Digestif: A Farewell to "Hannibal" (2013-2015)

Patrick: When I first heard about Hannibal, my instinct was to roll my eyes and turn the other way. Really? Yet another Hannibal Lecter prequel? Hadn't we learned our lesson from the horrendous Hannibal Rising? And starring Mads Mikkelsen as Lecter? There's no way it could possibly work, I thought to myself. It would probably just glorify Lecter's killing sprees as he killed people, and fans would eat up the violence and consider Lecter a hero. So I went on my merry little way, discarding Hannibal into the same trash heap into which I mentally relegated shows like Breaking Bad and Dexter.

Of course, then I actually watched Breaking Bad and Dexter, and I learned that the fans who admired the protagonists from those shows were wrong to do so. Breaking Bad deals with the complete moral breakdown of Walter White, whose downfall is a direct result of his pride and greed. As for Dexter Morgan, he is an unreliable narrator who lies to himself and to the audience about his feelings - he calls himself a sociopath because it is easier than examining his choices and questioning the "code" given to him by his adoptive father Harry, surely one of the worst father figures in all of television.

As I was watching these shows, Chris Chan and I would discuss them and how my views about these shows were evolving. And almost inevitably, the subject of Hannibal came up. Chris highly recommended the show to me, and because I trust his opinions, I sat down and watched it.

Hannibal begins with Will Graham tracking down a serial killer named Garrett Jacob Hobbs, who kills young female college students. As part of his investigation, Graham is brought into contact with Dr. Hannibal Lecter, who manipulates events behind the scenes to engineer a confrontation between Graham and Hobbs. Will kills Hobbs in order to save an innocent life, but the event is traumatic, and so he turns to Dr. Lecter as his therapist.

Throughout the first season of the show, Hannibal treats Will as a human Petri dish, conducting experiment after experiment to see how Will will react in a certain situation. This results in Will progressively losing his grip on reality— part of his brilliance as an investigator is his uncanny ability to visualize the crimes from the killer's perspective, but as the series progresses it becomes clear that this "talent" has serious consequences on Will's sanity.

The Dragon's Den

There’s no doubt about it, the killer is a madman. He smashed every single mirror in the home, and then proceeded to murder all the occupants, saving the lady of the house for last. He then committed some unspeakable atrocities, crimes so horrific that if I spelled them out I fear Blogger would censor this post. But the most frightening thing is… this wasn’t his first. “The Tooth Fairy” – so nicknamed by the cops because he bites his victims – has done this before, and if the FBI and Will Graham cannot catch him soon, he will do this again.

In order to catch this maniac, Will Graham turns to another madman he helped put away a few years ago – Dr. Hannibal Lecter: psychiatrist extraordinaire, gourmet chef, serial killer, cannibal… Dr. Lecter is delighted to help an old friend like Will… But whenever “Hannibal the Cannibal” offers his help, you should keep on your toes, because there is often a tremendous price tag attached…