Hannibal: Season 3

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.