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Hannibal 1×05 – “Coquilles” Review

Stars: Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen, Caroline Dhavernas, Laurence Fishburne | Created by Bryan Fuller

‘Coquilles’ is an outstanding hour of television. It’s equal parts horrifying and heart-wrenching while mixing in a dark standalone story. It’s a cocktail that Hannibal seems to have down pat and this episode is absolutely no exception. It skirts the plot of Abigail Hobbes this week but still allows for some deep, deep digging into the psychological plumbing of the people in this world all functioning around Hannibal Lecter. The best thing about all of it is this, it gives us a newer insight into a character that we’ve only seen from a distance thus far and the show is all the more better for it because it gives the episode a different tack than what’s to be expected about a show that features all sorts of salacious murderousness.

We continue to dig deeper into what drives Will and we see the toll that seeing the things he sees is physically affecting him. He’s sleepwalking and even more so at a potential risk to himself, waking up in the middle of the street and towards the end of the episode, standing on the roof of his house teetering on the edge. And his relationship with Jack subsequently is going through a change something akin to this. It’s unclear as to why Hannibal is trying to drive a wedge between the two men but it seems to work, and the best part is that Will sees into Hannibal’s attempts to do so almost immediately. The scene where Will lashes out at Jack in the alley while examining the second victim is great because it allows for a crash of the volatile relationship that we’ve seen this far on the show, and even if it is only five episodes in, we understand that they have a clashy relationship. And we see briefly that Will is slowly loosening up and even has a quiet, nice moment with the medical examiner, Beverly.

The main plot of the episode actually works in the context of the show because how it smoothly locks into the stealth plot aspect involving Jack Crawford. It works better than most of the serial killers we’ve met (including the one we’ve never met). The plot is reminiscent of a great Millennium episode called ’Kingdom Come’ about a man murdering priests as a way of lashing out at his loss of faith. The story involves the darkly, comically named “Angel-Maker,” aptly named because of his gruesome tableaus (nice visual reference to Charles Napier’s death scene in Silence of the Lambs) of slicing the flesh of victims to make angel wings and posing them as if they were praying over him. We only learn briefly that he’s suffering from a brain tumor and that he’s killing because he’s either coping with his death or bargaining with his inevitable doom.

The bigger twist is that the “Angel-Maker” is killing the victims because he sees deeper into them, sees them as the killers and miscreants that they are. It provides it even more so with a Frailty-esque twist to the episode. There’s allowance of the theological and religious implications of this killer and even throws in sprinklings of Judeo-Christian history. It’s awfully weighty.  The best part of the episode is how the killer again affects all around him, and that he dies before we really know why he’s killing people or even how he knows how the people he’s killing are the unsavory characters that they are. He dies but not before haunting Will (and what an effective jump scare that was in the barn) and revealing that he sees darkness inside of him. There isn’t catharsis for Will in anything here because he only sees the killer inside of his head. And this allows for the most beautiful relationship between what Will sees and what is real. Will’s frustration that he may catch a killer one day and another will pop up again and again is palpable and believable.

One of the most exciting elements of the “Angel-Maker”/cancer subplot because is that it ties deeply into Jack’s relationship with his wife. In ‘Ceuf’ we only see that he and his wife are having problems but there isn’t any reveal of what is causing any dissolution. Until now. The best part is how they play the distance in the marriage as a potential affair until we see it isn’t and it sneaks up so damn subtlety that she has cancer. Laurence Fishburne had been previously seen as someone who pushes and pushes Will into going into the field way before he was ready, and we see that he’s capable of grace especially in the amazing scenes between he and his wife. The scene in the bed is great because we see Jack accept whatever is going on in her life, even if it is an affair. But, it’s cancer attacking her body and as she reveals this to Hannibal in her therapy session, she gives a sense of heartbreak to something that is heartbreaking and Gina Torres sells the hurt of how little and how huge the cancer could affect her. Even better, the scene where Jack listening to the wife of the killer talk about how her husband was acting before their divorce, Fishburne plays his reaction and understanding of the fact that his wife has cancer so beautifully. It lends shading to Jack for what we’ve seen in how grumpy he’s been thus far. And their scene together is stunning because of her admission that she didn’t want change in their lives so she mentioned nothing and he says he’d be there for her as much as she needed him. Wow. Just powerful.

The final scene with Will and Jack, attempting to heal all their rifts and arguments thus far is, not to run the same ground, brilliant. Because Will is clearly not the person to understand exactly emotions or even care for someone so clearly hurt, but he sees in Jack something akin to anguish. And sitting next to him and saying that he won’t leave until Jack talks, but doesn’t want him to talk before he’s ready gives much more depth to the relationship that the two have.

Hannibal 1×04 – “Ceuf” Review

Stars: Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen, Caroline Dhavernas, Laurence Fishburne | Created by Bryan Fuller

‘Ceuf’ was notoriously pulled from the NBC lineup in the wake of any numerous tragedies that have occurred in the United States (Sandy Hook, Watertown, etc) and it wobbles the mind as to exactly why it was pulled. The episode, or the main plot of the episode revolves around a woman brainwashing children into killing other children seems pale in comparison to all the coverage of all the aforementioned tragedies that spool out before our eyes on news everyday and the episode would’ve fit right in line with all the many shows like Criminal Minds or Millennium that did the exact same plot but on a different tack. So, why was it pulled? Because the episode isn’t edited cohesively, it feels like an art experiment and feels disjointed. They hit all the emotional character beats but it still feels off. We just don’t feel the growth because it’s all presented as a series of shorts.

Hannibal is a show that lends grace and tragedy to murder, it doesn’t wallow in the bloody excess of these tragedies but rather show repercussions. It’s about how we react to death and violence. It’s about heartbreak. Hannibal is great in that sense. The lead character, Will is broken by the murder of the Minnesota Shrike and in the prior episodes we see how it tears him out, whether he enjoyed it or didn’t. The daughter of the killer is equally disturbed by the matter, either by growing up underneath the shadow of the killings and her own killing of a victim’s relative. It treats death with the weight it deserves.

‘Ceuf’ or the parts made available by NBC, mainly hits all the points of the character growth, hitting all beats with Abigail and Will, ushered into well-being by Hannibal and Alana. We see Hannibal picking at Will trying to see how he’s still affected by his killing of Garret Hobbes and the nightmares that he encounters every night by placing himself in the killer’s shoes. We learn about Hannibal’s past briefly, although he may or may not be telling all of the truths, that like Abigail he’s an orphan. And that Will may have commonalties in this two sided triangle. It’s interesting to see Will batting Hannibal’s psychological volleys about the low hanging fruit that is his past with his parents. He doesn’t have a moment of catharsis and let Hannibal get to the meat of the matter and have a revelation about his parents. No, he doesn’t give into Hannibal and that’s keeping Will’s character in check but allows for some deep darkness and a beautifully composed scene of Will revealing that he leaves on the lights on in his house and walks through the fog and mists in his fields surrounding the property. It’s a haunting shot of the home of Will’s house sitting there looking precisely like a ship at sea as he mentions to Hannibal as a metaphor for Will feeling safe. It’s a haunting shot by ace cinematographer (and staunch director) Karim Hussain. And we see Will at the episode’s end, alone and fighting his sleep.

Hannibal’s presence in the episode is felt immensely. He feeds Will’s dogs for him but rummages through his belongings in an invasion of Will’s privacy. It’s unclear what he’s going for but the more important meat of the episode lies in Hannibal’s radical treatment of Abigail, feeding her mushrooms to try and get her to dig in to how she feels about the murders her life has been thrust into. It’s great because Abigail and Hannibal are a complex relationship, just last episode they booth became co-conspirators in the murderous fallout of the Minnesota Shrike and now she sits at his table and eats his food but still sees her dead parents. Alana gets more and more involved in Hannibal’s therapy by creating the complete converse of his therapy. There isn’t a deep catharsis with Abigail as well as Will, and that hints at just how alike the two are. We only see him briefly with Jack discussing the fact that Crawford has marital problems and may be visiting Hannibal in an effort to heal any broken bonds he has with his marriage. And during their meal and discussion we get a  grim insight unseen by Jack that the “rabbit” that they’re eating is in fact an unnamed victim. We learn that Hannibal see Will as floundering and wants Jack there as an anchor for Will And we see that he wants to have kids with his wife but she shrugs it off and goes to sleep with nary a word said to him. There’s a clear problem but an unclear picture there that we don’t quite see yet.

It’s hard not to grasp at straws to put together the pieces made by the cutting up of ‘Ceuf’ but left in the wake we do have some great beats but an unfinished structure. Hopefully, it doesn’t hurt Hannibal because it’s a damn fine show.

Hannibal 1×03 – “Potage” Review

Stars: Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen, Caroline Dhavernas, Laurence Fishburne | Created by Bryan Fuller

Po·tage  (p-täzh) n.- A thick, often creamy soup.

There’s so much depth in ‘Potage,’ that it required a second viewing to truly absorb everything that’s going on, and it’s a whole hell of a lot. Whereas last week’s episode took a minor detour and focused on a fungal fetished serial killer, this episode is more of a direct sequel to the pilot episode. And it’s still a continual, searing portrait of the aftereffects of crime, and how people both internally and externally respond to crime. There are several motifs that occur throughout the episode, namely each character needing something from everyone in the intricate webs they find themselves in. We start with the good doctor and the hanging thread of the copycat killing from the pilot episode, it’s not all the way a certainty that’s been shown to us on the series, but we’re realizing more and more that Hannibal is behind the death, perhaps as a method to push Will into cornering the Shrike and figuring it out. Mikkelsen’s glib reaction to the slideshow of his handiwork he committed is just peachy. And later, committing another murder to cover up the copycat by killing one of Abigail’s friends during their local jaunt to her crime scene/home and planting DNA from the first victim’s brother on the newer victim. It’s again, not something that’s expressly shown but intriguingly hinted at and isn’t dumbed down for the casual viewer.

You’ve got Crawford pushing Will into a corner all but condemning Abigail Hobbes for co-conspirator in the Minnesota Shrike killings and Will needing Abigail just the same as proxy to help alleviate the nightmares he’s been having since he killed her father, and as we see in the proceeding events, putting himself as the murderer killing her in his nightmares. It’s weighty stuff but giving both the Hobbes girl and Graham the link of both being victims on the flip side of the coin provides a rather interesting dichotomy in a show amidst all procedurals over-saturating the waves. The idea of nightmares plaguing the characters is a strong element simply they don’t show this stuff and all the stuff after the deaths are said and done. Or Freddie Lounds trying desperately to use Abigail to her advantage and being shot down by Will and simultaneously coming up with the only humor of the night in Will’s threat to her (which staying true to HER character, attacks him online). The only person not using anyone for their own good is Dr. Bloom, and she showcases a different approach to psychoanalysis than Hannibal could or Will’s anti-touching approach to getting to know anyone. Her interactions with Will near the beginning of the episode shows her as a person who sees Will as a person and not just a means to catching a killer or pureed psychology gray matter.

Another way this is essayed in the episode are the scenes where Abigail returns to her home and her father’s getaway cabin, the crime scenes where her parents were murdered and where her father committed his most dark of deeds. Returning pilot director David Slade paints the home and the cabin as shells of darkness, the cave that you have to return to after all is gone, and the warmth feels sucked out. Fuller and ace Buffy writer David Fury and Chris Brancato serving as the triple headed monster credited with writing the episode hammer home the effect of murder, be it Abigail asking why there’s no chalk outline for her dead mother, and subsequently saying goodbye to her mother and noting that the crime scene cleaners did a great job of cleaning up (it’s worth noting that Will mentions that the cleaners flipped their family photos on the refrigerator around). It hurts to see these things, revisiting this place of death.

There’s definite shading that’s given to Hobbes and his daughter, treating him as the casual hunter teaching his daughter and then folding it over on its self and makes Hobbes beyond the cliché of a serial killer. He treats his trophies, both animal and human with grace, his skewed mentality being that if he wastes one iota of the body, their death is meaningless. It’s a strange, almost “Texas Chainsaw” inspired killing mentality using the parts of his corpses for other uses like pillow stuffing of pipes or what else may be. But one that suits who we’ve seen Hobbes as, at least in this episode and builds a mythology around a killer we’ve only glimpsed in both reality and nightmares. Having Abigail kill the brother of the copycat victim gives her an edge and allows for her guilt to be palpable, even from the beginning we see she’s having recurring nightmares about gutting an unnamed woman victim rather than the deer she shoots in the cold open. But, her last conversation with Hannibal shows she knows exactly who he is and what he’s up to, after all he helps her hide the body of her victim. She calls him out as a killer and the caller to her father before all hell broke loose, and he uses his knowledge of her murder and her of his, to keep their secrets. Again, not to repeat a point over and over, but this is not a-typical behavior, the victim is now co-conspirator with the person who brought this madness upon her. It’s a deep. dark well.

Hannibal 1×02 – “Amuse-Bouche” Review

Stars: Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen, Caroline Dhavernas, Laurence Fishburne | Created by Bryan Fuller

Amuse-Bouche: def: \a-’myuz bush\ [Fr. amuse the mouth] 1: a small bite before the meal begins. 2: greeting of the Chef de cuisine

The most important thing that ‘Amuse-Bouche’ does is to show exactly how Will Graham is affected by the shooting of the Minnesota Shrike himself, Garret Jacob Hobbes. They show him crushed by this decision, at a standstill with himself, just outright questioning himself. It’s a great moral quandary for the character because this idea is rarely raised on any shows. Death doesn’t have a weight to it. It just happens. But, here on “Hannibal,” it’s damned devastating as it should be. People are screwed up by it, the serial killers don’t just murder people and enjoy it, they’re just as wracked with the weight of what they do and both sides of the coin are just as mired in the red mists. ‘Amuse-Bouche’ is all about the fallout of the pilot’s events, everything involving the Shrike permeates throughout this episode, even if there’s a brief standalone story nestled within the larger plotline. They briefly visit the brilliantly eerie hunting lodge of the Shrike, and it’s just amazing detailed it is, with the neat looking antler museum. Even more so, they mention that Hobbes may have had a sidekick. It’s discussed only a little that it may be Hobbes’ daughter, but really doesn’t dig into the meat of this matter (pun intended). The real shrift of all of this is Will’s killed the Shrike and saved the killer’s daughter and about the after effects.

The great thing is, this is just the jumping off point. This is how Will is affected by the death of Hobbes at his hands. People all around him are congratulating him, but he feels it’s unwarranted and unnecessary. He killed a man and his next thoughts are to stop them from people following in the Shrike’s footsteps. And because he needs his evaluations to keep on working, he begins to become evaluated by Dr. Lector, which is a welcome, his presence is far more than in the pilot and welcomed immensely. This is an amazing entryway into the foundation of their relationship, even though it’s in its infancy, the groundwork is built. It’s a nice tete a tete between the two men, we see more of Hannibal as someone who’s fully capable of reading Graham like a book, and Graham is someone so resistant to the idea of getting his head shrunk. This is all about who we know as Will, perhaps his personality slant not being susceptible to Hannibal’s therapy.

There’s a small plot about a serial killer burying diabetics alive to grow his mushrooms and allow for people to grasp the tether to who we were in the most symbiotic of manners, but the plotline is a little murky as are his motivations but it still gets in some pretty cool looking effects with people layered in mushrooms, a sort of fungi-esque corpse. It’s pretty effective and starkly projected, and feels like something that Fuller would have created, an almost dark tapestry. It barely registers overall in the main throttle of the episode but still allows for a decent detour in the episode. And Fuller sneaks in a cameo for all the “Wonderfalls” fans out there with Chelan Simmons reprising her character of Gretchen Speck-Horowitz.

They do tie it into the story with Abigail and Will, about how the killer is trying to draw a connection from her to Will but it feels an afterthought in the whole scheme of things. They also introduce one of the more aggravating characters (and rightly so, this character is always pestering across the board) Freddie Lounds, although interestingly is gender swapped for the show. Lounds may serve a small purpose, to natter Will Graham but she comes off exactly as she’s to be presented. At least, she serves a purpose to all of the surrounding plot, to give the creepy killer an outlet, to make him think that he fosters a commonality with Will, that Will sees him for what he is. Lounds may be the most annoying character but is still so true to life. The scene where she attempts to pull the wool over Lector’s eyes and get him to fess up about his sessions with Will is great, it’s as if he straight up hypnotizes her and forces her to erase her recordings to save Will’s skin. But, she still writes up about Will and nearly screws the fungi case into oblivion and gets a cop fired and then killed in the process. Lounds is portrayed as a monster, but one who doesn’t kill and still gets her access, as Crawford figures she’s the owner of the hair strand found in the Shrike’s nest.

The final scene ends with Will and Hannibal and is so damn electrifying, it’s hard not to walk away feeling charged up. Will’s wrecked confession that he liked killing Hobbes is just heartbreaking as is Dancy’s performance of this admittance. But Hannibal’s rationalizing to bring Will aroung to the realization that killing Hobbes is all about power, likening him to God killing his worshippers is perhaps much too meaty for some but for those who enjoy a theological meal in their crime show procedurals, we’ll eat it up.