"Hannibal," Year One

Spoilers for the first season ahead.

I've had such a love hate relationship with this show. On the one hand it's one of the most visually interesting crime dramas on television, thanks to the efforts of Bryan Fuller and crew. The cast is also to die for, with Mads Mikkelsen as an irresistible new version of Dr. Hannibal Lecter, and good supporting work from Lawrence Fishburne, Caroline Dhavernas, and Gillian Anderson. Hugh Dancy is still not quite up to par, but his performance grew on me eventually. I like that the corpses of the week often make me physical recoil in a way that I hadn't since the weirder episodes of "The X-files." I like that the case-of-the-week format is largely abandoned by the second half of the season to focus on the interactions of the main cast and the fallout of a single case that had been solved in the first episode. And even when it is tracking down guest star murderers, it doesn't play by the rules, paying far less attention to working out the weekly mystery than exploring what the new mystery means for the increasingly tenuous mental state of Will Graham.

On the other hand, "Hannibal" is often a slog, featuring long, long dialogue scenes of Will in psychoanalysis and puzzling his way through the various motives of the murders. The show's cental conflict between the FBI and Hannibal is sometimes wonderfully tense and thrilling to watch, and sometimes feels like they are going around in endless circles, dragging things out. It doesn't help that nobody in this show talks like a normal person, not the agents, not the lab tech comic relief, and not even the teenage girls. Instead, it's reams of obsessive exposition, often in the form of repetitive arguments and interrogations. Aside from Hannibal, everyone seems eager to recite what they're feeling at any particular moment with hardly any cueing. This is necessary for a show that is so concerned with the inner workings of Will's mind and tracking Hannibal's manipulations, but sometimes they lay it on way too thick. Alana and Will's romance predictably goes nowhere because within a few seconds of making her attraction clear, Alana is reciting all the reasons why the pair wouldn't work together, providing a very professional self-diagnosis of all her neuroses.

More troubling are the constant logic leaps the audience is expected to swallow - Jack insisting that Abigail Hobbs should be investigated as an accomplice to murder with hardly any evidence, Will failing to get a second opinion after the mysterious death of his physician, and the remarkably rushed introduction and dispatching of Abigail's best friend who coincidentally looks almost exactly like she does. Lord Dark Helmet once declared that "evil will always triumph, because good is dumb," but this was pushing things. I'm usually pretty forgiving of genre shows, but I do expect the basic plotting to be more solid, especially when we're talking about a show where all the main cast members are highly intelligent FBI agents or doctors or both. I really dislike how Jack Crawford is too often about as perceptive as a brick. If I were to suggest any improvements for next season, it would be to ease up on the "Shining" references and pay more attention to ensuring that the characters' actions make sense.

Last night's finale episode was one of the strongest of the season, though, and provided some very satisfactory payoff to weeks of escalating tensions. I expect I'd like "Hannibal" better if I watched multiple episodes in one sitting, giving the febrile atmosphere more of a chance to work its way into my skull. I may have my reservations about the overly analytical dialogue, but it does fit this heightened, stylized world that "Hannibal" exists in, where the most horrific crimes are often rendered exquisite through Hannibal's dinners and the artfully arranged crime scenes. The show evokes the creeps on very visceral level, but often understated or intellectualized in a way that makes them much more effective. No other horror series I've seen, not even the more graphic "Dexter" and "American Horror Story," has been more consistently disturbing. And as often as it's dull, it can be very clever. I loved the final scene of last night's episode, with that wonderful reversal on the most famous Hannibal Lecter appearance.

And finally, it was all worth it for Mads Mikkelsen's version of Hannibal Lecter, who is one of the best television characters I've met in some time. I'm glad the show's creators haven't been afraid to depart from their source material and expand on the characters in such delightful ways. "Hannibal" is far darker and more daring that I could have every hoped for, and has turned out to be a very good fit for television. I'm not convinced it's as good as some of its fans insist, but I'm looking forward to next year.
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