Hannibal Recap: Season three, episode 8 – The Great Red Dragon

Spoiler alert: this blog is published after Hannibal airs on NBC in the US on Saturdays. Do not read on unless you have watched season three, episode six, which airs in the UK on Sky Living on Wednesdays at 10pm


Hannibal, season three episode eight: The Great Red Dragon. Photograph: NBC/Brooke Palmer/NBC
Brian Moylan
Sunday 26 July 2015 04.01 BST Last modified on Sunday 26 July 2015 04.03 BST


I’m such a dummy, I thought that Hannibal was only turning himself in so that he could break out again, but little did I know that would be it. That small scene at the end of the last episode was the conclusion of Hannibal’s reign of terror against Will, Alana, Jack, Bedelia, the Vergers, and the Chesapeake Bay that he has pursued since the series started. He has no intention of breaking out, at least not yet, and I’m not entirely sure what he has to gain from living the rest of his life in an institution, but I guess we have no choice but to go along with it.

However, Hannibal is also free (in a way). In his mind he’s not residing in a cell in the Baltimore city mental hospital; he is living in his mind palace. The scene where he sits in the chapel in Italy – where Will tracked him down earlier this season – and listens to a choirboy sing Hallelujah while he is being arrested is quite brilliant. We see flashes of his freedom throughout the episode, as when Fredrick, who is working on a new book about the Tooth Fairy, stokes his “competitive vanity”, and again when he’s cutting out articles about the Tooth Fairy and using it to once again lure Will back into his trap. When the camera trains on Hannibal, we see him in some lush setting, like the salons and sitting rooms that he’s used to. But when the camera focuses on someone else, we see the stark contrast of his reality. We see this dichotomy once again when Will takes the bait and asks for Hannibal’s help to find this new killer.

Let’s talk about this new killer, shall we? We don’t know much about him yet, but the dialogue-free opening sequence in which we were introduced to him was absolutely masterful. After finding one of William Blake’s engravings of Satan, or the Great Red Devil, this man decides that is what he wants to become. His exercise routine (more like an exorcise routine) was absolutely terrifying, as it looked like he was about to sprout wings and horns at any moment.

Later, when he was watching the home movies from the family he murdered (all right, I read Red Dragon, the book this storyline is based on, about 20 years ago, so I might have some extra insight), he turned himself into the projector, at least in his mind. It was like a mechanical animal, something akin to the stag that Will and Hannibal always see, but scarier and symbolizing something much darker. We know the Tooth Fairy likes clippings of his crimes and to touch his victims, but everything else is being kept vague as Will and Hannibal try to hunt him down. This episode was all about giving us glimpses into his life and setting the mood, which it did with freakish visuals, convoluted musical cues, and not a drop of dialogue. It was more like a commercial for the most Goth perfume ever created than a conventional network drama.

After skipping three years into the future we see Hannibal still captured in a psychiatric ward that is run by Alana. But where is Will? He’s married to a woman named Molly who has an 11-year-old son and a penchant for adopting stray dogs. When the Tooth Fairy emerges, killing an entire family in their home on the night of the full moon, Jack takes the trip up to Will’s house to ask him to come back and help solve the crime. Will says that not only is he not interested in going back, but he doesn’t think he’d be able to. “It’s dark on the other side,” he says. “And madness is waiting.”

Molly thinks that trying to solve this case is the right thing to do; especially because if he keeps reading about it and does nothing, it will sour him on the refuge he has with her. Hannibal also sends him a note with a clipping of the Tooth Fairy’s killing, and that’s enough to get Will interested. Maybe it was some sort of reverse psychology whereby Hannibal told him not to get involved so he decided to. Or maybe he’s just doing it because he knows Hannibal wants to rekindle their partnership and he can’t resist the siren song of his true soul mate.

Either way, Will ends up investigating the crime and we see something we haven’t seen all season: Will looking at a crime scene and reenacting it in his mind. It’s an especially grisly one, in which the Red Dragon kills a mother, a father, and their two children, placing shards of a mirror on their mouth and eyes and in some other places. He also has to touch the mother; making skin-on-skin contact is somehow imperative to his ritual. We don’t know why he does this or what drives him to kill, but we know it’s going to happen again, and it is the thing that brings Will and Hannibal back together. This really can’t be good for anyone, can it?

Hannibal Review 3.08 – “The Great Red Dragon”

July 26, 2015 | Posted by Joseph Lee

Warning: This review contains spoilers for tonight’s episode. Don’t read if you haven’t watched it yet.

Last week on Hannibal, Mason Verger had Hannibal and Will captured in Italy and moved to his estate on Muskrat Farm. His plan: eat Hannibal while wearing Will’s face. Eventually Alana lets Hannibal out to save Will, while she and Margot murder Mason after milking him for sperm. Hannibal allows himself to be captured later as a final blow to Will Graham, who just wanted to live his life without knowing where Hannibal was.



Season 3, Episode 8: The Great Red Dragon

Directed By: Neil Marshall

Written By: Nick Antosca, Bryan Fuller & Steve Lightfoot

If last week’s episode felt like a finale (and it would have been the perfect finale for this show, I think), then this episode feels like a season premiere. Let’s say season three ended with last week and season four started with this episode. That’s how you should see it because this is the start of a new story. It’s three years since the events of last week’s episode. Hannibal’s in a state institution, Dr. Chilton has published a book on him, Dr. Bloom and Jack are still doing their thing and Will is finally happy. I’ll get to each story in a bit.

Francis Dolarhyde is here and he is crazy. We’ve had a lot of insane people on this show. In spite of Hannibal’s protests, he’s probably insane. Will Graham definitely lost his mind for a while. Mason Verger was so crazy he could get his own wing in a psychiatric facility. And yet, insanity is portrayed in different ways with all of them. For example, Hannibal has a god complex and Mason is a sadist. Now we have Francis Dolarhyde and he seems like he’s almost animalistic. He’s a different kind of psycho than we’ve seen before on this show, which means the confrontation with Will Graham will be different than any we’ve seen.



When Richard Armitage was announced as Dolarhyde, I wasn’t sure what to think. I’m not too familiar on his work, as I only knew him as Thorin Oakenshield from The Hobbit. So to say he blew me away in the role is an understatement. He doesn’t even do much in this episode really. We only see the aftermath of Dolarhyde’s murders. All of our time spent with him is while he’s alone and has time to revel in his delusions. He makes a series of mewling noises, he gets tattoos to match William Blake’s “Red Dragon” paintings and he collects news articles about himself while marking out the “Tooth Fairy” nickname he hates so much. Even with all these seemingly unimportant things happening, it’s fascinating to watch.

I’m really curious as how he’ll interact with everyone as the season continues. Eventually he has a love interest, if this follows the book closely. He’s also set to have a confrontation with Will later, as he’s the one hunting him. He’s already implied to be interested in Hannibal so we may see those two interact at some point. I suspect Jack’s close to losing his importance on the show as he didn’t have a huge role in the Red Dragon story, but maybe Fuller will find a way to work him deeper into the investigation. He somehow got him in Italy to hunt down Hannibal and that worked out fine.



Speaking of Hannibal, he’s finally in prison. The entire series has led to this, so now we get to see how Hannibal reacts to prison. Well, I say prison but it’s really an institution. We find out that Dr. Bloom and Dr. Chilton worked together to spare Hannibal the death penalty. Chilton did it so he could ride Hannibal’s notoriety. Bloom did it under the delusion that there was enough death, but you know she really wanted Hannibal alive so he could live knowing he’d never be free. Even then, her conversation with Hannibal seems to imply that she knows he’ll escape somehow, because he’s promised to kill her at some point.

Hannibal seems to have adjusted well. He’s as unflappable as ever, even in a jumpsuit and without his usual benefits. He takes delight in torturing his visitors however he can. He reminds Dr. Bloom that he “always keeps his promises”, he reminds Dr. Chilton that he fed him human blood at some point. He does all of this while pretending he’s in fancier settings than a cell. He’s also sending love letters to Will, actually asking him not to take the Tooth Fairy case. I suspect that Hannibal knew Will would do so or already did.



So that brings us to arguably the star of this episode, Hugh Dancy as Will Graham. He doesn’t show up until the second half and from there it’s all about him. Will has finally found some happiness after the past two and a half seasons. He has a wife, a stepson, his dogs and a fairly isolated home. That makes it all the more soul-crushing when a car pulls up to his home and Jack Crawford steps out of it. If you care about Will at all, then Jack is almost a villain at this point. Yes, he’s just trying to do his job, but this time he’s pulling Will away from a happy life back into the world of psychotics.

Dancy absolutely carries his half of the episode with his performance. He gets a long sequence in which he studies the scene of Dolarhyde’s murders and you can see him slowly break down but try to keep it to himself. Watch his eyes as he begins to put the pieces together. Watch him struggle to say “this is my design” as he slips back into the role he wanted nothing more to do with. Even then, he knows he has one more place he has to go to catch “The Tooth Fairy”, and that’s to get Hannibal’s insight. The guy he wants nothing to do with anymore. Dancy has been good all series long, but he deserves special mention here for how sympathetic he once again makes Will after several episodes of straddling the line between good and evil. Next week’s meeting should be an emotional one, to say the least.

The 411: While a step down from last week, "The Great Red Dragon" is still a great introduction to Richard Armitage's Francis Dolarhyde and where all of our main characters are now. Armitage is great so far, a strong addition to the cast. It will be interesting to see how he progresses as a character. Hugh Dancy deserves a mention this week for carrying the episode on his back with a psychological performance. Fine acting all around.
Final Score: 8 [ Very Good ] legend

Becoming: Hannibal, “The Great Red Dragon”



And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:

And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.

And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.

And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.

Revelations, 12:1-4 (KJV)

The first half of Hannibal‘s third season was a dreamy, gauzy exploration of unhealthy co-dependency: between Will and Hannibal, between Hannibal and Bedelia, between Mason and Margot, between Alana and Will. The pace was slow, the action sparse, and the philosophizing heavy. It wasn’t to everyone’s taste (!) – although I loved it all – but Bryan Fuller isn’t interested in serving the same old dish. “The Great Red Dragon” could well be a pilot episode of a new series – but, since it’s laid on the foundation Fuller et al. have built over the past two and a half seasons, it’s immeasurably richer than either of the screen adaptations of the same source material could hope to be.

hannibal-richard-armitage

We’re at the point where Red Dragon the novel begins: Hannibal Lecter is imprisoned in the Baltimore Hospital for the Criminally Insane; Will Graham has retired from FBI work and settled down with a new wife and stepson (and a new pack of dogs); and Francis Dolarhyde (Richard Armitage) has committed two grisly murders. Well, two sets of grisly murders. Known as the Tooth Fairy by the tabloid press, due to the number of bite marks he leaves on his victims, he breaks into a nice family’s house on the night of a full moon, quickly and brutally slays the entire family, and then does things with the bodies. If you’ve missed Manhunter and Red Dragon the book and/or the film, prepare yourself: Dolarhyde breaks every mirror in the house, places shards in the eyes and mouth of each family member, arranges the husband and children to sit against the wall in the master bedroom (so they’re “watching”), and then he touches (and, it is implied here on the show and stated outright in the novel/films, rapes) the wife’s dead body.

hannibalblood

Several reviews have noted that these murders feel all the more shocking and gruesome because, up to now, the murders we see committed by Hannibal and other various “monsters of the week” have been more like works of art than acts of rage. This episode has pulled off an amazing feat: it’s not only a fresh take on the Red Dragon story, compared to the two previous cinematic iterations, but it also feels like a revisiting of the main theme in a symphony, after several movements of development. During the first season, the format of the show involved Will and Hannibal working together to solve that week’s murder. Will, with his tremendous powers of empathy, would walk through the crime scene and imagine committing the murder himself. After Hannibal framed Will for the Chesapeake Ripper’s serial killing – a bumpy section in their road to romance, it must be said – the second season necessarily diverged from that format, and applied Will’s empathic powers to other ends; namely, Hannibal. Now, three years after the events of the most recent episode, Will is compelled – by Jack, of course – to examine the Tooth Fairy’s crime scenes to try to catch him before the next full moon.

hannibalmolly

He doesn’t want to do it. He doesn’t want to allow that kind of horror into his mind anymore. He’s happily married to Molly (Nina Arianda), a warm and funny woman who anchors Will to the real world. Molly knows, however, that Will won’t be able to live with himself if he fails to help the FBI, and the Tooth Fairy strikes again. One gets the sense that Molly usually wins the few arguments these two have; it’s a shame that she won this one, too. After the hell that Will has been through, we really do want to see him settled, stable, and happy. If this second half of the season ends as the novel does…well, things don’t look so good for Will Graham. We’ll see what Fuller has up his sleeve, however. In the meantime, Team Sassy Science – which is to say Jimmy Price (Scott Thompson) and Brian Zeller (Aaron Abrams) – is back, since we’re no longer on our Euro trip and are back in the FBI’s jurisdiction. Hannibal is often morbidly (and mordantly) funny, but these two could be on their own sitcom spinoff. Food for thought, NBC.

What of Hannibal, speaking of things that are bad for Will? He is locked up behind his Plexiglas wall, in a spacious but empty cell. In Hannibal’s mind, however, it takes on the aspect of whichever room in his memory palace he likes best that day. Director Neil Marshall (of The Descent fame, the movie that guaranteed my sworn opposition to stepping foot in any cave, ever, for any reason) manages this shifting point of view quite cannily: in two-shots between Hannibal and his visitor – whether Chilton, Alana, or Will – the scenery changes. Hannibal speaks, and he’s in his study or his dining room. Alana offers a rejoinder, and he’s back in his cell, while she’s seated the requisite number of feet away from the glass. Still, Hannibal isn’t nearly as serene as he might seem. Where Chilton fails to get a rise out of him by insinuating that his fifteen minutes of fame are up, since he’s too esoteric and snobby (a not-so-coded reference to Hannibal itself and its failure to hit with mainstream audiences), Hannibal one-ups him by writing a scathing rebuttal of Chilton’s writing, career, personality, etc., in a renowned psychiatric journal. He writes a letter to Will, advising him to stay out of the Tooth Fairy case – almost certainly counting on the fact that Will can’t help getting involved, and perhaps coming to visit. Hannibal is a caged tiger, and he’s doing his best to keep himself from going truly crazy (Chilton and Alana lied in court so that Hannibal wouldn’t receive the death penalty, instead living the rest of his life in an insane asylum) as he paces back and forth in his cell. Three years is a long time.

The real revolution, or revelation, in this episode is of course the Red Dragon himself. Fuller knows that we’re all pretty likely to know something about this particular story, so he doesn’t waste time or energy on detailed exposition. It’s all about Armitage’s brilliant embodiment of a disturbed young man. He barely speaks, and he’s alone almost always. Future episodes may investigate Dolarhyde’s miserable childhood, his mother’s rejection, his embarrassment and lifelong sense of inadequacy stemming from his cleft palate, his abusive grandmother, his crippling fear that she would emasculate him for wetting the bed. There’s plenty to work with – but I get the sense that Fuller assumes we can fill in those details on our own, and would prefer to move the series forward, rather than lurch back into the serial killer’s sad upbringing. Hannibal has never been about retreading familiar territory with these characters: it’s always been about finding the emotional truth in each of them, and surging onward and upward.

hannibalwings

And the emotional truth of Francis Dolarhyde is that he’s a shy, lonely person wrestling with some powerful demons. (Wrestling with them powerfully, at that. The opening training montage, featuring strenuous yoga poses and calisthenics, is something of which I hope there will be an extended director’s cut someday.) Is that ever an excuse for someone who commits the heinous acts that he does? No, never. However, that’s what Hannibal has gotten right, time and again: these “monsters” we fear aren’t cartoon villains. Hannibal Lecter is a strange breed, but he’s not a supernatural being. He’s not a moustache-twirling maniac. He adheres to a moral code that none of the rest of us would subscribe to, most likely, but he’s a man with desires and joys and woes. Francis Dolarhyde is an abuse victim who struggles between wanting to be like everyone else, and wanting to Become something greater – the Great Red Dragon, specifically.

In short: this continues to be the best show currently on television. Rather than rehash the same story we’ve heard in two other movies, Hannibal builds on the complex psychological portraits of its main players, established over the past two and a half seasons, and allows those to lend the Red Dragon story real depth – and menace. And even though “The Great Red Dragon” has stuck quite closely to the events of the novel, Fuller has proven to be a gentleman, as ever: a lesser show, or movie, would surely have sexualized Mrs. Leeds and her fate worse than death (after she’s dead). Here, if you don’t know where the labia are (and honestly, I bet most NBC viewers don’t), you won’t even realize Dolarhyde did anything more than touch her face. If this show has to end, I’m glad it’s ending with a roar.



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Hannibal: ‘The Great Red Dragon’ Review – S03E08
Posted by Samuel Brace On July 26, 2015 0 Comment



It’s finally here. The moment, the story, the chapter in the saga we have all been waiting for. As soon as it was announced that Thomas Harris‘ books were being adapted for the small screen, as prequels to her first novel, everyone was wondering how long it would take for the show to reach the RED DRAGON portion of the story. The point where the tale of Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter officially begins, before Clarice, before Lecter would be made infamous in pop culture by the film adapation of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Well, now is the time, waiting is no longer required, he, and the grand story that accompanies him, have arrived.

Right off the bat, one can already tell that Francis Dolarhyde aka The Tooth Fairy, aka The Red Dragon, aka Richard Armitage, is a different kind of villain — removing Hannibal himself from the equation — than any other we’ve seen on the show before. This episode served as a fantastic introduction to the character, revealing certain aspects of his insanity and his ritual, but leaving out details about him as a man, as a human being — this only made him more horrifying. There is something very scary indeed about a man that kills so randomly and without reason, well, without any reason we can ascertain so far. All we know is that he kills “perfect families”, butchering them in their homes and that he has fake teeth, a really big scrap book and an awesome tattoo.

Richard Armitage was left without any dialogue in his debut episode, only guttural screams of pain and torment to express himself. One of my gripes with season 1 (a little of two) was the ‘killer of the week’ trope that it toyed with. Although HANNIBAL has pulled it off far better than most, it was still something that bugged me, but I get the feeling The Tooth Fairy (sorry, The Red Dragon…) will be a completely different kettle of fish. He is going to be around for a while and is already intrinsic to the plot of this season going forward. Hannibal will always be the shows ultimate villain (quasi hero) but with the good doctor locked up, it has allowed a new killer to emerge, one that is equally monstrous to behold.

“There is no name for what this man is.”

This week, like I mentioned earlier, was an important episode for the show, but also a strange one given off screen events. ‘The Great Red Dragon’ saw the start of the books finally take place on screen, taking us into somewhat familiar territory, but also delivering us the end of the show. In all likelihood these next handful of episodes will be HANNIBAL’s last, so the irony is certainly palpable here with the start of the grander, more famous story, but with the end of the tale we have grown to love so dearly. It’s a bitter sweet sensation for sure.

After Hannibal’s surrender at the previous episodes end, we pick up events three years later, with Hannibal locked safely behind bars at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Sporting a new haircut and having beaten the death penalty on an insane plea, Hannibal is using his memory palace to help stomach his undesirable new surroundings. We see him meeting with old friends such as Alana and Chilton which produced some fascinating and downright funny conversations. Such as Chilton and Hannibal’s discussion about a dish they once shared, spawning lines like, “the blood was from a cow, but only in the derogatory sense.” Oh that one got me good. Great stuff.

Hannibal behind bars excites in a way that I find it hard to describe. Perhaps if one wasn’t privy to the source material or the films that preceded the series, then this might have had a different effect, but just seeing Hannibal back where we have always known him ignites a certain tension and perhaps a little nostalgia. It’s really great to see the show finally reach this place in the story, despite all the difficulties it’s had behind the scenes.

“If I go, I won’t be the same when I come back.”

It took a while for Will to appear in this episode, but appear he did, setting up the crux of the season going forward. We find him, or well, Jack finds him, at relative peace in snowy seclusion, seemingly married and parent to his new partner’s child. A nice nod to the opening of the book. Jack is back at his old job and trying desperately to stop the Tooth Fairy striking before the next full moon, knowing there is only one man that can get the job done. He pays Will a visit, hoping he can lure his old friend back into the world that scarred him so deeply. Will eventually agrees, with a little help from his wife and a nice nudge from Hannibal himself, via a letter that warned him not to come, and about the madness that awaits him if he does, but also in typical cheeky Hannibal style; with a news clipping from the Tooth Fairy’s latest murder. Hannibal will never be able to resist toying with his old… well… toy.

With Will back to work, struggling with all the demons that it arises in him, we see him traversing the hallways of one of Francis’s murder houses, giving the show the opportunity to revive Will’s old method of getting in the heads of killers. It was nice to see after what feels like an age. The best thing to come out of that moment however was the image of the forensic blood strings spread out behind Will like wings, a really terrific shot.

“I have to see Hannibal.”

Will knows and so do we, that to catch a killer like the one he is after, there is a certain mind set required, a mindset that he has long left behind, a mindset that he once used to catch the greatest of them all and the only way to recapture it is to visit the man himself. My favourite moment of season 1 was the very last scene of the finale, where Hannibal walks down the long corridor of the hospital to visit Will in his cell. So when the final moment of this episode re-imagined that very scene, I was excited to say the least. “Hello, Doctor Lecter” Will says upon seeing Hannibal behind the glass. “Hello, Will” he replies, beaming with pride at being reunited with his pal. The exchange being the exact opposite of the moment from season 1 with their lines reversed in order. It was a magical moment for the show and sets up events wonderfully.

Hannibal, like the show that bears his name, “defies characterisation”. What is HANNIBAL? It’s certainly not like any other network show, it’s certainly not your run of the mill serial killer affair, it’s something else, HE is something else. HANNIBAL has become so cinematic, both visually and thematically. This story, this arc, seems so big, it seems important and grand. This is a truly special TV show that borders on being immaculate. And this all might come off as hyperbolic but I don’t care. For someone that is normally so curmudgeonry towards so many things, you can take these words (not that you should need convincing) as ones that mean something. HANNIBAL is extraordinary, must see television. Period.

‘Hannibal': Betrayed By Good Taste

By Kevin Yeoman2 hours ago

[This is a review of Hannibal season 3, episode 8. There will be SPOILERS.]

–

After several weeks of Hannibal running around Europe, while the narrative adapted/played with story elements from Thomas Harris’ Hannibal novel, the series has seen fit to make a significant time jump of three years, in order to bring about the next storyline from the novels, and with which to end the season (and perhaps the series on). It seems a little odd to have Harris’ first Hannibal Lecter novel become what may very well be the last story Bryan Fuller and company apply their unique aesthetic to, but, in its own looping, dreamlike way, it would make for an oddly perfect conclusion to this strange yet beautiful series, the existence of which, even as you look at it now, defies all logic.

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Early on and with great ease, the storyline settles into its new but slightly familiar rhythms. Will has found himself a family of actual people – not just dogs (thanks to the presence of Nina Arianda as Molly Graham) – Jack is back at the FBI, and Hannibal has settled into a comfortable, tension-filled existence with Dr. Chilton and Dr. Bloom at the psychiatric hospital, where they have gone out of their way to make his cell as reminiscent of his old office as possible. The episode even features the welcome return of Zeller (Aaron Abrams) and Price (Scott Thompson), as the narrative’s focus on the BAU’s pursuit of the Tooth Fairy (a.k.a. Francis Dolarhyde – played here by Richard Armitage) brings the eighth episode of season 3 even closer to one of, say, season 1.

‘The Great Red Dragon’ is an introduction. The episode is tasked with bringing the audience up to speed on what’s been going on in the lives of these characters since the events at Muskrat Farm, while also dividing the narrative’s focus with Dolarhyde’s evolution into the titular Red Dragon. And perhaps knowing that there would need to be a level of exposition necessary to help announce the status quo, Fuller and co-writers Steve Lightfoot and Nick Antosca, made several important choices when it came to the specificity of dialogue.

For instance, if you’re Fuller and company, how do you introduce a well-known character, previously played by the likes of Tom Noonan and Ralph Fiennes, and make that presentation memorable? You give the actor playing him no actual lines of dialogue, so as to allow him to standout against an episode rife with exposition. The effect is as striking as the poses Armitage twists himself into. Most striking, though, is how his performance vacillates between sadness and rage, and the lack of spoken words (though he makes a pitiable effort at one point, and its hard not to sympathize with him) underlines the distinctiveness of Francis’ mental malady.

To counter that, there are discussions between characters that not only explain their relationships with the world as it has changed for them, but also their relationships with the people they have become. After Jack pays him a visit, Will tells Molly, who encourages him to go help with the Tooth Fairy investigation, “If I go… I’ll be different when I get back.”

The line is almost like Hannibal itself is discussing the previous seven weeks, but with the advantage of hindsight. “I’ll go to Europe. I’ll track down Hannibal Lecter, and almost get swallowed whole by my own abstractions and gorgeous aesthetics… but I’ll be different when I get back.” The clever thing about the line is, if we choose to look at it as hindsight, is how much “different” resembles Hannibal season 1.

It’s a welcome change that becomes inexplicably and inappropriately wistful, as the gruesome nightmare that is Will Graham’s mental reconstruction of a family’s bloody murder brings with it the painful sting of nostalgia. That is, thanks to the shrewd direction of Neil Marshall, ‘The Great Red Dragon’ reminds the audience of why they fell in love with Hannibal in the first place.

As sure as the bar of light wiping across the screen keyed into the audiences’ pleasure centers, it also signified a journey into the dark recesses of Will’s unusually empathetic mind. The moment’s emotional impact – on both Will Graham and the audience – was likely all part of Fuller’s design. That design feels like Hannibal, as a show, had something to get off its chest, and the only way to do that was through a shrewd meta-conversation between Hannibal Lecter and Dr. Chilton over a decadent dessert eaten with a plastic spoon.

While there’s plenty of symbolism swirling around the consumption of a gorgeous, succulent product by way of a functional but perhaps second-rate delivery system, it’s really Chilton’s pointed words he uses to get a rise out of Hannibal that perk up viewers’ ears. Raúl Esparza might as well be talking directly to Hannibal the television series when he says the new killer on the street has “a much wider demographic than you do.”

The conversation becomes particularly personal, as Chilton chides his patient by saying, “You, with your fancy allusions, your fussy aesthetics; you will always have niche appeal.” Meanwhile, there is something “so very universal about what [the Tooth Fairy] does.” Of course what the Tooth Fairy does is kill “whole families in their homes.” Chilton’s dialogue feels like the show’s creators’ cheeky nose thumbing at the bean counters who ostensibly sealed its fate when, after three seasons, Hannibal‘s fussy aesthetics failed to appeal to a wider audience.

And yet, almost right on cue, that’s precisely what ‘The Great Red Dragon’ does. Last week’s ‘Digestivo‘ was by far the most direct episode this season has offered. This time around, though, the narrative is given its abstractions – i.e., Hannibal’s sumptuous mind palace – but the story itself feels even more accessible to a wide audience, not just the trustworthy few who have clung to the series from its inception.

With Will stepping back into the swing of things, the welcome return of the BAU’s ancillary members, and the introduction of Dolarhyde, the episode’s offerings were at once new and intriguing, yet comfortably familiar at the same time. Even the exposition between Chilton and Bloom felt compelling, as it worked the underserved angle of their need for revenge, while also reminding the audience that Dr. Lecter is not so easily bested. Even within the confines of his rather posh cell, Hannibal the Cannibal remains a threat to those around him. He may not be able to bite as he once did, but his mind and his tongue remain as sharp as ever.

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Hannibal continues next Saturday with ‘…And the Woman Clothed with the Sun’ @10pm on NBC.

'Hannibal' Season 3 Episode Guide: Shakespeare Opera-Like Tragedy Teased By Richard Armitage
Jul 27, 2015 05:35 AM EDT | By Rolly Gacelo


The last "Hannibal" season 3 episode finally introduced the Tooth Fairy to the audience.

After playing cat and mouse in the first two and a half seasons, Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) and FBI agent Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) will now work together to take down a feared serial killer only known to the world as the Tooth Fairy.

Having Lecter and Graham and work together is an understatement of how good this new villain is. During the days when he is not stalking his new victim, he lives a normal life and goes by the name Francis Dolarhyde.

Although he has a knack for killing 'perfect families', he too wants to live a normal life. He also goes out on date. However, this part of his life does not go the way he imagines. In the words of Richard Armitage who plays this character, Dolarhyde's love life is a tragedy and this will be shown in the next "Hannibal" season 3 episode.

"You know what, we really do honor the book, and so you see the full extent of that tragic love story," Armitage said in an interview with TV Line.

"To me, really, the crimes aside - and remember, I never actually had to portray any of the crimes, so I suppose I compartmentalized them - Dolarhyde and Reba represent a tragic, romantic love story, which really doesn't end well and escalates into a Shakespearian opera of the proportions that Thomas Harris really explores in the novel."

In the Thomas Harris book where the show's characters were based from, Reba is a blind woman who fell in love with Francis Dolarhyde.

The next episode is called "And the Woman Clothed with the Sun." Read the full "Hannibal" season 3 episode guide below:

"The FBI's search for elusive serial killer Francis Dolarhyde intensifies as Will Graham begins envisioning himself in Dolarhyde's tormented psyche. Wading deeper into dangerous territory, Will enlists the help of Hannibal Lecter to assist with the killer's profile. Meanwhile, Alana Bloom reminds Will that the last time that he and Hannibal worked together things didn't end well, but Will sees no other option. Elsewhere, a new woman (guest star Rutina Wesley) comes into Dolarhyde's life."

Wir schauen Hannibal - Staffel 3, Folge 8
von Pfizze (Sven Pfizenmaier)
- Veröffentlicht am 27.07.2015, 08:50


Hannibal wagt nach einer halben Staffel einen kompletten Neustart und wir fühlen uns wie in die erste Staffel versetzt: Ein neuer Killer taucht auf und ermordet Familien bei Vollmond. Will kehrt zum FBI zurück und braucht Hannibals Hilfe. Alles beim Alten also.

Wie erwartet macht Hannibal ohne große Erklärung einen Zeitsprung von ganzen drei Jahren und eröffnet in The Great Red Dragon direkt die Geschichte von Francis Dolarhyde, eine Storyline, mit der Thomas Harris vor über dreißig Jahren sein großes Hannibal Lecter-Universum begann. Dieser Zeitsprung und der damit einhergehende Neustart der Serie erinnert in seiner Konzeption ganz an das Case of the week-Prinzip der ersten Staffel, was nicht nur eine sehr angenehme Abwechslung nach den verstörenden Turbulenzen der letzten Wochen ist, sondern auch ein vielversprechender Auftakt für eine klassische Kriminalgeschichte im nicht ganz so klassischen Gewand der Hannibal-Vision von Bryan Fuller.

Jack (Laurence Fishburne) sucht WIll (Hugh Dancy) auf, um ihn um seine Mitarbeit in einem neuen Mordfall zu bitten. Eine vertraute Szene, doch seit dem Beginn der Zusammenarbeit in Staffel eins ist jede Menge passiert und vor allem Jack scheinen die Geschehnisse abgestumpft zu haben. Zwar verspricht er Wills Frau Molly (Nina Arianda), dass er alles tun werde, um Will so gut es geht zu schonen, vollständig aufrichtig wirkt das jedoch nicht. Unverständlich ist das nicht, nicht nur wegen der Vergangenheit mit Hannibal, sondern auch, weil Jack seit dem Tod seiner Frau wohl außer dem FBI kaum noch etwas hat, sodass er sich vollständig dem Gesetz verschreibt. Das geht sogar so weit, dass er Will mit den billigsten Tricks überzeugen will und ihm Fotos der ermordeten Familie zeigt. Übrigens wirkt Jack vor allem später im Gespräch mit Molly sehr routiniert darin, Leuten Bilder von mittlerweile ermordeten Familien zu zeigen, um sie von seiner Meinung zu überzeugen. In diesem Fall klappt das natürlich, da Will sich ja in einer ähnlichen familiären Situation befindet und somit ein leichtes Opfer für Jack ist. Die Unterstützung seiner Frau hat er und so begibt sich Will zurück in ein FBI-Team, um dem neuen Killer auf die Schliche zu kommen.

Dieser neue Killer ist Francis Dolarhyde (Richard Armitage) und er tötet ganze Familien bei Vollmond. Er ist auch deshalb so spannend für die Serie, weil er so ein krasser Gegensatz zu Hannibal (Mads Mikkelsen) ist. Auf der einen Seite haben seine Morde nichts mit der Kunstfertigkeit von Hannibal zu tun, er tötet seine Opfer mit einer Schusswaffe oder einem Messer. "He lacks your love of presentation", fasst es Dr. Chilton (Raúl Esparza) in seinem Dinner mit Hannibal zusammen. Das allgemein mangelhafte Ästhetik-Verständnis von Francis ist allerdings auch nur eine Form seiner rhetorischen Unfähigkeit, die sicherlich ihren Teil zu seinem jetzigen Zustand beigetragen hat. Er steht vor dem Spiegel und probt das Sprechen, doch scheitert er kläglich und frustriert. Seine sprachlichen Probleme sind womöglich ein noch größerer Faktor für seine soziale Isolation als seine entstellte Oberlippe. Sie lässt ihn (in seinen Augen) wie ein Monster aussehen und seine artikulatorischen Fehlschläge tun ihr Übriges, um Francis das Gefühl zu geben, ein gesellschaftlicher Freak zu sein, eine Laune der Natur, der nichts anderes übrig bleibt, als aufzuhören Mensch zu sein und sich stattdessen buchstäblich in ein Ungetüm zu verwandeln.

Damit hat Hannibal natürlich überhaupt nichts zu tun. Schließlich ist er das Epitom des guten Geschmacks, Mode-Mogul (sogar der Gefängnisanzug sieht gut an ihm aus) und Meister der Rhetorik. Kein Wunder, dass seine Augen während des Gesprächs mit Dr. Chilton immer eine Spur Neid und ein gekränktes Ego zum Ausdruck bringen. Immerhin macht ihm dieser plumpe Killer gerade gewissermaßen den Platz streitig - nicht einmal Chiltons neues Buch wird von Hannibal handeln, sondern von der "Tooth Fairy". Denn, wie Chilton schnippisch und herrlich genüsslich anmerkt, "folks are a bit more interested in him. [Tooth Fairy] is not as snappy as Hannibal the Cannibal, but he has a much wider demographic than you do. You, with your fancy allusions, your fuzzy aesthetics, you'll always have niche appeal. But this fellow, there is something so universal about what he does." Dieser Kommentar ist natürlich auch gleichzeitig eine humoristische Selbstreflexion der gesamten Serie, die genau aus den oben genannten Gründen lediglich eine Nische bedient und von NBC abgesetzt wurde. Hannibal hört sich Chiltons Sticheleien stillschweigend an, doch so richtig gut findet er das offensichtlich nicht.

Dafür scheint er jedoch mit seiner neuen Umgebung sehr gut klar zu kommen. Ob seine Zelle wirklich dermaßen schick aussieht, lässt diese Episode im Unklaren. Sie könnte genauso gut lediglich in seiner Vorstellung so aussehen, immerhin sieht er sich selbst auch mit Alana (Caroline Dhavernas) zusammen an einem Tisch, mit einem Gläschen Weißwein in der Hand. Die scheint sich übrigens in den letzten drei Jahren kaum geändert zu haben und bleibt wohl für immer die bis zum Abwinken coole, eiskalte Alana, die sich über die Jahre scheinbar noch mehr von Hannibals Geschmack hat inspirieren lassen und nun nur den allerbesten Wein und die allerfeinste Kleidung trägt. Auch sie genießt die neue Position, die sie Hannibal gegenüber hat, doch wirklich sicher kann sie sich nicht fühlen. Hannibal betont zum wiederholten Male, dass er seine Versprechen immer einhält und spielt damit auf den Umstand an, dass er Alana schon lange töten wollte und immer noch vor hat, das nachzuholen.

Vielleicht beruhigt er sich ja nach dem Wiedersehen mit Will. Der konnte den Ablauf der Morde zwar wie gewohnt detailgetreu nachstellen (übrigens sind diese Morde in ihrer banalen Schlichtheit ebenso ungewohnt wie verstörend und stehen damit ihren "kunstvollen" Kollegen dieser Serie in Nichts nach), doch der Schlüssel zu Francis Dolarhydes Gedankenwelt, der fehlt ihm noch. Hannibal sollte nicht allzu viel gegen seine Involviertheit in den Fall haben, immerhin hat er sich extra einsperren lassen, damit Will ihn jederzeit finden kann. Und außerdem ist Francis Dolarhyde offenbar ein ganz großer Fan von Hannibals Arbeit.

"Congratulations, Hannibal. You're officially insane."

Notizen am Rande:

- Das Design von Hannibals Zelle ist laut Bryan Fuller eine Hommage an Stanley Kubrick.

- Natürlich interessiert sich Will nur für die Hunde der ermordeten Familie.

- Es ist schön, dass jetzt, wo alle Karten auf dem Tisch liegen, Hannibals Opfer mit ihm offen über ihre gemeinsamen Erlebnisse sprechen können. Alana trinkt kein Bier mehr und Chilton fragt, woher denn das Blut in seinem Essen bei ihrer letzten Begegnung kam: "The blood was from a cow... only in a derogatory sense."

‘HANNIBAL’ RECAP: AND THERE CAME A GREAT RED DRAGON

By Sean T. CollinsJuly 27, 2015 // 12:00pm

Let’s make one thing perfectly clear: It is a miracle that Hannibal is on television. Please, please treat yourself to it while it lasts, and encourage everyone you know, and think can stand it, to do the same. If they’ve never seen the show before, this week’s episode, “The Great Red Dragon,” is a marvelous place to start. Directed by Neil Marshall, who created an all-time great horror film in The Descent and helmed two pantheon-level Game of Thrones episodes in “Blackwater” and “The Watchers on the Walls,” it begins the show’s adaptation of Thomas Harris’s first Lecter novel, Red Dragon — the book’s third live-action translation, after Michael Mann’s Manhunter and Brett Ratner’s eponymous rehash. You can come in cold, or you can be familiar with every iteration of this story so far, and it doesn’t matter. The things you see speak for themselves.

But please don’t think for a second that there’s nothing more to Hannibal than style, spectacle, and blood spatter. It always has been, and remains, a supremely well-acted show, all the more so for the high degree of difficulty involved in anchoring the characters’ heady psychological proclamations in recognizable human emotion. That’s what made Hugh Dancy’s work in tonight’s episode so impressive. We rejoin him three years after Hannibal’s surrender, and he moves and speaks like a man who’s had a knife blade removed from his back. His speech is surer, firmer, faster, far removed from the pained and halting cadence to which his brain- and body-warping relationship with Dr. Lecter had reduced him. Listen to the straightforward way in which he parries his old friend and unwitting tormenter Jack Crawford when the man attempts to draw him back into profiling: “So you don’t wanna talk about it here?” Crawford asks. “I don’t wanna talk about it anywhere, but you’ve gotta talk about it, so let’s have it.” For a show about people who eat people and the people who love them, Hannibal sure has a lot figured out about how ordinary people deal with disagreements with those they’re close to.

And in the end, Will is still close to Jack, and to the world of law and justice he represents. Gone is the man who nearly ran away with a monster; in his place is a guy who loves his wife, his kid, his dogs — and, ultimately, the slain families whose deaths a man like Hannibal Lecter would observe with the dispassion of an exterminator spraying an anthill. This makes the return of the visual and verbal vocabulary of Will’s near-psychic profiling — the metronome swipes, the reversal of time, the performance of the killings, “this is my design” (or in this case, “this isn’t my design”) — thrilling rather than boring: He is once again ready, willing, and able to care about others.

More impressive still is Richard Armitage’s instant-classic work as Francis Dolarhyde — aka the Tooth Fairy, aka the Great Red Dragon — whom he doesn’t so much play as inhabit. In a recent interview, Armitage said he patterned his (so far entirely wordless) performance on Mica Levi’s avant-garde score for Jonathan Glazer’s art-house horror masterpiece Under the Skin. That a main character on a network television show would be based not a performance but the music from one of the most difficult and surreal horror films ever made is remarkable in and of itself. But beyond that, the connection makes perfect sense. Like Under the Skin, Red Dragon concerns an individual in the process of becoming: making, and perhaps unmaking, themselves into a creature driven to commit monstrous crimes. Armitage’s Dolarhyde stares at his own hands as if only now realizing not just their potential but their existence, and mouths formless syllables as if trying to construct not just speech but the meaning behind it. It’s both easy and instructive to see the parallels with Scarlett Johannson’s nameless predator, another beast slouching toward mayhem to be born.

But there are few parallels, if any, between Dolarhyde’s brutality and that of the series’ title character. After a half-season immersion in Hannibal’s world of refined and decadent Old Europe evil, the blunt force of this new killer could not be more striking. Frederic Chilton, who as played by Raul Esparza could quite convincingly pass himself off as Armitage/Dolarhyde’s twin brother, makes a joke out of the contrast (to say nothing of Hannibal’s ratings woes). “He has a much wider demographic than you do,” he tells Lecter. “You, with your fancy allusions and fussy aesthetics, will always have niche appeal. But this fellow…there is something so universal about what he does. Kills whole families, and in their homes. Strikes at the very core of the American dream. You might say he’s a four-quadrant killer.”
Indeed, Dolarhyde kills with an urgent simplicity that’s more viscerally frightening than the elaborate installation-art, performance-piece slayings that have been the stock in trade of both Hannibal and his several serial-killing rivals throughout the series’ run. The Tooth Fairy uses a gun to commit most of his murders; he needs to end lives as quickly as possible. While he does stage his victims’ bodies in gruesome tableaux, posing them together as one big happy family with the shards of broken mirrors over their eyes and mouths (and in the mothers’ genitals), he actually puts the corpses back afterwards. He has no interest in advertising himself to the world, proclaiming his sick genius; what he does, he does for himself alone. If Lecter is a vampire, Dolarhyde is a werewolf. He is an exclamation point to Hannibal’s ellipsis. All of this is communicated by the show through killing; this is its design. And if it is the punctuation that must end the series, so be it.

HANNIBAL Review: 3.08 “The Great Red Dragon”

HANNIBAL jumps forward three years and introduces us to the Tooth Fairy.

You, with your fancy allusions, your fussy aesthetics. You’ll always have niche appeal. But this fellow – there’s something so universal about what he does. Kills whole families, and in their homes. Strikes at the very core of the American dream. You might say he’s a four-quadrant killer.

Here, Frederick Chilton is talking about the Tooth Fairy to Hannibal Lecter, and it's hard not to interpret this statement as Bryan Fuller's admission that Hannibal has lived in a niche for the past two and a half seasons - a niche, fancy and fussy and challenging, that got it canceled. But now we've jumped forward three years and met Richard Armitage's Francis Dolarhyde, also known as The Tooth Fairy, also known as The Great Red Dragon. This is the subject of Thomas Harris' first book in the eventual Hannibal Lecter series and the subject of two films, Michael Mann's Manhunter and Brett Ratner's Red Dragon. It's a fairly typical serial killer procedural story, one that inspired many serial killer procedural stories like it.

We meet Dolarhyde, and he's quiet and strong, mildly disfigured, deeply insane. Will has kept safely to himself and his new family for the past three years (though I have to say, I wish his new home were on the beach rather than in the snow, as in the book. Sun and sand separate Family Will from the chilly distance of Solitary Will), but Dolarhyde will be the one who brings him back into the fray, the weary, retired consultant back on the case for one last job. Jack knows that Will will come back. So does Molly (a perfectly earthy Nina Arianda). Hannibal knows it and sends Will a letter that pretends to warn him away while really inviting him to take the journey he knows Will wants to take. “It’s dark on the other side, and madness is waiting.”

This is a story with four-quadrant appeal, and it's the kind of narrative that could have saved Hannibal, if Bryan Fuller had taken the easy route and started the third season with it. And Red Dragon Hannibal already feels like a somewhat different show: from the lighting and coloring down to the very episode title, bucking the naming convention of an exotic course and simply calling this hour "The Great Red Dragon." It's more straightforward and less esoteric, though still beautifully directed, this time by The Descent's Neil Marshall.

Perhaps the difference is that Fuller's timeline is finally, completely tethered to its source material. So much of "The Great Red Dragon" is faithful to Red Dragon, including specific dialogue ("His father was."), including the return of the pendulum of Will's mind from the first season, inspired by this paragraph from the book's second chapter:

The two-story brick home was set back from the street on a wooded lot. Graham stood under the trees for a long time looking at it. He tried to be still inside. In his mind a silver pendulum swung in darkness. He waited until the pendulum was still.

This is as Will investigates the home of the Leeds family, the Tooth Fairy's most recent victims. As Will looks at the scene of Dolarhyde's awful carnage, his hands begin shaking and he almost loses himself for a moment - before the pendulum drops, and swings, and then he is in the mind of the Tooth Fairy. He is cutting Mr. Leeds' throat and shooting Mrs. Leeds in the spine. He is killing one son as he sleeps and dragging the other out from his hiding place beneath the bed, and then he's killing him too. For a moment, and for the first time in years, Will is the killer. This is his design.

And just like that, we're back to the beginning. We've even got Jimmy Price and Brian Zeller back. Fans of Harris' Hannibal, who have also been fans of Fuller's Hannibal, are now able to see these two men become one and the same. We see Hannibal face off with Alana and with Chilton. We see Will enjoy his family and try to refuse Jack. But in the final moments of the episode, as Will Graham stands outside of Hannibal Lecter's cell and the two men face each other for the first time in three years (and somehow it feels like three years, even though, for us, it's only been one week - what a feat of time manipulation that is!), everything else falls away and it's just these two men again.

"Hello, Hannibal."

"Hello, Will."

But please don’t think for a second that there’s nothing more to Hannibal than style, spectacle, and blood spatter. It always has been, and remains, a supremely well-acted show, all the more so for the high degree of difficulty involved in anchoring the characters’ heady psychological proclamations in recognizable human emotion. That’s what made Hugh Dancy’s work in tonight’s episode so impressive. We rejoin him three years after Hannibal’s surrender, and he moves and speaks like a man who’s had a knife blade removed from his back. His speech is surer, firmer, faster, far removed from the pained and halting cadence to which his brain- and body-warping relationship with Dr. Lecter had reduced him.

http://decider.com/2015/07/27/hannibal- ... ed-dragon/

Hannibal Review: “The Great Red Dragon”
(Episode 3.08)
By Mark Rozeman
July 26, 2015 | 11:55am


To this day, Red Dragon by Thomas Harris remains one of my absolute favorite books of all time. In a broad pop culture context, it’s essential in that it’s the novel that introduced the world to the Hannibal Lecter character. In a more macro sense, it marked one of the first modern-day, best-selling books to truly add an intensive psychological element to the detective novel in the form of its unorthodox hero. As presented in the novel’s pages, Will Graham is a highly damaged man cursed with the ability to delve into the minds of the sick criminals he pursues. Reading about Will’s mental state, it’s not at all hard to believe that, given the right circumstances, he might very well have become one of the disturbed individuals he helped put away.

Since then, this trope of a specialized investigator who can “get into the mind of the killer” has become such a trite and hackneyed premise of so many various novels, film and TV shows that it’s perhaps inevitable that some of Red Dragon’s initial impact has been diminished in the decades of creative photocopying.

As good as the original source material remains, it would take a real visionary to make such a story feel original and relevant again. Enter Bryan Fuller and the rest of the Hannibal creative team. Presented as the first installment of a six-episode arc, “The Great Red Dragon” quickly dives into the heart of darkness, resulting in a truly unnerving but visually sumptuous hour of television.

The tone is set right from the start, with the pre-credits teaser quickly stabling the “origin story” of Francis Dolarhyde, the man who will become known as “The Tooth Fairy.” In the course of a few minutes, we see Dolarhyde become captivated by a Time magazine cover of William Blake’s “Red Dragon painting,” engrave an elaborate tattoo on his back as to better resemble the drawing, buy a pair of crooked teeth dentures and awaken from what appears to be a splitting headache covered in the blood of his victims.

From here, the show establishes that it has been three years since the events of “Digestivo.” Hannibal is locked up in his iconic transparent prison, having beaten most of the ensuing murder charges due to an insanity defense. A visit from Frederick Chilton finds the good doctor learning of a hot new murderer set to dethrone The Chesapeake Ripper’s place as the media’s most talked about serial killer.

What’s interesting about these early scenes with Chilton is just how meta the show seems to go. Indeed, this is like latter half of Arrested Development Season Three-level meta. “Like overuse of punctuation, the novelty of Hannibal Lecter has waned,” Chilton comments before adding that The Tooth Fairy has a “much wider demographic…you, with your fancy allusions, fussy aesthetics, you’ll always have niche appeal.” The Tooth Fairy, in summary, is a “four quadrant killer.” At this moment, Chilton may very well be a network executive explaining to Bryan Fuller why his weird ass show will never be a hit with mainstream audiences. At least the Hannibal crew is having fun with its self-proclaimed “niche” status.

Will, meanwhile, has tried his best to move on from the madness that had engulfed him. In the interval time since “Digestivo,” he has met and married a woman named Molly and is now serving as stepfather to her young preteen son. Just as in the book, Will is brought back into the fold after a visit from Jack Crawford, who explains that several families have been found massacred by The Tooth Fairy and they need Will’s help to locate him before anyone else dies. Given all the hell that Jack knows Will has gone through as a result of his various investigations in Season One, it’s a bit odd that he can be so casual in making this request, even if it is an urgent matter. Then again, it has been three years so perhaps Jack believes Will is healthy enough to handle one last case.

Will, however, is not as confident. As he relates to Molly that night, he’s almost positive that, if he accepts the assignment, he will come back to her a very different person. Molly ultimately gives him her blessing and he travels to the scene of The Tooth Fairy’s most recent massacre. In what feels like the first time since early Season Two, we again bear witness to Will’s mental reconstruction of a crime scene. It’s both a thrilling and horrifying prospect—thrilling in that such sequences are such technically lush feats of filmmaking and horrifying in that you end up with the visuals of Will slitting people’s throats and shooting children. As one would expect, the episode all builds to the moment that Will realizes that he needs help and pays a visit to Dr. Lecter’s cell.

Because it acts as the opening entry of a long-form story, “The Great Red Dragon” suffers from a few inherent issues; namely, the episode must spend a good chunk of its running time catching audiences up on where each of the characters have ended up. It’s here that one realizes why Season Three’s technique of gradually revealing the fates of each of its characters proved to be such an effective strategy. As such, certain scenes, including Alana’s conversation with Hannibal towards the beginning, feel a tad clunky in execution.

That being said, any nitpicks are all but overwhelmed by the way the episode handles its titular character. As Francis Dolarhyde, actor Richard Armitage delivers an all but silent performance, communicating almost solely through grunts and body language. What’s more, episode director Neil Marshall films Dolarhyde’s pre-kill hysterics almost like the moment in a horror movie where a man starts transforming into a werewolf, complete with a quasi-epileptic filming style and a pain-stricken performance from its actor. Time will tell how well Armitage holds a candle to his predecessors, including Manhunter’s Tom Noonan and Red Dragon’s Ralph Fiennes but he’s certainly off to an impressive start.

“The Great Red Dragon” provides an excellent intro to the season’s final big arc. From a writing standpoint, I’m just happy that the show will now be using episodes titles that don’t require me to cut-and-paste and/or constantly spellcheck. In all seriousness though, it’s an exciting prospect to see one of my favorite novels being filtered through the mind of one of my favorite TV scribes. It’s truly a fan fiction-esque melding of minds that I couldn’t be more excited to see play out.

Ich habe bisher zwar nur den Trailer und nicht die ganze Folge gesehen, fand die Reviews aber äußerst hilfreich: ohne die ganzen Vorinformationen habe ich nämlich nach 5 Minuten aufgegeben. Jetzt werde ich möglichst bald einen neuen Anlauf wagen. Auch wenn ich mit der Serie sicher nichts anfangen kann - es ist offensichtlich, dass das eine für die Karriere tolle Rollenauswahl war!

[Review] - Hannibal, Season 3 Episode 8, "The Great Red Dragon"

Courtesy of Sony Pictures Television

Remember all that snotty, "I'm saying one thing, but really I know it's another" stuff I was saying last week about it being a series finale? And then I was all "but we've got six episodes left and I don't know because that was beautiful?" Well it turns out I was kind of right. About a lot of it. What was abundantly clear, from the very first moments of this episode were two things. 1) Bryan Fuller has had a clear vision in his head of how he wanted to tell the Red Dragon story since the beginning, and b) this episode felt like the beginning of not just a new season, but almost an entirely new show.

I can say the first point with a certain confidence, because we're watching it instead of the three years that we've umped over. Faced with the almost certainty (when they were filming, it's an absolute reality now) that the show would be cancelled, Fuller opted to truncate his initial plans for the show in favour of telling precisely this story. The show has bent over backwards to get us to a place and a condition that Red Dragon can unfold. And I can say the second point with the utmost confidence, because nearly every aspect of the show feels different to the way things have been the last seven weeks. In a way, I almost feel cheated out of a lengthy gap between then and now, so that the abrupt change would feel so much more startling.

Hit the jump for the review, which contains spoilers that have found a new life, but the old life harbors in the shadows.

Before we talk about what we've got, I want to draw our attention to what we've lost in the fact that NBC cancelled the show, and that it was so likely that they would cancel the show that Fuller changed directions. When the show first began, Fuller said he had a seven year plan. Season one and two were meant to unfold as they did. Season three was essentially what the first seven episodes were, the man hunt. Season four was meant to be Red Dragon, five Silence, six Hannibal, and seven an original epilogue. Fuller has stated that it was the way they broke season two into two sections that convinced him they could truncate those stories into smaller, tighter versions and sheer a couple years off his estimate. Last year, he was still hoping for five. He got three. But in those three, he managed to tell his original prologue, and the entirety of Hannibal and will get through Red Dragon. For economic storytelling, that isn't anything to regret.

But the real victim here is the original material. Especially, and what I was getting really excited to see, the stuff that lead up to Red Dragon. All the backstory that Harris waved away with a couple lines of exposition. Stuff that creates no reason to be excited in the novels, but when empowered by the magnificent backstory the series has created, suddenly becomes amazing intriguing. As much as seeing the red Dragon story told is enticing, I find myself much more drawn to the aftermath. Last week saw Will essentially breaking out of an abusive relationship. He's physically beaten, covered in wounds and scars, and mentally he has only just began to reclaim his sense of self. From the ruins of himself, from the calamity of Hannibal Lecter, I wanted to see him rebuild. To meet Molly and begin the process of healing. To sequester his ability to empathize, and find a normal life. Everything that Red Dragon is forcing him to abandon. It is great to jump forward three years, and now say everything is fine. But it means less when we see him slipping back into his old derangement when it was only last week that we saw him thus, and when we have no investment in his climb back out.

Fuller is making the best of the situation that NBC has forced him into. The result is the loss of what we know would have been masterful storytelling. I deeply bemoan that we will never see those stories, stories that Harris was interested or capable in telling, and that no one else ever would have considered, but that this show's writers would have set on fire. That Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikklesen would have done remarkable things with. Those are stories we'll never have now. They were stolen from us. And I'm angrier about that then about anything. Because these would have been stories worth having. They would have made us better.

Red Dragon is the most conventional the show has ever been. In fact, it's like we're right back at the the beginning, before the show had broken out of its shell and reveled in the sun in its own full glory. It feels like the show that NBC thought it was buying, one with a recognizable formula. One with an inhibited sense of self. One that follows the rules. Part of that is Neil Marshall's highly competent direction, a panning and lingering sense of space and framing that works wonders fro this more distant and detached reinvention of the series. It stands in stark contrast to the maniacal whimsy of Vincenzo Natali's direction, which set the course for the first half of this season. Marshall's work is almost clinical; sterile in a way that captures Will's cordoned off personality. As the episode progressed, as Will slipped into his dementia like a comfortable glove found in the pocket of a long unworn coat, so too did the camera begin to tilt at reality's windmills. Marshall only glimpsed at the madness waiting at the bottom of the well.

Three years have passed, and it turns out that not much has changed. People don't change, not really, but when they do, they rarely change back. Will hasn't changed, he suppressed. Like an addict, he forces himself not to revert. But Jack, despite Bella's death giving him new perspective on life, has fallen back into his familiar habits, and is once again at the FBI, and is once again asking more of Will then is reasonable. Alana remains as we left her, a changed woman after Hannibal's influence. The sort of person who no longer trusts any beer after a particular brand caused her to loose her taste for it. She used that new, cold, pessimism to take over control of the State Hospital. Chilton has what he wanted, fame and notoriety, though he still lacks any ability to achieve it on his own. His lack of position challenges his authority, which the show has already established was practically nonexistent. He's now a freelancer, like Will, someone to be drawn into Hannibal's gravity.

The new addition (the episode saw the welcome return of lab flunkies Zellers and Price, and hinted at Freddie Lounds still poking about) is Francis Dolarhyde, played by Richard Armitage. The script keeps him speechless for the entire hour, emitting only an animal scream at one point. It is a salient introduction, and allows his actions and the other's interpretations to speak for him. More writing should be like this, should be this self assured. Dolarhyde, like Hannibal, is a force that reaps itself upon the world. He isn't as powerful as Hannibal; more a gale running up against a hurricane, but it helps us to know that he is not a killer-of-the-week, which Will and Hannibal so ably dispatched back in earlier seasons. He has something greater to offer. The real problem that I had with the episode was how strict it was. It felt like the first part of a movie, offering a fairly straight forward and mostly faithful adaptation - not interpretation - of the source material. The execution is still undeniably this show's own brand and style, but the method feels very unlike how they've approached things before. Hopefully, in the five remaining episodes, as the show must course correct around the aspects of the novel they've already put to use, that the show finds its own original way of recounting these events.

I have faith that it will be thus.