With its premiere on April 4, “Hannibal” opened with decent numbers (approximately four million viewers) and introduced its audience into the visually horrific world of FBI Special Investigator Will Graham and his uneasy colleague, Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
While the premiere did a good job at setting up the artistically dark tone of the series, it did have some kinks that needed to be worked out in terms of character and plot development.
With its second episode, “Amuse- Bouche,” “Hannibal” continued to hold steady with 4.38 million viewers and seemed to start making a little headway with the aforementioned kinks from last week.
This week’s crime was morbidly beautiful in its set up and execution — involving a killer who buries his victims alive, and keeps them alive, in order to use them as fertilizer for mushrooms.
Arguably the most disturbing moment in the episode is when one of the unearthed, presumably dead, bodies, complete with a partially decomposed face, regains consciousness and grasps at Graham. It certainly had my roommate and me gaping at the TV and then furiously combing through Google to see if such a thing was possible.
The investigation of this week’s crime is complicated by the introduction of Freddie Lounds (Lara Jean Chorostecki), a tabloid blogger who will do anything and everything to get information and starts a smear campaign against Graham and the FBI.
Because the show operates under the presumption that most viewers have some knowledge of the books and movies featuring Lecter, this episode does an excellent job of playing with the viewers’ expectations.
Prepare for some spoilers — In the novel “Red Dragon,” Freddy Lounds is a sleazy male tabloid reporter who meets an unfortunate end at the hands of the serial killer Graham is tracking down. As soon as we see Lounds’ female TV counterpart, we instantly think that she’s going to meet the same end sometime soon.
And the show’s writers brilliantly play with this expectation when Lecter catches Ms. Lounds spying on his therapy session with Graham and the scene immediately cuts to Lecter serving a delicious pork dinner to FBI Agent Jack Crawford. However, Lounds is shown to be alive and well.
We finally get some much-needed development with some of the show’s secondary characters this week. Beverly Katz (Hettienne Park), a member of the FBI team with whom Graham frequently interacts, shows that she has no intention of treating Graham with kid gloves like everyone else, and bluntly calls him on his anti-social behavior and doesn’t shy away from asking him personal questions.
Meanwhile, Katz’s coworker Brian Zeller (Aaron Abrams) clearly feels that Graham is threatening his position as smartest guy on the team, and willingly gives up information on Graham and the case when he sleeps with Lounds.
While still in its baby stages, hopefully the show will work to develop the relationship between Graham and his teammates more in the future.
On the other hand, while a definite improvement over the first episode, this episode still falls short in terms of having a fully fleshed-out plot. The writers and showrunners are doing an excellent job at executing how each crime is committed, and making sure each one is unique and visually beautiful in its own twisted way, but the show still falls short in explaining why these killers are committing these demented and intricate crimes.
If Graham is supposed to have this amazing ability to get inside killers' heads and understand their motives, why aren't we getting better explanations for their crimes? Sure, we get the reasons for the small, particular elementsofthecrimes,butweneverget a solid explanation for the overall big picture of why these killers do what they do. If the show can't come to terms with this in the rest of the season, I'm afraid it might never reach its full potential.
Catch "Hannibal" on Thursdays at 10 p.m. on NBC.
