Did anyone else watch it last night? It got great reviews from the critics and I think it lived up to them. It is dark and quite graphic for a network show, and it alternates from a straight drama to “Twin Peaks” type weirdness all throughout the hour.
There were definitely some things that made me scratch my head, though. It is like the earliest books (and movie) in that the main character is Will Graham, who is depicted as quite withdrawn and a mild Asperger’s case. It is said that he washed out of field agent training and was an instructor at the FBI Academy, but before the end of the hour, he is actively working a case and carrying a gun.
Who exactly was eating the organs of the girls? It was certainly implied that it was Lector, but it seems that Lector was in the DC area while the murders took place in Minnesota. I don’t think Lector was flying back to DC with a girls lungs in his carryon.
The story seemed to be progressing to be a season-long story arc, but then in the last five minutes everything got wrapped up like an episode of Columbo. That seemed weird.
I’ll continue watching - it certainly isn’t your normal network TV fare, and some of the previews of the upcoming season are looking good. Great cast, too.
Yea, I got a little confused about how the main character and Hannibal turned from a college professor and a psychiatrist into Mulder and Scully* during the ten minutes. I was watching it while working though, so maybe I missed some explanatory dialogue.
Was pretty promising though, I’ll keep watching.
Judging from the “next time trailer” (very mild spoiler boxed)
The next episodes plot will be tied to this weeks (Presumably the girl will come-to and tell someone about the phone call that set daddy off) so I think your right its going to be a long season arc instead of just a bunch of one-off murder cases.
*(I thought I saw Gillian Anderson in the “next time trailer”, be kinda weird seeing her in another dark drama about a scruffy FBI profiler)
So far, seems worthwhile. I know a lot of people howl bloody murder about the later books in the series that (horrors!) present Lecter with at least some degree of humanity, instead of just a superhuman monstrosity, but I didn’t find that a problem.
I’m not at all sure about the Graham portrayal at this point, but other characters are working well for me, especially Lecter. At least this version has an actor who’s plausible for the character’s canonical origin in Lithuania. OK, so they didn’t get that extra finger on the left hand, but I understand the practical difficulties in that ;).
Hopefully, this show will get at least some chance to develop. I’ve been burned by two new series in the last few months (“Do No Harm” only got two episodes, “Zero Hour” only got three), so I’m dubious about investing much interest in a new show that seems likely to just get yanked in favor of reruns if it’s not an instant mega-smash-hit.
I like the look of Lector, and the actor who plays him does a good job of pulling off the inherent creepiness of that character. Still, I couldn’t understand what he was saying half the fucking time, so I hope that future episodes will alleviate that. Like another poster said, though, I’m not so sure about the depiction of Will Graham, but that won’t stop me from tuning in next week.
Yeah, I’m going to keep watching. Between this, “Bates Motel,” and “The Following,” there sure is some dark shit on TV right now.
My interest started to fade early on when Graham was described as having a light case of Asperger’s. It’s been overused as a way to describe characters who “can make connections no-one else can”, i.e. they may as well be psychic. He won’t be analyzing crime scenes with careful study or based on his experience with similar scenes in the past, but by going into a trance and divining the correct chain of events.
Possibly the episode got better after that - I didn’t stick around after the girl magically reappeared in her own bed.
I was confused. Graham said the girl in the field was by a copy cat. And he said the serial killer who was eating various bits had a daughter who looked like the victims that he feared losing. But then the guy who killed the field-girl turned out to have the daughter etc… So was he the actual serial killer? Or was it just a huge coincidence that the copycat killer also had a similar looking daughter, etc?
Having Graham and Hannibal sent out together, alone, on what looked to be a routine ‘check out places where appropriate machine work was done’ errand – huh? Wouldn’t that be something for a low-level FBI agent to do, not some non-official specialists? And how does Graham come to be armed?
And… are we supposed to wonder exactly what was in the sausage that Hannibal put in that breakfast he brought Graham?
I sort of like the characters but that sort of thing kept disrupting my involvement in the story.
The original serial killer killed everyone except the girl in the field. Hannibal killed her. It was the negative that allowed Graham to see the positive and find the killer.
Yes, I think it was pretty obviously human meat in the breakfast.
The girl didn’t magically reappear in the bed, the killer put her back, it was part of his thing.
Lecter was the copy cat. They show him butcher and eat the victims lungs (yes that is a gross sentence). He did it to test/taunt Graham, I think.
What I did not get was how did the body they found in the bed, get back into the bed without the family noticing? I misunderstood that scene at first and thought he was accusing the father of being the killer.
I liked it mostly. I had a real problem Grahams magical divination of the exact details of the killer and his motives though. It was based on nothing. Especially when he was at the board with Lawrence fish and started going on about how the killer was looking for the perfect girl and he had a daughter who was leaving home. Wtf? Then the single metal shaving lead them to a random construction site looking for a pipe fitter. Then they honed in on the killer based on him not having information in his record.
I don’t like the guy playing the title character. He lacks any sort of charisma, and his accent is just too thick. I don’t care if it’s authentic, I shouldn’t need subtitles to follow a crime drama.