though.
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Johnny ChopsockyScootaloo! We have to cook!Grillin' HaysenburgersRegistered Userregular
Yeah that was awesome. Finally things are happening.
Hannibal is clearly getting locked up soon.
Also, even though I knew exactly what was coming because of Hannibal '01, they still did such a great job with that particular scene.
It was satisfying, yet I didn't feel like Hannibal was giving his all to win. In previous fights he isn't that passive, if he wanted Jack dead that would have gone differently.
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
Yeah that was awesome. Finally things are happening.
Hannibal is clearly getting locked up soon.
Also, even though I knew exactly what was coming because of Hannibal '01, they still did such a great job with that particular scene.
It was satisfying, yet I didn't feel like Hannibal was giving his all to win. In previous fights he isn't that passive, if he wanted Jack dead that would have gone differently.
I disagree!
He was doing his usual thing of trying to provoke an emotional reaction, poking at Bella's death, but Jack just didn't give a shit and attacked with a single mindedness.
In their previous confrontation he went in, seemingly going for the arrest, and then letting up when he thought he'd subdued him, and that almost got him killed. So this time he was just like fuck it, sneak attack and hurt him bad, then keep hurting him, and it worked.
Hannibal tries to get the knife, fails. He tries to kick back, fails. Then he tries talking again, fails. It seemed like pure luck that he got away and Jack didn't pursue him.
Yeah that was awesome. Finally things are happening.
Hannibal is clearly getting locked up soon.
Also, even though I knew exactly what was coming because of Hannibal '01, they still did such a great job with that particular scene.
It was satisfying, yet I didn't feel like Hannibal was giving his all to win. In previous fights he isn't that passive, if he wanted Jack dead that would have gone differently.
I disagree!
He was doing his usual thing of trying to provoke an emotional reaction, poking at Bella's death, but Jack just didn't give a shit and attacked with a single mindedness.
In their previous confrontation he went in, seemingly going for the arrest, and then letting up when he thought he'd subdued him, and that almost got him killed. So this time he was just like fuck it, sneak attack and hurt him bad, then keep hurting him, and it worked.
Hannibal tries to get the knife, fails. He tries to kick back, fails. Then he tries talking again, fails. It seemed like pure luck that he got away and Jack didn't pursue him.
That's just it with Hannibal, he'll make some mistakes not that many in a fight to the death. He's active, aggressive, doesn't give his opponents time to breath and uses every object in the room to his advantage. He didn't do that in that fight. His fire was gone. There were a few times he just stood there like a deer in the headlights waiting for Jack to hit him. That's why I don't buy Hannibal wanted to kill Jack. They've fought before and he wasn't this sloppy.
I didn't really see it as cathartic as everyone else, I don't think.
It came right on the heels of him effortlessly murdering a dude who was fully aware he was probably going to murder him. Who then proceeded to confront him anyway. It was also revealed that he knows all about Verger and Dr. Bloom's plot and it's nothing but a joke to him, cutting the legs off of that entire plotline and making them into nothing more than bumbling idiots.
The entire fight was satisfying to watch in the moment, but he gets away yet again and I'm sure he was just toying with Jack in the first place.
Everything in the show moves at Hannibal's pace and follows his whims, and I can't really get satisfaction from him getting beaten up or captured if it's on his terms and is a part of his goals.
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
I just didn't get that feeling that it was on his terms.
His terms would've been provoking Jack with his talk of Bella, get him into an 'honorable fight' or whatever where he would surely win. Jack doesn't take the bait, and it rapidly spins out of his control.
That's what it looks like when it doesn't go according to his plan.
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Steam ID XBL: JohnnyChopsocky PSN:Stud_Beefpile WiiU:JohnnyChopsocky
So on the one hand Hannibal ascribes to the viewpoint that, like cooking and art, murder is an expressive act, a 'text' that can be 'read' in order to determine information about the 'author'. On the other hand, we have Hannibal Lector, a character designed to be difficult, if not impossible, to fully understand or predict. As Will put it in episode 2 of this season, Hannibal has multiple trains of thought at any given time to which he gives equal attention. This is surely an impossibility, but so is Hannibal himself. To a certain extent, even for Will Graham, Lector defies analysis. Perhaps even for Lector himself--especially now, in Europe, where he is killing more impulsively. Our focus in season 2 was Will Graham, and the ways in which he was changing through his relationship with Hannibal; Will claimed in the finale of season, though, that he changed Hannibal, too. In a sense the two have rubbed off on one another. Will has grown colder and more intellectual--it's possible that the repeated shocks of engaging with serial killers have somewhat cauterized his nerve endings--watch here as he mutilates a corpse almost casually, in a way that he never would have at the beginning of the show. But on the other side of the coin, Hannibal has grown more emotional, his generally placid interior roiling with pain and rage over Will's betrayal and the destruction of his glorious dream of a European murder spree with his BFF. His resentments seem pettier, his cruelty quicker and less intellectualized. The "peace" Hannibal talks of in Florence, if it existed at all, was brief, and the result of denying his emotions rather than any true contentment.
In keeping with this very subtle disintegration (a devolvement in Hannibal's perfection that Bedelia predicts will lead to his capture), the show is now willing to delve a little into Hannibal's past. For all that Lector insists that "nothing happened to me. I happened," this episode still goes a long way toward demystifying him. One way the show exhibits parallel reluctance to explain Hannibal, though, is by giving us a multiple choice question about Mischa's fate which is not actually answered. In the novels, Hannibal's sister is killed and eaten in front of him by others. Without actually discounting this possibility, the show's vague discussion of the event suggests that Hannibal killed and ate her himself--possibly because the love he felt for her made his own nature and behavior uncomfortably chaotic and unpredictable. Hannibal prefers order in all things (the impeccable suits, the impeccable clothes, the fanatically clean home and office, the exactingly careful body manipulations) but is attracted to disorder (his delight in the sudden godly betrayal of a church collapse, for instance, or his desire to meddle and manipulate with others), and this is reflected in his relationship with Will and, I'm assuming, Mischa, and further with all of his other victims. When Hannibal eats the "rude", the offense they've given him tends to be an invasion of either his own ordered self and image or of the social order in general. Killing them (and often using them as artistic media) restores that order--remakes the teacup, as it were, reversing (emotional) entropy. (It's telling that Hannibal, who has been quietly very, very upset all season, admits despairingly to Bedelia this week that entropy's advance cannot be halted. That's despair and depression talking.)
Regarding Mischa, the show only leaves us with two real possibilities. That Hannibal killed her and lied about it; or that he saw her killed and, to make some order from that chaos, took the crime upon himself. Either way, it was the first production of a machine made for exchanging disorder for order and back again in equal measure, for making a fetish of horrors. Either way, the machine runs and will not stop running, to Europe and farther and over person after person, until someone shuts it down.
Forgot I had this review piece up in drafts. Anyway, this is terrible news. I know it's always been assumed that a cancelation would lead to Hannibal continuing on Amazon or some other service... but if Hannibal was going to end, now would be the time. This season will probably having them wrapping up Will's arc in anticipation of moving onto Clarice's, and if they can't get the rights to her, Fuller may just decide to say fuck it... Plus he may be involved over on the new American Gods show.
Regardless of what happens, this is depressing news, as much as we should celebrate that such an odd and beautiful and subtle and horrifyingly violent show managed to survive three years on network television. I raise my glass of people-wine to you, Hannibal.
My interpretation:
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Well, the idea that you can tell what a person is like by their actions isn't particularly complex. That's the only way we can infer how someone thinks and feels since none of us have psychic powers.
And the science behind criminal profiling is actually pretty questionable. A lot of it is based on anecdotal evidence but there's not much empirical evidence. Plus there was a study done a couple years ago where they had criminal profilers write profiles of criminals from crimes that had been solved. They also had a bunch of other people in other professions write profiles of those criminals. The criminal profilers did no better than the other groups.
However, even though criminal profiling is based on really crappy/bastardized versions of real behavioral science, it is still based on behavioral science. There's really none of that on the show. There's no behavior analysis involved.
Now I want a Hannibal/Criminal Minds cross-over.
You can also infer how someone thinks and feels by asking them (or in terms of the show, the opposite of profiling, therapy). Judging behavior alone is a necessity when dealing with people who aren't there or aren't willing to talk.
Although it's presented in a hazy kind of way, I'd say that when Will views a crime scene and puts himself in it and imagines how he would have to acted in order to create the present conditions of the scene, he is basically intuiting character from behavior.
Anybody who's really interested in this stuff should totally read John Douglas's book, Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit. It's pretty fascinating. Basically a very accessible description of what he actually did, illustrated with lots of creepy/interesting anecdotes.
In psychology, a behavior is defined as a response to a stimuli (either internal or external). Although some psychologists, like behaviorists, are mainly interested in observable responses. So talking is considered a behavior in psychology. In fact, some psychologists lump talking together with other forms of communication that uses symbols.
Behavior analysis takes the whole environment-person-behavior relationship into consideration. It's not just about intuiting the person's character. It's about figuring out how the behavior arose, how the environment contributed to the behavior, whether the behavior is sustained by environmental factors or if the stimuli that trigger the behavior have been internalized within the person.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Yeah that has some major spoilers in it, though who knows what's fake imaginary stuff and what's real.
This makes me nervous that it'll not be ending on anything resembling closure. :I
Also I watched that super spoilery trailer!
Fuller has said that the season finale (much like the others) does function as a series finale if necessary.
At least we got some moments with Verger and Chilton.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Yeah, I mean I know it's mainly a very operatic and unrealistic show but it all becomes froth when even the dialogue is constantly untethered from reality. Jack has traditionally been the one person to bring things back to some kind of reality yet his attitude towards Will here was very bizarre.
Digestivo kinda feels 'final' like the end of meal time, y'know? Guessing Hannibal is captured there, and episode 8 begins the Red Dragon arc.
Fuller said in a recent interview that the last 6 episodes are basically a
http://lexiconmegatherium.tumblr.com/
It's a shame, but at least we're getting
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Steam ID XBL: JohnnyChopsocky PSN:Stud_Beefpile WiiU:JohnnyChopsocky
Still hopingit gets picked up though.
I just like this fifth one the most so far.
Steam ID XBL: JohnnyChopsocky PSN:Stud_Beefpile WiiU:JohnnyChopsocky
Also, even though I knew exactly what was coming because of Hannibal '01, they still did such a great job with that particular scene.
At least it's been awesome. Three seasons isn't the worst thing ever. Still sad, though.
Steam: adamjnet
Round 2
Fight
I disagree!
In their previous confrontation he went in, seemingly going for the arrest, and then letting up when he thought he'd subdued him, and that almost got him killed. So this time he was just like fuck it, sneak attack and hurt him bad, then keep hurting him, and it worked.
Hannibal tries to get the knife, fails. He tries to kick back, fails. Then he tries talking again, fails. It seemed like pure luck that he got away and Jack didn't pursue him.
The entire fight was satisfying to watch in the moment, but he gets away yet again and I'm sure he was just toying with Jack in the first place.
Everything in the show moves at Hannibal's pace and follows his whims, and I can't really get satisfaction from him getting beaten up or captured if it's on his terms and is a part of his goals.
That's what it looks like when it doesn't go according to his plan.