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Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

I'm not signing in to vote, but I hope Hannibal season 2 wins :shobon:

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Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat

Jerusalem posted:

I'm not signing in to vote, but I hope Hannibal season 2 wins :shobon:

It is literally only ahead by one vote because of me. You should vote too.

esperterra
Mar 24, 2010

SHINee's back




I wish I could vote for two things

Escobarbarian
Jun 18, 2004


Grimey Drawer
Voted for Hannibal s2. I’ll get back on track eventually, I promise!!!

Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat
EPISODE 1:

I forgot until watching Will enter Hannibal's house without being invited in episode 8, but in the first episode when Hannibal visits Will he asks if he can come in. One of the lore things about Vampires is that they can't enter a house until they've been invited in. I thought that was a nice touch.


EPISODE 8

16:00 Hannibal and Tobias are using tons of coded language to talk to each other. It's almost as if they're gays in a homophobic world and they have to keep their natures hidden from society while also seeking out others like themselves.

21:30 Hannibal has dinner with Tobias while Mendelssohn's Intermezzo from Midsummer Night's Dream plays.

21:40 Virginia does actually have wine-growing regions. I have no idea if they're any good. Janice Poon made an incredible looking paella that's served inside crab shells

27:00 Hannibal tells Will that he suspects Tobias may be the murderer. Will thinks it's because Hannibal is being a concerned citizen, but Hannibal actually wants either Will to get rid of Tobias or he wants to pit the two of them against each other to see who's more worthy of being his friend.

38:59 Hannibal is relieved that Will survived against Tobias. When Tobias showed up at first, he was worried that Will was one of the "two men" that Tobias confessed to killing.

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

Hannibal's line earlier in the season about Will being the mongoose you keep to kill snakes that come by is exorcised in that episode, I feel. He sends Will off for that function, to remove the threat of Tobias, but after doing it he feels concerned for Will's wellbeing, talks to Bedelia about wanting Will as a friend, and is clearly relieved to see he survived.

This gets taken a step further (and plays into your point about coded gay language) in the next episode where Hannibal takes it further and wants to literally make a ready-made family with Will. He essentially wants them to be a couple (the oft-joked about "murder husbands"), and it is easy to see it through the lens of a homosexual relationship even though there is nothing sexual there on either of their parts, it's a yearning for companionship/understanding on Hannibal's part, though being Hannibal he has to have that purely on his own terms and structured in a way where HE has complete and total control and others are forced into the mold he chooses for them.

Episode 9 goes apeshit with the arty murder displays with the crazy loving corpse-totem (and the criminally underused Lance Henriksen), plus Will's deteriorating condition is really coming to the fore. But it's that underlying desire to make Will not just complicit in his crimes but willingly so, and the decision to turn Abigail into "their" daughter, that really makes the episode standout. For all his manipulation and smooth control though, I love how many whirling pieces are starting to coalesce around other characters that will start pointing inevitably towards Hannibal. The most telling is Bloom ripping Jack a new one for his pretty disgusting treatment of Abigail, and justifying her defense by pointing out that Hannibal backs her story and what possible reason could Hannibal have for lying? If you don't know where the season is going to end up, it would be easy to think you could see EXACTLY where everything was going. I love this show.

precision
May 7, 2006

by VideoGames

Arist posted:

Making the poll for the next month, vote for any and all you approve of. We'll have the first option generally be to continue the current show we're watching. Also, we added an ~anime~ to the list at esperterra's behest. If you want to suggest an option, write it in under "Other."

https://forms.gle/CzXuobt6qtZ6K96C9

So what exact process should I have followed to get Rectify S1 on there? :confused:

Arist
Feb 13, 2012

who, me?


Told me about it.

(I forgot)

Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat
EPISODE 9

21:54 When this show was airing, people noted that Alana Bloom wears a lot of red clothes which seemed odd for the character and the show. Normally, you'd associate red with outgoing personalities or violent behavior. She did not seem as brash or cunning as Freddie Lounds, and she did not seem to have a violent streak in her. It was very puzzling.

Janice Poon's notes about the food

35:39 Hannibal pitches the idea that he and Will have to be father figures to Abigail. It's already something that's been rolling around in Will's mind, the way he imagined being Garret Jacob Hobbs and hanging out with Abigail in episode 7

38:30 This is some amazing acting on Kacey Rohl's part.

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

Episode 10 is creepy as gently caress, even for a show that revels in being creepy as gently caress at times. By this point there is no denying the show is more interested in drawing parallels between its "killer of the week" and the central characters, so of course Will meets a killer who, like him, is not entirely sure what is real and what isn't. This leads to some hyper-creepy visuals and disturbingly realistic make-up effects which again leave me still wondering even all these years later how the hell this was a Network show.

It's tempting at first to show that Hannibal is showing his true colors by convincing the doctor to hide Will's encephalitis from him, this interest in him is purely out of intellectual fascination as opposed to the (screwed up) friendship he spoke of to Bedelia in the previous episode. But this is an episode all about misdirection: we see Will murder Abigail Hobbs only to discover it was a vivid hallucination brought about during his attempt to reconstruct another murder; Sutcliffe's death is revealed to be another copycat murder; Will sees the clocks he draws one way while we see them another etc. Hannibal's reasons for hiding Will's encephalitis for the time being no doubt have an element intellectual curiosity, but it is also used as a way to draw Will closer to him (and cover his bases with Jack and making him discount physical explanation's for Will's decline, meaning that he'll want Hannibal to keep as close to Will as possible). He pretends an emotional indifference because he knows that is something Sutcliffe will understand/comprehend, and he was already planning to kill him once his function was completed.

But this is another example, like in episode 9, of Hannibal continuing to fly a little too close to the sun. He still clearly believes he is in some way untouchable, but he is having to go to greater and greater lengths to avoid discovery. The episode ends with not all the loose ends tied up, there is a "witness" to Hannibal (seen for the first time in his murder suit) even if she was incapable of distinguishing his face, and Hannibal's line about hoping she remembers nothing "for her own sake" is just dripping with the double-meaning.

Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat
EPISODE 10

32:40 This is one of those things that requires random food knowledge to notice: jamon Iberico is a ham made from curing a black Iberian pig for three years, a pig that has been eating nothing but acorns for the last year of its life. The fat is very fragrant like dried fruit, has very melty fat and costs about $150/lb. A whole leg like Hannibal bought can go for $1000. They are named Iberico pigs because they are a breed of pig from the Iberian peninsula (Spain). Sutcliffe is a very knowledgable neurologist, but he doesn't know anything about Iberian ham so he assumes "Iberico" is a person's name, as if jamon iberico is "Mr Iberico's ham." What's amazing about this scene is that Hannibal doesn't even lift an eyebrow to show that he's annoyed by this. We don't even see his face, the camera is on Sutcliffe. But if you know what jamon iberico is and you know what kind of person Hannibal is by now, you feel pretty certain that he got annoyed at this. Compound this by the fact that Sutcliffe follows it up by referring to Will as a pig while Hannibal has been nurturing a fondness for Will

I'm 99% certain this is something Jose Andres contributed to the script, it's a very cheffy joke

41:14 The makeup on Georgia Madchen is great, the actress is actually George from Dead Like Me (Ellen Muth)

41:47

Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 08:53 on Jun 27, 2019

ruddiger
Jun 3, 2004

The very first time I saw Hannibal in the clear rain slick with his suit underneath, I knew this show was something magical.

Escobarbarian
Jun 18, 2004


Grimey Drawer
Catching up and managed to watch eps 3-7 tonight. Can’t believe the angel corpses from episode 5 were allowed on network TV lmao. Mikkelsen is one of the best actors in the world and watching him toy with everyone is so loving funny and creepy.

I forgot all about quite a few things, including Miriam Lass and Franklyn, the weirdo patient who wants to be Hannibal’s friend. This season is definitely a lot better than I remembered!

Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat
Oh I can’t remember where it was, I think in one of the earliest episodes, but there’s a moment where Hannibal looks at a pencil or book and when he puts it back he doesn’t just plop it down, he also gives it a tiny shove so that it’s back exactly where it was before. It’s a very subtle gesture but it really sells the idea that he has some low key OCD

Edit: here’s a post from someone with OCD who posts several examples

http://www.waywardfannibal.com/hannibal-ocd/

Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Jun 27, 2019

Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat
EPISODE 11

Opening meal: Curried sheep intestines in bowls made from banana leaves

32:09 I love that whenever an opportunity presents itself to Hannibal, he comes up with a convoluted plot to take full advantage of it instantly.

36:16 Also love that Hannibal leaves the gun on the table knowing what Will is going to do. Earlier in the episode, he told Chilton that influencing a patient doesn't work when the patient knows they're being influenced. Hannibal is deftly influencing Will in a way that isn't obvious. The writing is so good!

Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 08:08 on Jun 28, 2019

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

Steve Yun posted:

Earlier in the episode, he told Chilton that influencing a patient doesn't work when the patient knows they're being influenced. Hannibal is deftly influencing Will in a way that isn't obvious. The writing is so good!

This I particularly liked, his actions didn't quite make sense in episode 10 but having him here using his (very polite, subtle) dressing down of Chilton's clumsy tactics as a counterpoint to how smoothly and cleverly he has psychically driven Will worked really well. This contrasts really nicely with Chilton himself later being completely unsubtle in trying to make Gideon's state of mind Bloom's mistake rather than his own, and openly lying about things said by Gideon. Hannibal always tells the truth, he just lies by omission or twists things just enough so nobody would ever think he'd been lying if the contradiction came to light, or that Hannibal was understandably mistaken/had his heart in the right place.

What always stands out to me in episode 11 is Will's pleading, sobbing,"DON'T LIE TO ME!" when he shows up at Hannibal's with Gideon at gunpoint. It's heartbreaking the way Hannibal makes him believe he's gone crazy/is hallucinating everything, and of course in the aftermath Hannibal is then able to make Jack feel like he is the guy who is exploiting Will while Hannibal himself is only concerned with Will's wellbeing. Hannibal always gets to have everything his own way, he tells the "truth" while playing different roles to different people and every single one of them believe that if anything is wrong, it is THEIR fault and not Hannibal's. As he noted to Chilton, psychic driving stops working once the patient realized they're being manipulated, but nobody (so far) has figured out that Hannibal is manipulating them. Which is why I also love the appearance every so often of the feathered-stag as a symbol in Will's mind to fill the void of the killer he KNOWS is out there loving with him but who he can't quite see. Hannibal is there obfuscating everything and Will's mind crosses the gap caused by Hannibal's manipulations with a cross between a Shrike and the stag antlers featured so prominently by the copycat AND Garret Jacob Hobbs. It shows that his mind, hosed up as it is, is still making these empathetic leaps even in spite of a mastermind manipulating Will's mind at every step of the way.

Also holy gently caress what happens to Chilton is absolutely loving horrifying, his "gift basket" is super-hosed up.

Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 13:18 on Jun 29, 2019

Escobarbarian
Jun 18, 2004


Grimey Drawer
Still behind but the fight in episode 8 is so good haha. I remember it feeling weird the first time but with everything else in the show it makes sense to establish this now. The whole “hey remember that guy from one scene in last episode well he’s actually a baddy” thing is pretty awkward though.

Toxic Fart Syndrome
Jul 2, 2006

*hits A-THREAD-5*

Only 3.6 Roentgoons per hour ... not great, not terrible.




...the meter only goes to 3.6...

Pork Pro
"I'm going to need you to hold a few things..."

:suspense:

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

Episode 12 is where things start coming to a head and you'd think that this should mark the start of Hannibal's downfall. His decision to kill Georgia Madchen to cover his tracks appears to blow up in his face, as Will picks up on the fact it was a murder and not a suicide/accident which sets him on the path to trying to finally identify the copycat killer by filling in the blanks around him. There's an early sense that things might finally be beginning to unravel for Hannibal, that he's having to go to further and further lengths to preserve the status quo and things are starting to get out of hand. Jack visiting Bedelia in search of info on Will is a good example, as it brings him ever closer to revelations about Hannibal and he wouldn't be able to avoid picking up on how uneasy she is even beyond discussing a patient in her care. Abigail isn't holding it together very well and her decision to work with Freddie is exposing her story to too much sunlight when she isn't in a position to cover it up anywhere near as well as the likes of Hannibal ("She's one of those smart girls who hasn't realized yet that other smart girls grew up before them and know all their tricks").

In the end, it doesn't turn out that way, instead through a combination of planning and luck Hannibal comes through unscathed (like with Miriam Lass) as Will's hidden encephalitis causes him to blink out of retaining any memory of his confrontation with Abigail, and of course she has already told Hannibal about Will's plans to trap the Chesapeake Killer (Will not knowing he is hunting Hannibal) which means he's able to avoid the bait. I like that the episode doesn't (for long) try to pretend that Will murdered Abigail, leaving him to twist in the wind on that lack of knowledge/memory while showing us the audience that she left him unharmed but freaked out and went back to her home. We are of course left with the cliffhanger of what Hannibal plans to do with Abigail once he is alone with her, with every sign pointing to him murdering her. That she has to stand there in terror trying her best to talk with him as he calmly discusses how he destroyed her life out of pure curiosity and now he's (probably) going to have to murder her is pretty harrowing. She's been a victim all her life without really realizing it, first trapped by her father and now by Hannibal, and even nice Will turned out to be batshit insane and far too close to her father (at times) for comfort. She has had an anguished journey through this season, and I'm off two minds as to whether it is an interesting commentary on females being reduced to victims/objects by the killers/television as a whole, or a somewhat exploitative way of sidelining a character who could easily carry a show in her own right but who is here reduced to a doll/idealized daughter for a couple of guys who take prominence over her (to be fair, the show is called Hannibal, not Abigail) to project their own desire for family/belonging onto. Perhaps that is the whole point? In the end none of the men in this show "honor" Abigail in any way: Hannibal uses her as a prop, Will as another stray to distract him/give him purpose, Jack either tries to exploit or to condemn her etc. None of them (until potentially Hannibal at the end) are trying to kill her like Garret Jacob Hobbs did, but they're still doing her a disservice.

Google Butt
Oct 4, 2005

Xenology is an unnatural mixture of science fiction and formal logic. At its core is a flawed assumption...

that an alien race would be psychologically human.

Lmao I've never seen this show before but what is going on with all these people appearing suddenly around this crime scene in ep 3 this isn't how life works

Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat
Don't worry about realism on this show.

Toxic Fart Syndrome
Jul 2, 2006

*hits A-THREAD-5*

Only 3.6 Roentgoons per hour ... not great, not terrible.




...the meter only goes to 3.6...

Pork Pro
The realest thing on this show is when it takes the Baltimore PD an hour to show up to a triple murder... :heysexy:

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

Season 1 of Hannibal could only ever end in one way: Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter facing off through the bars of a cell at the Baltimore Hospital for the Criminally Insane. It is what everything was building to all this time, all of Hannibal's manipulations, as clever and well-constructed as they were, must eventually come to a head with Will's realization of what is happening. Even those who hadn't read the books or seen the films were surely aware of this by cultural osmosis: Will Graham is the guy who captures Hannibal Lecter and puts him away.

The last few episodes have seen Will's subconscious trying its best to map around the void in his mind where the Copycat Killer can be found. Represented by the Feathered Stag, this episode opens with Will's dream/hallucination of hunting it down and wounding it with a rifle. This marks the departure of the feathered stag and the arrival of the utterly chilling Antlered Man, a demonic looking, obsidian-skinned figure in the shape of a man but the size of a giant, with enormous antlers coming from his head. Most tellingly, this figure bears the features of Hannibal Lecter, something that Will doesn't immediately grasp but which indicates that his subconscious at least has figured out that Hannibal is the central, interlocking figure that explains everything/fills the void. Unfortunately for Will, the tricks that he is finally starting to see through (or at least suspect) are also designed to switch suspicion clearly onto himself, and his conscious mind still considers Hannibal a friend. When he vomits up an ear, he immediately calls Hannibal to test if this is real or another hallucination, and accepts Hannibal's judgment that they have no choice but to involve Jack Crawford. That immediately kicks off an unstoppable process, as the FBI becomes involved and Will is hit with more and more distractions, and his determination to believe in his innocence comes across as either typical deception or pitiable dementia. By the time Will is hit with the information that remains of four different victims of the Copycat Killer were found in his home, it is too late for him to convince anybody of what he is now positive is his complete innocence, and his recreation of Gideon Abel's escape only deepens the perception that he is a killer on the run.

Hannibal, of course, is in amazing form here, putting on an incredible performance. I'm not talking about Mikkelsen (though he's great, of course) but Hannibal the character. From the moment he arrives at Will's house he is acting a part, whether Will is watching or not. He plays the same part later for Bedelia. He is the sorrowful, shocked "parent" devastated that his "daughter" has been killed and is disbelief that his close friend Will is the perpetrator. The performance is largely for his own benefit, if he lives it then it becomes true, and then nobody will have any reason to doubt it or to notice that his emotional shock only pops up at specific times. The only slip-up he makes is when he talks about his regret at not being able to "solve" Will Graham, as opposed to "save" him, as Bedelia corrects. That's an important point too, as later we will discover she is far more aware of Hannibal's true nature than she has let on, but that this awareness does not actually concern Hannibal.. for now.

But things are starting to not add up for others too. When Bloom discovers via an offhand comment that Hannibal had Will draw him a clock, she begins to suspect he may have known about Will's encephalitis before she even thought of it as a possibility, and Jack - who knows Will had a brain scan that came up all clear - goes along with her attempt to test this theory, indicating a willingness to believe in Will's innocence too. Hannibal, of course, was prepared for this, having forged a new clock in Will's hand (we actually see him do this in a previous episode) so he can act as shocked as anybody at the sudden onset of the auto-immune disease. They're placated for the time, but it was never going to be Alana or Jack that caught him, it's Will. When he escapes and seeks refuge in Hannibal's office (who wouldn't want to go there, it's awesome!), Hannibal attempts to lay out a perfectly feasible set of scenarios where Will could have murdered each of the four Copycat Killer victims, and perfectly "reasonable" motivations too. But as Hannibal himself told Chilton, psychic driving only works so long as the subject doesn't know they're being driven, and in a beautiful sequence we see each of Hannibal's explanations simply serve to showcase HIS techniques and HIS murders. Even now though, Will still doesn't quite consciously get it, each of the scenarios includes the appearance of the Antlered Man looming out of the shadows of the background, drawing closer with each description, closer to the surface of Will's mind. When Hannibal takes him to Minnesota for what should be his breaking point, the discovery of the giant blood-stain left by the apparent murder of Abigail Hobbs, it simply finally coalesces every stray thought, every piece of evidence and his hosed up empathetic brain to a point where consciously he finally realizes the truth: Hannibal is the Copycat Killer, the intelligent psychopath who has been hiding in plain sight, confusing Will and keeping him from seeing him while taking advantage of the access he has been given to indulge in murder and set up his puzzle-trap-maze and watch Will run around inside it. This should be it, the triumphant moment when Will struggles with Hannibal, overcomes him and puts him away, setting up a status quo for the next season where Hannibal is imprisoned and Will is reluctantly called into action to make use of him as an asset to bring down the likes of the Red Dragon.

Except Jack Crawford shows up and shoots Will in the shoulder. Echoing Garrett Jacob Hobb's final exhortation for him to "see", Will pleads the same to Jack, who is unaware of the smirking monster standing beside him who he has just rescued. Instead, Will Graham goes to the hospital, has his encephalitis treated, and Hannibal Lecter remains free, respected and most importantly trusted and liked by all who know him, including Jack Crawford and Alana Bloom.

In the end it was Hannibal Lecter who "caught" Will Graham and helped to put him away, and this fantastic, stunning, beautiful, well-acted, horrifying season ends on a beautiful subversion of what everybody "knew" while still ending in the only way it ever could: Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter facing off through the bars of a cell at the Baltimore Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

Arist
Feb 13, 2012

who, me?


I'll update the OP eventually, but since we're moving straight on to Season 2 I'll just say I'm going to abandon the idea of specific weeks because it doesn't make sense when there aren't a consistent four every month. Besides, most people were watching at their own paces anyway.

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SardonicTyrant
Feb 26, 2016

BTICH IM A NEWT
熱くなれ夢みた明日を
必ずいつかつかまえる
走り出せ振り向くことなく
&



Just started watching based on recommendations. I'm actually glad this series is so short because I've been bingewatching a few CW shows and each season is like 23 episodes and it just drags after awhile.

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