Kim and I just watched Hannibal: Season 3.
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I found Seasons 1 and 2 to be intelligent, intricate and
interesting. Season 3 started off like a 60s French Film student’s semester
project. From the images of snails after every commercial break to the
kaleidoscopic lesbian sex scene between American Mary [Katharine Isabelle] and
Canadian Caroline [Dhavernas] it reeked of French art films. It was all style,
very little substance. The plot was submerged beneath waves of
surrealist/erotic imagery and unfortunately further diluted by dialogue out of
a 17 year old Morrissey fan’s notebook. The characters tossed barely related
pop-philosophical and pop-psychological aphorisms back and forth amid swirling
digital psychedelic backdrops.
By the fourth episode, we were ready to abandon
the whole thing. Then Kim suggested that maybe those episodes were being
experienced from the POV of Gillian Anderson’s character. That made sense.
Bedelia [Gillian Anderson] has joined Hannibal in his exile.
Where her character has seemed numb for the first two seasons, she is so
completely disaffected in season 3 that when her ‘habit’ is finally revealed,
it comes as no great surprise and actually makes the first four episodes make a
sort of convoluted sense.
There are two other things that confuse and annoy me about
season 3. Chiyon makes no sense. I know there was a brief explanation of her
association with the Lecter family, but her apparent age makes the explanation
unwieldy. And who created the Dragonfly-man? Was it Will or Chiyon? It doesn’t
make sense for Chiyon to do it. And if it was Will, then, honestly, WTF?
The second half of the season was back to the wonderful
style of writing that graced the first two seasons. The retelling of ‘Red
Dragon’ was very well done. And for the first time this season there is
actually a sympathetic character. Of course, since the show is about a serial
killer, the sympathetic character is one. I actually felt bad for Francis
Dolarhyde. He was fighting his own mind and just trying to be a guy in love. I
only had two issues with him: 1) He ate a William Blake original [the bastard!],
and 2) He always killed the family dog first [for this he will never have my
complete sympathy, anyone who murders a dog deserves to be devoured by their
own brain!].
I enjoyed watching Season 3. Definitely not as much as I
enjoyed Seasons 1 & 2, but I don’t regret it. You just have to hang on
through the first 4 or 5 episodes which are very lush and sensual, but unlike
seasons 1 & 2, to get to the good stuff as ‘Red Dragon’ plays out. If the
decision to cancel this show was made during the first four episodes I can
understand it, but since it ends right before ‘Silence of the Lambs,’ I think
it was a perfect place to stop.
