Seen

*In the interest of pushing more content to this blog given the glacial rate at which I am developing some longer, more formalized pieces, I am going to go ahead and offer some reflection on each week’s episode of Bryan Fuller’s beautiful Hannibal TV series on NBC.

"Hannibal Title Card." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 1 Mar. 2014.

“Contorno” (aired 7/2/15)

            Hannibal has never been more brazen or vulnerable. During the show’s first two seasons, the titular cannibal’s murderous activities were largely left to viewers’ imaginations. Though we sometimes saw him on the brink of a kill (as with poor Beverly Katz back in season two), the unsavory business of murder was generally omitted in favor of the (arguably) equally unsettling experience of watching Hannibal prepare beautiful dishes that might at any given time contain human beings. Season three, for all its increasingly experimental visuals and at times ludicrously cerebral dialogue, has been the most direct of all when it comes to Hannibal’s murders. We’ve seen him snap a man’s neck, stab another in the head with an icepick, and disembowel and hang a third.

            The perpetrator of this violence never seems to lose his cool poise or drop the perpetually detached expression he wears no matter the stakes, but the fact that we are seeing all these murders firsthand now suggests that Hannibal is no longer concerned with going unseen. Though he seems in control of himself as usual and the assuredness with which he performs these violent suggests confidence in his decision to draw his pursuers to him, what remains largely unsaid is that this is a self-destructive behavior. In “Contorno” Hannibal goes so far as to murder Pazzi and then dangle his body from his (Hannibal’s) place of work like a grisly banner. It’s not a cry for help; it’s just further proof that Hannibal’s heart is broken and that as with Mischa before him, Will and what he represents have become preoccupations for Hannibal that he can only remedy through murder.

            The comparatively fast pace of tonight’s episode and the pay-off that comes in its final moments when Jack finally unloads on Hannibal likely comes as such a relief to the faithful who have been waiting for things to finally start happening that the excitement may obscure the fact that this is an altogether different Hannibal that we’re seeing. He is still a man who would never do anything as crass as to tell an opponent to “bring it on,” but that’s essentially what he does when he goads both Alana and Jack. Not only does Hannibal seem to have an eerily accurate understanding of what transpired between Jack and Bella during the latter’s final moments, but he then goes on to all but dare Jack to kill him as well. The implication in this taunt, of course, is that if Hannibal is going where Bella has gone, then she must not be anywhere good.

            We have seen little moments of weakness in Hannibal before and where his curiosity or interest in testing a what-if scenario have led him to do things that could potentially leave him exposed if they backfired (like tipping off Garrett Jacob Hobbs way back at the beginning of season one); however, he seems to have lost his sense of self-preservation. He is saved from death in “Contorno” only because of a thematic technicality—because, suggests the teaser for next week’s episode, Jack knows that Will has to be the one to finish things. Other than the trussing and near hanging he endured at the hands of Will’s errand boy back in "Mukōzuke," this is the worst beating Hannibal has taken in the series. Obviously it signals the beginning of the end for him.

            Hannibal’s conversation with Bedelia about snails, fireflies, sheep, and sheepdogs represents the doctor’s attempt to justify his dangerous behavior by insisting on the primacy of the food chain. Firefly offspring eat snails; sheepdogs have an innate desire to savage sheep even if their conditioning is supposed to keep them from doing it. “Contorno” keeps returning to the image of the monstrous firefly dotted with snails that Will created at the end of “Secondo” because it represents an inversion of the established patterns of animal behavior. Will is making human art. Snails are eating a firefly (of sorts). All bets are off as to who comes out on top, and Hannibal has made a grave miscalculation. Unfortunately, Hannibal’s lack of discretion still spells doom for Pazzi, who decides that the “half-life” of the honor he could regain for himself and his family name by apprehending Hannibal in the name of justice is outweighed by the thirty pieces of silver he could acquire by selling the doctor out to Mason. I have no idea how Pazzi thought he was going to get away with taking a fingerprinted knife right out from under Hannibal’s nose (one that he just put down and was bound to miss). Hannibal ought to have at least gotten Pazzi into his apartment or somewhere less public to kill him, but, then again, Pazzi should have known better than to step into the lair of “Il Mostro” alone and at night.

            Will exists on the fringes of this episode. His travels with Chiyo do yield a mention of Hannibal’s aunt Lady Murasaki, but her attendant’s motivations remain inscrutable. She knows Hannibal’s location somehow and tosses Will off the back of the train because, she argues, a violent gesture is the only kind he understands. What is the message here, then? Chiyo does not see herself as a killer—at least, she does not continually replay the act of killing her former prisoner in her head, suggesting that she either forgives herself or is a bit of a psychopath herself. The teaser for next week shows her setting the sights of a rifle on Hannibal, so she clearly plans to kill him for his treatment of her (still an ambiguous question mark for the most part) and his duplicity in having her guard and harm what seems to have been an innocent man. Does she toss Will off the train to protect him or to keep him from stealing her own revenge? Either way, she clearly thinks little of their shared revelation that he must kill Hannibal to stop himself from transforming into him.

            On the fringe of the fringe this week, we have Mason and Alana continuing their plan to have Hannibal captured and eaten. Although Mason’s aggressive sexual taunts are beginning to irritate me (after only two episodes), it is nice to have him cut through the faux-artistry at times with a disgusting, crass spin on the show’s preoccupation with food and eating. Sadly, Margot is missing from these brief visits to the Verger home.

            There are still two episodes left until we hit Red Dragon proper. Next week is “Dolce,” which means “sweet,” suggesting that we are having dessert… “Just desserts” perhaps? At any rate, the meal is winding down. The following week is “Digestivo,” which refers to a drink that comes before or after a meal, apparently to aid digestion.[1] That title in particular is ripe with meaning. On the one hand, it seems that the story of Hannibal in the wild is drawing to a close, but a new chapter of the story is also beginning. Given that the process of digestion involves mulling over the meal that has been consumed, it stands to reason that “Dolce” could settle the principle conflict of the first half of the season while “Digestivo” deals with the resulting fallout.

Note:

[1] I’m using a simple “_____ meaning” search to get this information, so there may be additional nuance here I’m missing.