Margaux and I didn’t love Hannibal this week. Find out why!
Trevor: I know we’ve talked about Hannibal’s weird snail motif before, but it was on full display for the first half of “Contorno,” by which I mean the show moved at a snail’s pace. There was a lot of exposition and place-setting, and I found myself not quite as enraptured as I usually am watching this show. Of course, the second half stuck the landing, so overall I think “Contorno” is a solid episode, but it was just slow getting there. What did you think?
Margaux: It was nice that “Contorno” was the first episode this season that shed the need for exposition because like you said, I was starting to tune out in the first half as well too many repeating motifs (snails, Hannibal “drawing” everyone to him, TOO MUCH WHISPERING). But I do like to see Jack Crawford fight, especially when it’s as lyrical as it always is on Hannibal.
Trevor: Oh, absolutely, this show doesn’t half-ass anything when it comes to its established aesthetic. This was a good episode for Jack. I liked the scene of him scattering Bella’s ashes, and then throwing his wedding ring. It’s good that there’s at least one competent cop in Florence, cause it sure as shit ain’t Renaldo Pazzi.
Margaux: To be fair, we knew Pazzi was going to die almost immediately upon meeting his character. Finding out Pazzi’s tragic family past only sealed his fate more, but found the last bit of irony, Pazzi showing Hannibal his family facial bridle, was really nice prop foreshadowing.
Trevor: Pazzi’s death was brutal, but lyrical in its own way, as it circled back to his ancestor’s demise. I loved the delight with which Hannibal told Renaldo how Francesco de Pazzi died. Just absolutely fucking with him. Pazzi’s murder was very well done here, which is good because it’s one of the few good parts of Hannibal the novel. (I, like most people, barely remember the movie.)
Margaux: “Bowels in or out?” Hannibal is one cold bitch.
Trevor: What did you think of Will and Chiyo’s road trip? Like most of “Contorno,” it was mostly very talky, but also like “Contorno,” it ended well.
Margaux: I was ready to write off their coupling as the weakest part of Hannibal until Chiyo shoves Will off the back of a moving train. She got my attention then. Not with all this “there are other means of influence besides violence”; okay, great…mind elaborating on that? I’m glad she did.
Trevor: She’s intriguing, and Tao Okamoto does a good job with her vague proclamations, but I felt nothing when she and Will kissed. But to be fair, I don’t think I was supposed to; Hannibal has its erotic moments, but episodes like “Contorno” are aggressively sexless. I guess I’m more interested in what we might see out of Chiyo, by which I mean, how is she going to be around Hannibal? Is she in love with him? She’s obviously under some kind of thrall; she kept one man prisoner and pushed another off of a train for Hannibal Lecter.
Margaux: Or to protect herself from Hannibal Lecter, she tells Will that she knows “exactly where Hannibal is.” Chiyo has a bit of Alana Bloom pragmatism under her somewhat vacant exterior. Chiyo says she murdered the prisoner out of self defense, essentially, if Will hadn’t pushed her into it, it probably would of happened anyway. She pushes Will off a train to teach him a lesson through the only means he supposedly knows, but what I think Chiyo doesn’t know is that what Will enjoyed the most out of his relationship with Hannibal was the companionship. Like he told Dr. Bloom last week, the willingness to ignore the worst in each other in order to continue enjoying the best.
Trevor: All excellent points. Will and Hannibal both have these grandiose plans to kill each other, but do you see it actually happening? I’m unsure. Which got me wondering: with the two main characters wanting the other dead, is there a way to keep them both alive without disappointing the audience? Don’t get me wrong, I have complete faith in this show, I just wonder if Bryan Fuller has painted himself into a corner, narratively speaking.
Margaux: As long Will, Alana, and Jack’s intentions of killing Hannibal remain “pure,” there will be a way for most of these character to keep on livin’. They’re all using what attracted them to Hannibal ostensibly against him, to track him down and have their last face-to-face moment with him, I think that’s what Hannibal wants/wanted, too. But a lot like how Jack beat the ever living crap out of Hannibal, but didn’t quite seal the deal, and how Alana has teamed up with monster to sort work through her fucked up relationship with Hannibal, but still calls Pazzi to warn him of his certain death if he goes up against Hannibal, to me, all equal flattery in Hannibal’s mind. It was only when Hannibal did the math and figured that Pazzi sold him out to Verger for a pretty penny, did he decide to do Pazzi in like his ancestors.
Trevor: Speaking of Verger: I’m still on the fence about Joe Anderson’s delivery. The voice at times seems to be bordering on self-parody, and his gleeful vulgarity tends to get in the way of what should be an actual threat to Hannibal. Look at how he talks to Alana: “Wow, Hannibal buys a lot of expensive shit. Did you suck his dick?” That was their convo in a nutshell. Tonally, it doesn’t quite fit with the show yet, but I’m sure that has to do with the majority of the cast having these impressionist adventures in Europe.
Margaux: Mason Verger reminds me of every prick ever who thinks they’re “funny” because they say offensive shit to women, to see if it’ll get a rise outta them, cause: comedy.
I don’t think Mason had a whole lot to do in “Contorno” other than be a rich dick, so I wasn’t watching his performance all that closely. But with Alana, I thought her phone call to Pazzi (that Hannibal intercepts because…he’s already killed Pazzi) finally threw all Bloom 2.0 in perspective for me, much like the dramatically bold new outfits and drastic make-up, it’s all armor for Alana and I truly question her ability to go through with her co-plan with Verger. Sure, Verger has overlapping qualities you could say are a lot like Hannibal, but Mason lacks the charm to keep Alana on his side to drag this shit to the finish line.
Trevor: She can only stay mad for so long. Well, that came out wrong: she can only stay homicidal for so long. I don’t see her sticking with Mason for much longer either.
My final thought: that fight at the end was fantastic. It’s disingenuous to even call it a “fight”; put simply, Jack beat the shit out of Hannibal. It’s so rare to see Hannibal surprised or caught off guard, and I loved how ineffectual his taunts were. He couldn’t get inside Jack’s head. It’s scenes like this that remind you that Hannibal is actually a villain. Jack not saying anything during the beatdown was just the cherry on top. Great, great scene to close out an otherwise okay episode.
Margaux: Throughout the fight-dance, I kept waiting (albeit, on the edge of my seat) for Hannibal to turn this thing around on Jack. Not because I wanted to see Hannibal hurt Jack in the same as “Mizumono”, but like you said, you never see Hannibal get the beatdown without giving it back a little bit. I love how when Jack and Hannibal first see each other, Hannibal is standing over Jack (so to speak), and by the end of their fight Hannibal is limping away and Jack is towering over Hannibal. Damn that shit be symbolic as hell!
Trevor: Haha, those are the kinds of trenchant insights people come to GAMbIT for. You want to talk stars? For me “Contorno” was 3.5, maybe 3.75 cause it stuck the landing so hard.
Margaux: “Contorno” was 3.5 for me, too. I just want the whole gang to get to Italy already for some good old fashioned stabbing and punching!
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