Hannibal

No. Those people just like living riverside in Egypt.

An ass-pull that huge would completely put me off the show. Sad that Abigail's dead. Sad that DuMaurier is twisted. Sad that Will is in a nuthouse. But that's the show I signed up for.

From which about a dozen different people keep ARGUING WITH ME. OH MY GOD SHE'S DEAD. WE NEED TO COME TO TERMS WITH THIS. THEY ATE HER, OKAY? THEY ATE HER. 


Gold star for whoever it was that suggested he's totally going to make more beer for Alana, though.

I have to say, it's really a testament to the creators here that they've managed to get a fanbase to woobie-fy HANNIBAL FUCKING LECTER.

In the fans' defense, the last two books kind of gave them a running start on that. What's surprising to me is that the show's actually gone out of its way to make him more hateable than he ever was in the books, and yet people have Tumblr meltdowns when they "find out" that he's evil in episode 10. I just. I can't. I can't even handle that line of thought, have you been watching this show at all.

RiverThames wrote:I have to say, it's really a testament to the creators here that they've managed to get a fanbase to woobie-fy HANNIBAL FUCKING LECTER.

Am I in denial for hoping most of the people thinking he didn't kill Abigail are people in their late teens/early twenties who haven't really seen/exposed to "Silence of the Lambs"?

I actually think that might be the case for a lot of people. But I've seen others say, "But Abigail is his Mischa (little sister) substitute and he would never eat her!" Well, sorry to say he just did, but...

I'd say mostly it's just due to the fact that no matter what the circumstances, no matter how clear or obtuse a situation is presented, there will always be people who'll argue something completely the opposite or entirely different. There's a direct relationship between the amount of evidence against their particular theory and the strength at which they'll cling to it and continue to argue it. Just hashtag it #abiveal and move on.

But my inbox is flooded with Abiveal deniers! *bangs head*

More cheerfully: actual lol.

I'm assuming it's him making the "Hannibal the Cannibal" connection? Because I was confused, thinking it would be about #abiveal, which doesn't.

Yeah, that. I just found it incredibly satisfying to think that SOMEONE, SOMEDAY, on this show will be like, "...SHIT!!"

PrincessCleo wrote:Yeah, that. I just found it incredibly satisfying to think that SOMEONE, SOMEDAY, on this show will be like, "...SHIT!!"

I know, right? The moment when it all comes together (probably the end of next season?) is going to be hilarious. Also when Crawford works out that Hannibal killed his trainee, I think he will unleash the crawdad.

Cleolinda wrote:But my inbox is flooded with Abiveal deniers! *bangs head*

I saw a lot of these types of comments on your recap and I'm still not quite sure what that's all about. Is it that they love Abigail as a character and don't want to believe she's gone, or are these people who want to believe that Hannibal is on some level a sympathetic character and that he wouldn't kill someone he thought of as a daughter? I don't know, but either way it seems kind of silly to insist she's still alive -- what was the point of the scene of Hannibal and Bedelia eating the veal if that was the case?

A lot of people seem to love Abigail as a character and just don't want her to be dead; there seems to be a smaller subset of people who also can't believe that he would do that to someone he seems to have put in his little sister's place/thought of as a daughter. Like, she was safely on this pedestal, so he would never do that. And I'm like, I hate to be the one to break y'all's hearts, but he did. I don't see the point of the dinner scene with Bedelia either, if she's secretly still alive somewhere, and it just doesn't seem in character for this show to not stab us in the heart and regret nothing (bless them all).

I never thought Hannibal put Abigail on a pedestal though. (Not arguing with you or anything, I hasten to add, just a thought process here). To me, their relationship was pretty scary because she wasn't his equal in any shape or form and she was a bit unstable in her own way, naturally enough. Just because she was an attempt to recreate the past, that didn't mean he wasn't going to jettison her the moment his own survival was threatened or she acted in a way that he found unsatisfactory. 

And I think what really unnerved me about them is that with Hannibal and his ideas of what constitutes rude and his sense of 'better than everyone else', who the hell knows what he'd find about you that would make him kill you. Could it be using the wrong fork at dinner? Scoffing down that expensive ham didn't do Dr Sutcliffe any good, as was mentioned previously. Talking at the opera? Cutting him off in traffic? Anything might make you his next dinner dish! 

If he hadn't killed her, he'd have made her into his padawan. I hate to say it but I think poor Abigail being killed may have saved her from a fate worse than death, if that makes sense.

Yeah, see, that was my issue--I really did not see her as being as sacred as some of those commenters did. Honestly, I tend to think that killing her was his idea of mercy at that point, and then he, uh, honored her at Bedelia's house. But that doesn't mean he's not also pretty intent on looking out for his own interests.

He used all the parts of the Abby? (Eesh)

One thing that I find so fricking fascinating about the character of Hannibal is that I think he DOES, in his own way, "care" about certain people, like Will and Abigail. But I also think he has no difficulty reconciling killing them, or hurting them, or whatever. I don't think Hannibal is faking his...maybe affection isn't the right word, but I think he enjoys Will/Will's company to a certain extent (the moment when he was expecting him to show up and he didn't and Hannibal looked disappointed). I don't think he's talking to Will and all the while secretly thinking "I can't wait to frame him. I hate him so much! Muahahaha! Fuck that guy! He's going down!" But I think not ruining Will's life or whatever is just not a priority for him. I don't even think he's like "Oh well, I had to frame Will for murder. Pity. *shrug*" I think it's like, "Will is fun to hang with. [or whatever more fancy wording he would have in his own brain] And now I will frame Will for murder. How does my appointment book look tomorrow?" Like, I don't even think those two things even meet in his brain. And with Abigail, I think it's like "I understand her. I feel connected to her. Interesting. I wonder if I could train her to be a murderer like me. Oh, now it's time to kill her. OK." 

He's impossible to relate to for that reason, because he doesn't really do the thing where you have feelings about people. Sometimes he has feelings about them, but the feelings are really just curiosities. That is terrifying and hard to get your brain around. I've used this example a trillion times, but it's why I found the Borg the scariest villains on Star Trek, because they weren't these like snarly villains motivated by human-like rage or lust for power or whatever. All they wanted to do was annihilate you and there was no, like, emotion attached to it. It was just another day for them. You could throw yourself at their feet and do a long Shakespearean speech and they would just be like "whatever, *murder*." They wanted to expand the Borg collective and that was literally it. Hannibal isn't a robot, but his motivations are not like regular person motivations. "Person suit" is the perfect way to describe it. He's an alien. He's not a misguided lost little boy who just misses his sister. He will entertain himself occasionally by getting closer to people and seeing how they work, but even if he's amused by them like I'm amused by my Sims, I don't think any of them are ever going to "reach" him or "save" him or anything like that. They're not real to him.

Put another way, it's like all his relationships are business relationships. He cultivates them, and he can have interactions with them and sometimes even a genuine human moment, but ultimately it's all about the business/his interests. If it starts to be the case that the relationship isn't benefiting him anymore, it no longer makes sense for him to spend time on it. He won't NECESSARILY kill the person if that happens, but he wouldn't hesitate to. Like that doctor who was mean to him and he needed some lungs or whatever so he was looking through his rolodex and was like "oh yeah, this guy, he sucks, I'll murder him." He hadn't killed him before because he wasn't important enough to waste time on killing. If he needed Abigail to be dead more than he needed her to be alive, well, time for her to be dead. End of story. If it turned out later that was a mistake, he'd probably regret it in the sense that he made a choice that wasn't most beneficial to him, but not because he killed someone unnecessarily. 

With Will I don't believe he was planning all along to frame him, but I believe he was setting it up just in case, and it became clear that that was the route to go and he was like "okey doke." 

I just don't think he has any feelings at all towards other people, in the way people have feelings for people. The world is a giant toolbox with tools/raw materials of varying intelligence that can help Hannibal in different ways. And, as many of you have said, that's the show I signed up for. If he suddenly was like "Abigail reminds me of my sister! I CAN'T KILL HER" I'd be annoyed.

Heh, yeah. I think he has feelings, but they're about people, like you're saying, not... for them? Like, he's sad Abigail's gone but he has no remorse for the fact that he killed her? Like cause and effect just have no moral relation? I really feel like that's why he looked so pissed off when he confronted her about digging that guy up, in her room at the hospital--kind of like, "I am not going to be able to have nice things if you keep this up." And there's this look he gives Will in that second-to-last episode when Will's like "WE'RE GONNA GO BACK TO MINNESOTA, WHEEEEE" that's like, "Oh, goddammit, why you gotta make me do this." I truly believe that's the moment he decided Abigail had to die. And he wasn't happy that he was going to have to kill her, but it was just an inescapable, ice-cold, logical conclusion that he would have to. And then he probably went home and listened to opera in the dark and felt very sorry for himself.

I believe both of your takes on Hannibal (which are the same, I think) but GIVEN THAT, where does that leave Bedelia? She has to have known for some time that he was a cannibal. I don't buy that she realized it right at the point where Hannibal was all "EAT THE VEAL, MOTHER BEDELIA." She would have looked a lot more startled and grossed out, I would think. But that raises the question of why didn't she report him a long time ago? Crawford practically invited her to. What kind of strange relationship do they have going?

I think Bedelia knew he was a killer but not a cannibal. And I think she's afraid of him, and doesn't want to show him that she's afraid. So she covers very well, but you can see it because she doesn't blink at him.

Also, in unrelated news:

"I imagine he would be a fantastic lover."
Bryan Fuller about Hannibal Lecter and his romantic future in season 2.

Oh my.

The dude who doesn't grok human emotions will be a fantastic lover? I suppose he does pay attention to people.

O girl. 


(And Bryan Fuller skipped merrily away, a full day's trolling accomplished.)

PrincessCleo wrote:O girl. 


(And Bryan Fuller skipped merrily away, a full day's trolling accomplished.)

Right? I'm pretty sure he was cackling with laughter as he skipped.

He took a little bow, didn't he?