The Pieces are in Play in Hannibal

Finally, on Hannibal, we got the official confirmation that the only person to die at the "Red Dinner" was Abigail Hobbs. In fact, this fourth episode of the season not only confirmed that Alana Bloom is still amongst us (and with some bite now, which is refreshing and probably a lot more interesting to play,) but Dr. Chilton, who we literally saw shot through the head, has survived as well. Apparently the bullet went through the cheek and just underneath the brain, as we see in typically horrifying fashion.

This week is actually missing one prominent cast member - Hannibal himself (save for one brief shot.) There is a degree of anachronic order - we are not following up Will's trip to the Lecter estate, but instead we are reassembling the rather vast number of people who now have great reason to want to take revenge on one cannibalistic doctor.

Apertivo sees the reintroduction of the Vergers, and late in the episode we watch (in even more horrifying detail than the path of the bullet through Chilton's head) the skin-grafts that have restored Mason's face... as well as they could manage it, at least.

Chilton serves as something of a through-line of the episode, as he visits the various injured parties to put together some sort of revenge society together, but he does not have much luck. (Actually, an even larger throughline of the episode is the fact that we see many of the characters at the moment they wake up after their major injury - the exception being Chilton.) While everyone has something of a plan to deal with Hannibal, they are not quite ready to hop on Chilton's wagon. Chilton - whose injuries pre-date those who survived the Red Dinner - visits most of them while they are bound to beds, carrying a bouquet of flowers that might seem like a note of sympathy, but in a way it's more like he's asking them out on a date - it's his proposition. He approaches them each with a strategem - with Mason, he takes out the prostheses that have allowed him to look like he used to - a contact lens, a plate in his mouth that mimics his missing chunk of palette and teeth, and some make-up to hide the bullet's entrance wound. Without these aides, Chilton looks half-dead (though still better than Mason.)

Most heartbreaking is Jack's story this week, as Bella finally succumbs to her cancer. Perhaps more than anyone else on the show, Jack feels the most like an ordinary person, and so this loss hits us hard (not to mention the fact that Laurence Fishburne and Gina Torres are married in real life, which comes through with the authenticity of their rapport.) As he sits with Bella's body in the church, remembering or perhaps imagining their wedding day, he finds that Hannibal has sent a note of condolences. As always, with Hannibal, you don't really know if this is a genuine expression of sorrow or a way to twist the knife a little more in Jack's gut - or both. It's sad to see Gina Torres leave the show, but this was clearly where the story was heading, and at least her death from cancer was about as good a death as you could hope for - dying in her sleep in the arms of the man she loves (though Jack points out that she probably would have wanted to die while he was out to spare him the trauma.)

While not totally bereft of surreal interludes, this episode plays a bit more straightforward (though that's in relative terms - we've really left behind the crime-procedural stuff from season one by now.) Essentially, we get where each character is. Jack is no longer with the FBI, and he wants to ensure that Will is ok. Will, of course, is off to Europe - his relationship with Hannibal is so bizarre that even a disemboweling and the murder of Abigail hasn't been enough to permanently divide them - though Alana points out that this is essentially a kind of emotional blackmail.

Chilton has attempted to enlist Mason Verger's aid (and his resources) in a plot against Hannibal, but Mason isn't really interested in him as an ally. Instead, he finds Alana Bloom. Alana, so deeply violated by Hannibal but lacking Will's fuzzy mentality, looks like she's become an avatar of pure vengeance, and I'm very excited to see her enact it.

Honestly, if there's a critique I have of the show, it's that I'm waiting to see Will's image of Hannibal transform. I understand that he has a great deal of affection toward his friend, and certainly we cannot lose that without losing a key component of the show's themes. But I want to see Will angry. As much as Will might like Hannibal and admire him, fundamentally Hannibal is a monster, and one who has done terribly cruel things to Will personally - cultivating a disease within him, framing him, and finally eviscerating him literally. Will risks losing agency if all of this can be forgiven - we are presented with their relationship as one that transcends mundane conceptions of what friendship really is, but it seems much more like a kind of grand case of domestic abuse, with the abused partner forgiving far too easily.

Will has not had his confrontation with Hannibal yet, but when it happens, I want to see him get fucking mad.

Hannibal Cancelled, By NBC At Least

Look, I'm not an idiot. Frankly, it was some kind of miracle that NBC allowed Hannibal to get to a third season, given how incredibly not-network the show has been. But ultimately, they've pulled the plug on this horrifyingly wonderful show.

Certainly the violence of the series made it a very, very, very odd fit for a show on broadcast television, but Bryan Fuller's commitment to abstraction and an expressionistic style of filmmaking tested audiences - and most of that audience wanted nothing to do with it.

It's easy to get into a film-buff (or tv-buff, though the two are really just different branches of the same tree) bubble, where you forget that most people who watch shows on television or movies in theaters are really in it for pure entertainment. I don't mean that in an elitist way - some people really care more about the real world. We art-nuts are the ones with the strange disease/addiction, but it's a shared malady that has allowed us to feel a sense of community.

Hannibal, the TV show, was not made for general consumption, and so it was quite odd indeed that it wound up on NBC. Now, to be fair to NBC, it's the network that tends to have most of the shows I like, or at least it was a couple years ago. Its comedies from the past decade like 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, and Community were among my favorites. But what I enjoy a lot in a television show is a great deal of depth - layers to be pulled back to discover more.

But shows that reward viewers for paying obsessive attention effectively punish those who don't, and so a show that is broad but shallow will appeal to more audiences, who just aren't interested in putting their energies into analyzing a show, and would rather use that entertainment as a way to unwind from other challenges in their lives.

Hannibal was one of the most challenging shows I've ever seen on television. And while we're used to seeing that type of program on cable, the broadcast networks have always, by economic necessity, been forced to cast a wide net.

So I do not in any way blame NBC for canceling Hannibal. In fact, I'm shocked they didn't do it earlier. Its viewership was minuscule, and even if it cost them very little to exhibit, NBC is a company that needs to maximize the profitability of its entire schedule.

BUT:

The good news is that we're in an era where many such shows don't really need to be associated with a given network to survive. Community, seemingly cancelled multiple times by NBC, now lives on with Yahoo.

Given the fact, also, that Hannibal is largely financed outside of NBC's budget, a move to another platform might not have a negative impact on the show's producers' ability to retain the same quality.

I would personally love to see Hannibal survive long enough to get through all the books' stories (hopefully they can get the rights worked out to Silence of the Lambs,) but there will definitely be some new challenges in finding a way to distribute the show.

I'm fairly confident, however, that if the financial backers of the show were willing to keep it funded when it had a .5 rating on NBC, they'll continue to do so if it becomes an Amazon Prime or similar program. (And maybe we'll stop having to deal with the bizarrely skewed FCC morals on standards and practices - no more blurred Botticelli butts.)

Redemption and Breaking Bad

Walter White is a bad person - one could imagine him as an anti-hero as one begins the show, but very soon - the second episode, for me - one could begin to see his true nature - not as a hero at all, but a villain protagonist.

Walter's decisions get many, many people killed. A few of them he kills himself, but in most cases, he creates a situation in which people wind up dead. Walter has an amazing capacity for rationalization. Indeed, even by the end of the series, he never once really considers that the production of crystal methamphetamine itself is an evil act - that he is creating a drug that does longterm harm to its users. Gale Boedecker at one point refers to himself as an "extreme libertarian" as his justification for cooking, but Walter never even considers this.

The focus of the series is less about the drug-use itself, but about the criminal world that one must involve oneself with to partake in such a business.

The events of Ozymandias are the culmination of the collapse of the world that Walter has tried to create. Uncle Jack's arrival technically frees him from arrest, but the disintegration has already begun. We see Walter at his most despicable - even though he tries to save Hank's life, he still envisions some sort of endgame that leaves him with his family and his money, but the truth is that all of his sins have isolated him, and he ends the episode by severing his ties, trying to give Skyler enough distance by playing the role of a more monstrous and cruel version of himself, a brute rather than a liar.

Granite State, the penultimate episode, shows us how even these last efforts were not enough to ensure a legacy. Horrors persist in this world, and Jesse is left enslaved, with the innocent Adriana - someone who I had foolishly thought was safely no longer a factor on the show - is executed by the neo-Nazis - a demonstration of their ruthlessness and a gun to the head of her son.

Jesse is essentially in hell - he's in a place where he must escape into a dream-like version of his task, an amber-colored vision of solid craftsmanship in which he imagines he's building some sort of innocuous woodwork. He has life, but what kind of life is it?

Such it is for Walter White, who has been relocated to New Hampshire to live in a freezing cabin and... wait to die. Any move he makes will invalidate the safety he has, but what was the point of "freedom" if freedom requires him to hide out in two acres of snowy forest?

Walter makes one last attempt to do something for his family, but Flynn isn't going to put up with his shit anymore. Walter knows he's never going to be that paragon provider now. He'll never be able to get what he wants how he wants.

But he might be able to get what he wants.

Thus we come to the finale, Felina. While I think it's generally well-regarded, I have heard some dissenting voices saying that it lets Walt off too easy. I understand that position, but on the other hand, I don't think we automatically have to complain if we get the slightest modicum of a happy ending (hint hint, George R. R. Martin...) Walter does not make up for all he has done - not by a long shot. But he is able to get something resembling justice. He spends his last days putting things, if not right, then righter than they are.

His journey begins in a snow-covered car, and it's here that Walter makes one plea to whatever higher power that might be. Walter isn't a religious man, and religion actually plays a very small part if any in this series, but whether it's fate or a god that is willing to give him one last chance, the keys fall into his lap and he is allowed to move forward.

First, he pays a visit to the Schwartzes. It's actually a fairly horrifying scene, and that fear doesn't really let up until we see who the "assassins" were. Granted, by the time the sniper-lasers showed up, I was pretty sure this was a ruse, but one sort of wonders just how much the Schwartzes deserved this treatment. Indeed, we never really get a sense of what exactly went down between them. Still, they really threw Walt under the bus on Charlie Rose (by the way, when did that become an expression because I feel like I only started hearing it a couple years ago.) Still, this allows Walter to get the money to his family without their knowing it's from him. It's still a fairly prideful act, but it's one that doesn't require his family to acknowledge him as the source of the wealth.

But he does come to say good bye, and Walter's true atonement to Skyler is that he finally confirms that yes, he did all of this for him. Finally, he drops the bullshit and tells her that he became what he was because it made him feel strong and in control. After five seasons of lies, this means a lot, and it allows him to have one last moment with Holly.

The last act of Walter Heisenberg White, though, is one of brutal justice and mayhem. What I find fascinatingly ambiguous is what his intentions are toward Jesse. Is he still furious with Jesse for going to the cops? Somehow that doesn't really sit right with me - as an audience member, we know that Jesse is hardly getting anything good out of this deal, but would Walter really want Jesse dead for cooking their blue meth?

The real target, though, is Uncle Jack and his aryan asshole brigade. There have been plenty of terrifying bad guys on this show, but there was usually some kind of redeeming quality to them. Gus, in particular, might have been a callous killer, but he had his own history and motivations. Uncle Jack is just disgusting. He's a nasty killer in a nasty little criminal world, without any of the grand vision or projected civility that we saw out of Gus.

So Heisenberg does as Heisenberg tends to do. He goes in with an engineered plan. He cooks up a bullshit story to approach Lydia with what seems like a desperate new business opportunity. Now Lydia, a season-five addition, is a monster of a different sort. Like Walt and like Gus, she has tried to maintain this distance from her business to keep herself safe. But she is also paranoid, and thus she has allowed many people to die to clean up her perceived messes. Her willingness to kill for her own safety doesn't differentiate herself much from the rest of the villains in this show, but it seems that murder (always by someone else's hands - she's not even willing to look at the bodies of the dealers that she has Uncle Jack wipe out) is her first and only option.

And it's Lydia who finally winds up taking the dose of Ricin that Walt originally cooked up for Gus, I believe (I think the one for Tuco got splattered on the floor by his uncle.) There's probably a whole article about the way that Lydia - as the only real female villain in the show - fits into a story that is so much about masculinity, but this is already very long.

Walt goes to Jack's compound seemingly in an act of foolishness, as they're planning on just killing him. But Walter has already arranged things, parking his car so that the automated machine gun he's hooked up will blast the clubhouse with a deadly barrage.

The only real hitch in the plan (other than the rather easily-dealt with issue that his keys are a bit of a reach from him on the pool table) is when they present Jesse. Again, I wonder how much Walter knows - if he's really ready to take revenge on Jesse for filling his shoes, or if he is simply trying to draw him out - but when he sees that yes, clearly, he's been mistreated, Walter does one last good act, pouncing on Jesse in the pretense of attacking him just as the machine gun opens up and wipes out the aryan asshole brigade.

Almost. Jack's taken a lethal hit, but Todd is unharmed. He gazes in childlike astonishment at the death-trap Walter created, only for Jesse to both take revenge and free himself by choking that scary motherfucker to death. Todd (excellent naming, by the way - no offense to real-life Todds) is weirdly inhuman. It's almost like he doesn't really understand what is wrong and what is right - this is the guy who offers Jesse ice cream for getting a 96% out of a batch, but also murders a child with absolutely no remorse. There's a childlike quality to him, but the horrifying things he does prevent us from viewing him as anything resembling innocent. It's the uncanny valley.

Uncle Jack isn't quite dead, and he tries to play his last moments cool - he knows where the money is. But this was never about money, and Walter lets him know with a bullet.

Finally, the reckoning comes between Jesse and Walt. Walt kicks the gun over to Jesse. He has no hatred, and no reason to harm Jesse anymore. He offers himself up, but Jesse knows that killing him is exactly what Walt wants. And besides, Walter is already bleeding from a nasty wound from a stray bullet he took protecting Jesse.

The point is, Jesse is done being anyone's tool, and he won't be Walter's killer. Jesse, that poor Jesse, drives to freedom. What the future holds for him, I have no idea, but damn it's good that he's free of that cell, free of that lab, and, frankly, finally free of Walter White.

As the police arrive, Walter goes to the lab that Jesse had been working. He's done all he could to set things right. Was it enough? Has Walter redeemed himself? I don't know if I'd go that far, but he has finally been honest with himself and with the people who are important to him, and he has done what he can to fix the problems he has created. And so, Walter gets to die where he belongs - in a lab, surrounded by chemistry equipment. A lab that produced his most famous creation.

Divergence and Convergence on Hannibal

The relationship between Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter is the core of Hannibal. That relationship was inexorably changed by the events of season two. Will cozied up to Hannibal following his framed imprisonment, presenting himself as a serial killer apprentice. Will's ultimate intentions were always on the mysterious side, especially to himself, but we saw that he ultimately turned on his "friend," which led to the catastrophic Red Dinner - Hannibal's ultimate declaration of his own nature.

But Hannibal still retains a deep connection to Will, and it seems that he realizes - in a way that is plain enough that Bedelia can read it in his behavior - that ultimately, he will be caught. It's a question of how he wants that to go down. Hannibal is like a chess player who can see that his opponent will checkmate him, but for now, he has control of just how that defeat comes.

And of course, given that this is still technically in the pre-Red Dragon period of the story, there's a certain inevitability - we need to actually get to the point where the Thomas Harris novels start, and that requires a caged Hannibal.

We get a reveal in this episode of another survivor of the Red Dinner (and the previews for next week give away the last,) with Jack arriving in Italy, speaking briefly with Pazzi. Jack's primary concern is Will - we don't know exactly what kind of communication occurred between them before Will's trip to Italy, but I'm guessing it wasn't a mutual decision. The scene here, to my mind, really just indicates to us that Jack is back in play, but what his role will be in the events of the season remain to be seen.

Will and Hannibal have diverged - Hannibal has re-created his image as a respectable member of high society with Bedelia playing the part of his wife, but his heart doesn't seem to be in it - he has been killing more frequently than he needs to. Perhaps he knows he will be caught, and so he sees no need to cut back. Inviting a colleague to dinner, (the same Italian professor who seemed upset that Hannibal would become their primary Dante expert) he serves the man a cocktail that passengers drank on the Titanic right before it sank. Damn, Hannibal, that's not the most subtle foreshadowing you've done. Yet when he jams an ice pick into the professor's head, he claims it was impulsive. Perhaps this is Hannibal at his "not-giving-a-fuck"-est. In a moment of intense dark humor, when Bedelia removes the pick, ending the professor's broken-brain rambling, Hannibal quips "Technically, you killed him." Yes, Hannibal has drawn Bedelia into participating, rather than just observing, but this is hardly his A-game. Bedelia's action is clearly an act of matter-of-fact mercy, and one could hardly imagine that this is the moment that is going to give her the taste for killing. It's horrifying in that she is so desensitized to the violence that she can carry on a conversation afterward, but personally, I don't fear (for now) that Bedelia's going to join team Hannibal, at least in any capacity beyond her current status.

Yet even though their paths have diverged, Will and Hannibal share something - both technically force a woman to take a life this week. However, Will's version is oddly more similar to something Hannibal might have done. Was he sure that this is how it would have gone down? I don't think he was. Yet it is Will, and not Hannibal, who creates a corpse-sculpture at the end of the episode.

Ok, let's back up and explain Will's story, which continues this season's intensely surreal experimental style. Will has traveled to Lithuania, to Hannibal's family estate. And of course, OF COURSE Hannibal grew up on an estate with a freaking castle. Again, the Devil-by-way-of-Dracula imagery continues (not to mention the mixing of blood and wine - damn, Hannibal, even when you're hundreds of miles away you're always blurring the line between food and human matter.)

Will hops the padlocked gate and wanders into this haunted manor. There he sees a Japanese woman, Chiyo (and forgive me if I'm doing that white person thing of confusing Japanese and Chinese - I know Hannibal has a Japanese aunt, so that's where the assumption is coming from,) who hunts game birds. Will avoids her and wanders into a wine cellar that is filled with snails (a motif I imagine we'll continue to see this season) and a caged-off alcove covered with strange, almost voodoo-like skeleton charms and containing a dirty, almost feral man.

Chiyo confronts Will and they go up to the gamekeeper's house where she apparently lives to talk about why he's there, and why she is. Hannibal's history prevents him from returning to this home. His claim is that the man in the cage murdered and ate his sister Mischa. He has left Chiyo there because he expects she will eventually kill the man. We really don't get a specific date for when this happened - there's a date on Mischa's tombstone but I couldn't read it - but for all I care, it could have happened a thousand years ago. This is a fairy-tale land, and Chiyo stands committed to remaining innocent of killing another person, yet because of the man's crimes, she cannot simply allow him to go free. And thus, Chiyo is as much a prisoner as the man is.

Will sets the Eternal Guardwoman free by liberating her prisoner. He sends the man on his way, but of course this is too easy. Chiyo goes to check on her charge, but the man breaks free of the unlocked cage and attacks her. She smashes a bottle of wine and drives the bottle's neck into his. (Correction - it's actually the chicken bone Will stepped on in an earlier scene.)

Will, perhaps inadvertently, got her to commit the act that Hannibal had wanted her to do for so long. At least through Will's machinations, it was an act of self defense and not of murder.

Of course, we discover that Hannibal's story was a falsehood. As he says, "Nothing happened to me. I happened." The implication is that this man was innocent, at least of that particular crime. Hannibal presumably ate his own sister, but he has spent the rest of his life trying to replace her. Oddly, this re-frames his relationship with Will, not as a patient or a not-technically-sexual lover, but as a surrogate sibling. In many ways, I think Hannibal wants Will to be his little brother. Rather than being the object of his attention - a kind of "facing each other" relationship, he wants Will to occupy the same vantage point - to share a background and home ground in the way that only siblings can. Is Mischa's murder the only one that Hannibal actually regrets?

While the general rule for writing characters in any situation is that more fleshed-out characters are better (personally I think that this mainly makes them easier to write,) when you are dealing with an iconic monster like Hannibal, retaining mystery is important. Horror is in the unknown. Yet in a clever way, this exploration of Hannibal's past seems, on the surface, that it will help explain his motivations - to see a perhaps traumatized child who internalized the violence he was exposed to and continues to inflict it on the world. Yet that's not the case. The root of Hannibal's evil remains unknown, and that helps to blur the line between whether he is really a human at all, or truly a monster wearing a person suit.

Many a Bloody End (Or At Least Transition) in the Finale of Season Five of Game of Thrones

Episode 50 (isn't it convenient that there are ten episodes a season?) of Game of Thrones is called "The Mother's Mercy," but there's not a whole lot of mercy we see in this episode. What we do see is a series of violent climaxes to many long-running stories with huge questions about what is to come.

And one of the reasons those questions are big ones for every member of the audience is that, with the conclusion of season five, most of the major plots of the series have now caught up with the books. A non-book-reader eager to know what the fate of, say, Jon Snow is will not be able to get spoilers from those of us who have read them, because dammit, we don't know either!

But let's save Lord Snow for last, just as the episode does.

First off: Stannis.

Stannis committed a horrific act of sacrifice in last week's episode, and this week we find that it was entirely in vain. The heartless display sent half of his troops packing, and they took the horses with them. On top of that, Queen Selyse, unable to deal with what was done to their daughter, hangs herself. And just before the final, desperate push to Winterfell, Melisandre takes off. In Stannis doesn't know how this will go, he's an idiot. But he probably does know.

We're treated to one sweeping shot of the massive Bolton cavalry charge over the tiny Baratheon force, and there's no illusions about how the battle will go.

Stannis survives the onslaught just barely, but he's wounded, and with nowhere to go. He kills two soldiers who wish to finish him off, but he's wounded more severely. He's clearly on his way out. And then Brienne of Tarth shows up. Finally, she is there to take revenge on the man who killed her King. And barring some really serious fake-out editing, she puts and end to Stannis, and with him the entire (legitimate) Baratheon house.

Sansa

The defeat of Stannis means a dire setback in hope for Sansa.

She once again tries to summon aid from the people of Winterfell, but as she leaves her tower, knowing that Ramsey is on his way back, she is confronted by Miranda and Reek. Miranda holds a bow to her, and Reek begs her to follow and comply, but Sansa knows what it means to comply with Ramsey's plan. She can see it in the man who was once Theon Greyjoy. Preferring a quick arrow to the heart over a life of torture, she awaits her fate. Yet this strength of will inspires that latent Theon that hasn't been entirely stamped out of him, and Theon shoves Miranda off the parapets to her death. Yeah, Miranda, not exactly going to miss you.

But that only makes the situation more dire. Ramsey's coming home, and now that they've killed his girlfriend, he's probably not going to be too friendly. So Theon (and I think he's Theon again) and Sansa hold hands and leap from the walls, this time to the outside.

Is it death that they leap to? This is actually one of the plots where we get a confirmation of what happens (though Sansa isn't even there,) so, um, spoilers for the books I guess: while Miranda very definitely died from her fall, she went over the sheer side onto cobblestones. Theon and Sansa are heading down a slanted exterior wall into snow. It's not, like, safe, but we definitely don't see them land, and it would be weird to wait until next season to say "yep. There they are, all dead and such." Plus, while this would be a satisfying ending to Theon's story (redeeming himself to save Sansa from what he experienced,) Sansa clearly has a lot of work to do. We have to see her become something other than a victim.

Arya:

No time is wasted with Arya. She found Meryn Trant last week, and we go immediately into her successful attack on the Kingsguard. After he auditions three teenaged prostitutes for him to beat, one of them manages not to whimper under his abuse. That one seems to be the one he wants, only for her to take off her face and reveal that she's Arya Stark. Arya stabs Meryn several times and gouges out his eyes, stabs him a bit more, tells her exactly why she's killing him, stabs him a bit more, and then slits his throat. FATALITY!

Yep, this is a very definite removal of the first name on her list.

Yet when she comes back to the House of Black and White to return the borrowed face, she is confronted by Jaqen and the Waif. They know what she did, and as only death can pay for life (something we first heard from Mirri Maz Dur not long before Daenerys burned her to death,) Jaqen takes a vial of poison and drinks it down, dying on the spot. Arya is devastated, but the horror show is only just beginning.

The waif asks why she is crying, and she says it's because Jaqen was her friend. Yet when she turns around, it is Jaqen she is speaking to. How? Because both "Jaqen" and "the Waif" really were "no one." Arya claws at the man she thought was Jaqen's face, only to find an endless series of face-masks, finally coming upon her own. And because she took someone else's face before achieving that status, she starts to go blind.

Arya's blindness and the big question on how far she really wants to take her quest to become no one will, I'm sure, provide us with plenty of plot fodder in the future. What I think is interesting here is that it suggests that, perhaps there is no Jaqen H'gar. He is simply one of the identities used by the Faceless Men, who, if properly trained, have no identity of their own. When the old black man at the entrance of the temple revealed his Jaqen H'gar face, it seemed as if Arya had found the man who had saved her from Harrenhall, but what guarantee was there of that? We knew he could change his face, so why should we assume that someone with that face was him in the first place. What's interesting is that in the books, there was never any suggestion that the "Kindly Man" was Jaqen H'gar at all - Arya just wants to be there because it is where Jaqen sent her. But what I wonder is if our normal sense of identity even apply to the Faceless Men. And if that's the case, I think Arya's going to have to think long and hard about whether she really wants to join them.

Jaime

The whole Dorne plot here is much more truncated than the events of the book, and the plot of the Sand Snakes is quite different in that. Also, Jaime never goes anywhere near Dorne, nor Bronn. Still, there is a plot to kidnap Myrcella that ends with her alive, but her face terribly wounded (like niece, like double-uncle?) This is a plot that the show hasn't really known what to do with, but we get something of an emotional moment when Jaime finally reveals to Myrcella that he is her father. It's a touching moment immediately undercut by what is presumably her death by poison, administered with a kiss by Ellaria Sand. I don't really know what to make of this whole thing - there's no way they won't trace it back to Ellaria - so either there's going to be a full-fledged war between the dwindling Lannisters and Dorne, or this plot's going to continue to go nowhere. Sucks for Jaime, sucks even more for Myrcella, who, like Tommen, seems to have somehow wound up perfectly nice. Did Cersei just pour all of her insanity into Joffrey? As bad as Cersei is, she isn't quite Joffrey-level psycho, so I'd say that Joffrey must have had some kind of tweaked genes or something - either that or growing up with the knowledge you're going to be an emperor combined with Cersei's insanity led to it. Neither Myrcella nor Tommen expected to rule. Is that really the only difference?

Daenerys:

Actually not much happens with her this week. We know that she's separated from Mereen and that Drogon needs to regain his strength and heal after the spears he took in the Great Pit. But the main thing of note here is that the Dothraki have finally returned. No idea whatsoever on where things go from here. After Drogo's death, Dany wasn't exactly in good with the Dothraki, but perhaps she can find a way to recruit them. With a Dothraki cavalry and an Unsullied infantry, she would have an awesome army.

Tyrion:

With Jorah and Daario setting out to find Dany, the governance of the city falls to Grey Worm and Missandei, and one Tyrion Lannister, who has experience running a city in the midst of chaos, war, and unrest. And to top it all off, Varys has come out of the woodwork. We have the wonderful promise of these two teaming up again - if anyone can bring order to Mereen, it'll be these two. Tyrion for Hand of the Queen 2016! (If only it were an elected position.)

Cersei:

Well well well, Georgie. You've finally made us feel bad for Cersei. What can you say? Cersei confesses to her crimes (with one notable exception) and is forced to do a nude walk of shame through the entire city. Even proud Cersei, who, for all of her flaws, always managed to keep her chin held high, cannot take the shame of this event. She breaks down crying by the end, like I think anyone would. But her good friend Qyburn is there, and he has with him a new member of the Kingsguard that is A: enormous and B: wears a mask that obscures his face, but the little skin of his we do see is almost purple. Yeah, if that's not a Frankenstein's The Mountain, I don't know what it is.

Jon:

Now the big one. Notably, Sam gets sent off to Old Town (which is at the opposite end of the continent, between the Reach (home of the Tyrells) and Dorne.) Jon knows that he's made a lot of enemies by bringing the Wildlings past the Wall, but he knows that it's the White Walkers who are the real threat, and the Wall can't stand without the Wildlings' cooperation.

Olly lures Jon out of his office with a story of his uncle Benjen, but when he arrives, there is simply a sign that says "Traitor." Jon turns around, only to be stabbed in the gut about seven times, first by Alliser Thorne, and last by Olly himself, all "For the Watch."

Our last image of the season (and indeed, one of the last of the fifth book) is of Jon bleeding out, his eyes lifeless.

This is the massive controversy that again, has not yet been resolved in the books. Speculation ABOUNDS.

We've seen important protagonists killed before - Ned first, and then the one-two-punch of Robb and Catelyn. Yet somehow, Jon's death doesn't really work the same way, and that has given a lot of people hope that Jon might somehow survive, or, more likely, be brought back to life.

There are several theories of how this might happen, but the one that seems most likely involves Melisandre.

While she's never done it before, we know that another Red Priest of R'hollor is capable of raising the dead - not as a zombie, but as the person they once were (though there seems to be a price for this.)

Thoros of Myr first resurrected Beric Dondarrion in a moment of grief and despair. Thoros didn't even really believe anymore, but he begged for his friend's life again - and the Lord of Light granted it.

Melisandre is currently almost catatonic. She knows that Stannis has failed - she fled before the battle because she saw - not needing prophecy - how it would end. The sacrifice of Shireen might have improved the weather, but it wasn't enough to win the battle. And now, the man who Melisandre had put all of her hope into has failed. Sure, it was pretty awful of her to abandon him, given that all of the worst things he did were at her behest. But Melisandre must be having a crisis of faith.

Jon Snow is the only person who seemed to be taking the White Walker threat seriously, and now he's dead. And given that the White Walkers fit so perfectly into the Red Priest conception of the Lord of Light's opponent, the Great Other, Melisandre could think that Jon Snow is the only chance for victory of good over evil.

Melisandre is poised to resurrect Jon Snow. She has nothing to lose, and she has the potential to have the power to do so.

Is it guaranteed? Hell no - this is George R. R. Martin we're talking about. But the pieces are all in place.

Still, that said, there's plenty of bad shit that could easily go down in the aftermath of this mutiny. The Night's Watch has been forcibly taken over by people who don't want the Wildlings on their side of the Wall, and the Wildlings just lost the one Night's Watch person they were willing to give a modicum of trust to. Add in the fact that before Jon's diplomacy, the Wildlings were fighting a battle with the goal of wiping out the Night's Watch. Oh, and the trump card that allowed Jon to beat them, namely Stannis' army? Totally annihilated.

If Melisandre wants to resurrect Jon, she better do it soon, because I expect that mere minutes from after Jon's death, the Wall is going to explode into chaos and bloodshed between the Night's Watch and the Wildlings. (And the Night's Watch ain't going to win that fight.)

The Question No One (That I Know Of) Has Asked About A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones (I'll use that name as it's a lot quicker to type) is very much about a world of grey morality. In the earlier books/seasons, it would be easy to essentially say Starks = Good, Lannisters = Bad. But of course it's a lot more complex than that. The Starks are really just one faction among many. We stick with them, and there's a hope in the series that they'll eventually return to claim Winterfell, but so much else is going on that we can't really use them as our basis for "who to root for."

Likewise, the Lannisters can't be written off as pure evil. For one thing, Tyrion is one of the story's most likable heroes (give or take a strangling.) But while Joffrey was an irredeemable piece of shit, we've learned to understand the actions of even the more villainous characters. Jaime's worst act (besides all the incest) was the attempted murder of Bran - definitely a bad thing to do, but an act done solely to protect his sister and children. Tywin and Cersei are more villainous and cruel, but they are also products of their environments - Tywin deeply worried that his family will fall as it threatened to do when his father was in charge, and Cersei mistaking thoughtless cruelty for cunning, but all in the interest of keeping her children safe.

We have plenty of examples of evil people, though they usually have some sort of understandable motivation. And we often see "good" characters in opposed positions. After all, the Battle of the Blackwater was essentially a fight between two villains, but we had Tyrion on one side and Davos on the other - neither of which we ever want to see come to any serious harm. Consider, for example, that until she hears from Barristan, Daenerys only knows Ned Stark as a  ruthless killer - poetically casting him as being as cold as his homeland, when we, of course, remember Ned as a paragon of honor and virtue.

Game of Thrones is a fantasy series, but it's one in which the monsters - the threats to our heroes - are typically human. There's plenty of evil that humans are capable of to have a sufficient amount of drama. But that doesn't mean that actual monsters don't exist. In fact, the very first thing we see in the entire series (both book and show) is a group of Night's Watch rangers killed by wights and an Other/White Walker.

While there are multiple magical fantasy elements, two stand out as the most important. The first book and first season end with the birth of three dragons - the first in perhaps a century (I don't remember the timeline that precisely.) The dragons lend legitimacy to Daenerys, even though she has about as much control over them as a trio of wild beasts (who can fly and breathe fire.) They're too animalistic to really be thought of as heroes or villains. They are dangerous creatures that will probably prove extremely important to the future of Daenery's storyline.

But I'm not going to talk about dragons. It's the White Walkers that this post is about. (I'll use the show's nomenclature just because "Others" can easily be confused with other (see?) uses of the word.)

George R. R. Martin has waved away the rumors that started with the show naming their White Walker leader "The Night's King." The Night's King is a figure of legend - the 13th Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, who fell in love with a woman who sounds like a White Walker and then became an evil tyrant, using the Night's Watch as his personal army.

The show has revealed that, at least in infancy, the White Walkers can convert humans to be like them - we see the "White King" as I'll call him (oh shit, that's the main antagonist of my own story... um... "Walker King?" That's better.) Uh... we see the Walker King do so to one of Craster's babies. What are we to infer from this?

The thing is, we know next to nothing about the White Walkers. They aren't undead themselves (or at least not in the same way,) but they can raise the dead as mindless soldiers to fight for them. They seem to be made of some kind of magical ice that shatters when struck with an obsidian or Valyrian Steel blade (we can presume that dragon fire also does the trick.) They have weapons made of a special kind of ice that is far tougher than steel, and can go right through a conventional sword (we'll call it Ice-9.)

But what are they? And what, ultimately, do they want? Westeros was previously home to other kinds of creatures. The Children of the Forest were sort of elf-like beings, and the giants are, well, giants. These beings seem tied to the Old Gods (the Children probably taught humanity about the Old Gods - who are also a bit of a mystery, and far less broken-down than, say, the Seven.)

Ok, enough build up, let's get to my thesis. We've spent so much time in a world where you can't be certain where everyone falls on the moral spectrum. So what if we're somehow wrong about the White Walkers?

Now, clearly that's a lot to swallow. The White Walkers kill people and then raise them, forcing their mindless bodies to fight their own loved ones - to fight for the very army that they fought against. There's very little more terrifying than becoming what you already feared. The White Walkers violate their victims' freedom in the most fundamental way. One of the recurring themes of the story has been the way that people have their freedom and will taken away - through sexual violence, slavery, or torture (Theon/"Reek.") But what the White Walkers do goes beyond all of that.

Here's the thing, though. The Blackwater taught us that villains do not always fight heroes.

The Faith of R'hollor - the "Lord of Light" worshipped by Red Priests like Melisandre and Thoros of Myr - is, from what I gather, a kind of Manichaean religion. It is dualistic, with the Lord of Light on one side and the Great Other on the opposite side, representing evil. In this gnostic worldview, the physical world is evil (Melisandre says the only hell is the one they're living in already.) The "Great Other" sounds a hell of a lot like it could be related to the Others (aka White Walkers.) And it works particularly well given the way that R'hollor is associated with fire and heat, whereas the Others are associated with ice and coldness.

Plus it kind of ties into the whole "Song of Ice and Fire" name for the whole series.

The thing is, R'hollor seems... well it's hard to really think of him as totally good. Admittedly, there's a good chance (hinted strongly in the books) that much of the evil done in R'hollor's name is really coming from Melisandre's imprecise guessing at her Lord's will. Thoros, for example, seems way more benevolent, and his resurrection of Beric Dondarion seems a lot more in the vein of Lazarus than zombie necromancer. But still, even Beric's resurrections have a disturbing and less clearly benevolent side effect - the fact that Beric feels less himself each time, with his old personality fading away. And Melisandre's headlining miraculous act was a terrifying assassin made of pure shadow. Oh, and she really likes to burn people to death.

If the Great Other is really affiliated with the White Walkers, the evil of R'hollor almost seems like it should be balanced by some redeeming quality among them.

Consider this: there is a lot of power in the Old Gods, though it's a subtle power. The faith of the Old Gods has deep ties to nature, with a lot of the magic of the North having a clear connection with the natural (physical, see where I'm going with this?) world.

The faith of R'hollor abhors the physical world in favor of the spiritual one (if we're going by its probable real-life gnostic inspiration,) but that would put it in opposition not only to the White Walkers and their Wights (all physical, no spirit, we assume,) but also to the earthy, druidic faith of the Old Gods.

It's possible, then, that the White Walkers represent a kind of extreme defense of the physical world. Humanity drove the nature spirits, like the Children of the Forest, out of their former lands. Perhaps the White Walkers' goal is to "liberate" Westeros.

Certainly a stretch. While I'm reasonably confident about the dualistic reflection between R'hollor and the White Walkers, it's hard to imagine them as anything other than pure evil - at least from a human perspective. But then again, that's how we've always defined evil, so it applies.

And don't get me started on how the people in the Iron Islands worship Cthulhu. (Seriously, they do.)

On the Ozymandias Threshold of Breaking Bad

I don't actually believe I've posted about Breaking Bad before on this blog. In all honesty, just putting together a post about the show (of which I have three more episodes, the next of which is the infamous Ozymandias) as I'm about to finish it makes me a little overwhelmed.

The show is dense, and Walter White is one of the most fascinating villain protagonists I've ever seen.

Jeez, where to start?

On a grand thematic level, Breaking Bad is very much about the American dream, masculinity, and pride in one's abilities.

If you somehow don't know what the show's about, or would just like to hear how I'd describe it, the show is about Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who becomes a meth cook after (though not necessarily because) he discovers that he has inoperable lung cancer.

Yet this description is perhaps misleading. The image that I think most people would get from this is that Walter is more or less a good guy who is turning to this trade out of desperation. There's a popular meme that in Canada, the show wouldn't work because they have nationalized healthcare, but honestly, I think it would just require Walter to come up with a different excuse.

We never get a totally complete story of Walter's backstory. He's clearly a gifted chemist, and we know that he was among three people to start a company called Gray Industries (the name being a joke on the blending of his name and his partner's, who is named Schwartz.) There was clearly a falling out between the three founders (the third being Schwatz's now-wife, who had probably been involved with Walt previously.) The point is - for whatever reason, he left the company just before it took off and became a multi-billion dollar enterprise.

Walter is driven by a desire to be a paragon. He wants to be the provider for his family, and he wants to leave a legacy that his children will always look up to. He is absolutely invested in being a paterfamilias, and he detests being someone else's subordinate. And meth is his ticket out of there.

Or so he thinks. Given his professional background, he's a far better meth cook than the average cook, but he doesn't have the criminal connections to get into the business. For that, he uses a former student who he knows is also a cook, Jesse Pinkman - technically, it's Jesse who teaches him how to cook crystal meth, but Walt, the experienced chemist, very quickly overtakes Jesse's original recipe.

The entire series from that point forward in the pilot is more or less a chain reaction of consequences. Walter is very smart and very clever, but while he wants to see himself as a planner, in fact he is more of a brilliant improviser. This has a tendency to put him in difficult situations, and one of the joys of the show is watching him scramble to get out of them.

Of course, part of the horror of the show is seeing what depths he's willing to sink to in order to do what he wants to achieve. We're introduced to Walter White looking like a dead-on live-action version of Ned Flanders - green sweater over a buttoned shirt, khaki pants, glasses, mustache. He's the very image of a nonthreatening man, and his life at that point reflects it. He is a teacher at a public school - a good one, it looks like, but you'd think at the very least he should be teaching graduate students. He has to work a second job for a man who keeps giving him more manual labor to do. And he has a son with cerebral palsy, which obviously isn't the son's fault, but it reinforces the notion that Walter is living a harder, less ideal life than what Walter envisions.

The thing is, Walter has that perfectly American personality trait: Exceptionalism. We Americans have a culture that always pushes us to stand out and be unique - to strive to be the best at what we can be. Now sure, that can motivate people to achieve great things, but by necessity, it also means that the vast majority of Americans are going to be disappointed in life. After all, there can only be one "best" at any given thing. When we meet Walter, he is not the best.

But in the production of crystal methamphetamine, he finds an avenue in which he can be the best. Early on, at the end of the first season, Walter creates a persona - at first purely as a pseudonym for dealing with criminals he'd rather not known his real name - Heisenberg. (I'm sure that there's a ton of thematic reasoning for naming himself after the German physicist, but for now I'm going to hold off on that.) As the bodycount rises and Walter's famously blue meth (a consequence of a different chemical process that has now apparently made blue meth more popular in the real world) makes more and more money, Heisenberg and Walter's exceptional legend grows.

The chain of consequences does have its interruptions. There are times when it looks like Walter could just drop out, enjoy the fortune he has made and return to a relatively normal life, only now with the money to be comfortable - to pay off his medical bills and then some, and to leave his family not wanting.

But two major things get in the way of this. The first is the one that we get the most examples of in the show - for Walt, it was never about the money. Through making drugs, Walter gets to be that paragon he always felt he should be. He is clearly the best meth cook in the world - even the Mexican cartels want his recipe and techniques. He has leverage with that skill, and power as a consequence of that leverage. He's not in it for the money - it's the fact that he knows, and others know, that he is the best in the world at what he does. This egotism shows through in other ways - for one thing, he's hesitant to even launder his money in a way that makes it look like it's coming from other people.

What season five shows us is that even when Walt can get a hold of his own ego and realize that he's made enough money (literally more than he can count,) and that he's made his mark, the actions he's taken are irreversible. There are actually some scientific principles at work here. Every chemical reaction can be done in reverse - water and carbon dioxide and some energy can give you glucose and oxygen, and then you can take glucose and burn it with oxygen to release that energy with your initial ingredients - but entropy always increases.

Walter's efforts to reverse the process that turned him into a drug kingpin seem to be working, but the chaos that he has churned up over the past five seasons have left the world a different place, and no matter how hard he tries, he can't separate out that contamination from his peaceful, model citizen life that he wants to return to.

I'm sure I'll have more thoughts when I finish the series. There's tons to talk about (I barely even mentioned Jesse, who is another fascinatingly complex character,) but for now I'm going to mentally prepare myself for Ozymandias. I heard Mizumono, Hannibal's season two finale, described as the show's Ozymandias, so I'm more than a little terrified.

Catching Up... Sort of... with Will Graham in Primavera

Yes, the culinary title tradition stands, with Italian cuisine as the appropriate category this season.

Last week's Antipasto established Hannibal and Bedelia's new life in Italy. Hannibal has had Bedelia play the role of his wife, and Hannibal has been so energized by the classiest of the cultural elite in his new environs that even his murder-rate has slowed down (this is a guy who seems to off people on a weekly basis under normal conditions.)

But of course, the premiere left us all wondering WHO THE HELL SURVIVED THE RED DINNER!?!?!?

The only real guarantee was Will, who is the series protagonist (even if Hannibal is an Iago-level villain who is more central to the story.)

And what have we learned now?

The teaser of the episode is essentially the last few minutes of last season's finale - we watch as Hannibal once again eviscerates Will and then calls a deeply brainwashed Abigail over to him before slitting her throat along the exact same scar as her father had done in the series premiere (indeed, this seems like the third time she's been cut there, given the amount of blood Will found in her house at the end of season one.) Will sinks deep into the blood pouring out of him, out of a dead-eyed Abigail Hobbs, and out of the Ravenstag - that now-obsolete totem that represented the killer Hannibal truly was when he was still a mystery.

But when Will wakes up in a hospital bed, who is there to greet him? Abigail. She explains that Hannibal must have meant for them to live. She says the doctors who stitched her up considered the throat-slitting to be a surgically-executed cut - meant to leave a mark but avoid killing her. All in all, she seems much better off than Will, though he has clearly survived as well - this must have been Hannibal's design. Abigail is quick to forgive Hannibal, sure that he has a place for them in his life, and that with forgiveness, they will be welcomed back into Hannibal's fold.

What of Jack and Alana? We are left with no clue. Instead, we cut forward six months - Hannibal has transformed the corpse of the British academic he killed in Antipasto into an enormous heart-shape. It's a message for Will and Abigail. Will comes to the crime scene after the evidence has been taken away, but he imagines seeing it, and in his imagination, the person-heart-shape unfolds to become an unholy stag-mockery in what is a contender for the spot of "most batshit crazy disturbing thing I've ever seen on television," (all of its competitors are probably from this show.)

Will meets with Detective Pazzi - a Florentine investigator who pursued "il monstro," Hannibal, long ago in 1995, when Hannibal was just starting out as a young man, reproducing a portion of Boticcelli's Primavera using actual people he's murdered. Pazzi had a moment of revelation, seeing the young Hannibal make daily sketches of the painting in the Uffizi, and attempted to arrest him, but (big shocker) found himself outfoxed by Hannibal.

Pazzi isn't as mentally messed-up as Will, and thus wants to actually catch Hannibal, but it is in conversation with Pazzi that Will realizes, or perhaps remembers, that Abigail isn't actually there with him.

No, while Will (and maybe Jack and Alana...?) was undergoing surgery, Abigail was undergoing an autopsy. Hannibal has effectively destroyed their shared daughter, finally, once and for all. Yet she lives on in Will's mind, unfortunately as a voice that compels him to rejoin Hannibal, to return on the path Hannibal has laid out for him.

Two major themes get talked about this episode - Religion, and Multiple Universes.

Hannibal has always had a strange take on God. He sees God as the ultimate killer, but he doesn't see this as a negative thing. Much as Hannibal said last week that ethics become aesthetics, Will's take on Hannibal's religion is that God won't save humanity because it is inelegant. Will mentions that his own religious beliefs are more in the realm of science fiction than mythic fantasy, though we haven't gotten a total encapsulation of them. Will's empathy threatens to overwrite his own beliefs with Hannibal's - which is of course Hannibal's goal.

Hannibal is this show's Devil, but he is attached to the world in a physical way. In fact, I'd almost consider him more akin to Dracula - he feeds on those he considers less than himself (which is almost everyone,) but he wishes to convert those who he does deem worthy into monsters like himself. He sees this as a gift - not a corruption, but a liberation.

Consider that in many traditions, righteousness is the imitation of God. (In Christianity, there's a line drawn between imitation of the Father - which would probably be considered blasphemously arrogant - and imitation of the Son - which is arguably what Christ's entire purpose in being on Earth was, to serve as an example.) But Hannibal believes God is a murderer who delights in elegance and irony, and so that is the form he has decided to take. Oddly enough, this makes Hannibal a deeply pious man. It's only that his religion is heretical to anyone with the slightest moral or ethical sense.

Will hints at what might be his belief structure. He is torn between a desire to know what the many other versions of the world would be like - if he had just gone with Hannibal like he said he would, perhaps others would not have died. (We hear him asking this of Abigail before it is definitively revealed that she is dead herself.) Yet at the same time, there's a strong sense that whatever can happen will happen - the unabridged Murphy's Law. While it might not be true on a quantum-physics level (at least according to modern science,) there's an attractive logic to this worldview, and there's also a good chance that on the scale of human behavior, it's actually true.

But it does leave moral questions open. Abigail responds to this postulation, saying that if one can only behave in the way that a deterministic universe has laid out for you, there's no such thing as doing the wrong thing. It means that Hannibal does what he does because it's what he will do, and that she will follow him because it is what she will do.

(Actually, given that this is a subject matter I've given a lot of thought throughout my life, I could go on for ages about the various wrinkles and consequences of this stuff, but I'll spare you.)

Will finds himself compelled to find Hannibal, even though the logical thing is for him to cut his losses and lick his wounds and hope that he never sees the monster again. But he is compelled, like the Abigail in his mind (or perhaps by the Abigail in his mind) to find him. Yet he really doesn't know what he will do if he finds him.

The episode ends with Will and Pazzi entering the catacombs of the church where Hannibal left his victim. Surrounded by hooded skeletons of priests from centuries past that look just like the grim reaper - the memento mori - Will knows Hannibal is there, and he forgives his friend, even if he doesn't promise not to try to stop him again.

Where we go from there is really up in the air.

Post Script:

I found myself asking over and over, out loud, while watching this episode: "How are they allowed to do this on television?" By that I partially meant the violence, which is very, very gruesome (though they have some guidelines they stick to that tend to make it somewhat easier to take - like the fact that the violence is never sexual in nature and also that we tend to see the aftermath, rather than the actual act,) but the main reason I found myself asking the question is that Hannibal is so, so much farther into the realm of experimental, expressionistic filmmaking than what you typically get, even on premium cable.

Hannibal has had its procedural elements, primarily in the first season, but the show's makers have clearly staked a big claim here, refusing to make a CSI knock-off with the twist of Hannibal Lecter helping the team out.

What I am extremely curious about is how things will transition into the Hannibal Lecter stories we're familiar with. Supposedly we're getting essentially Red Dragon this season, with an incarcerated Hannibal helping Will Graham catch the Tooth Fairy killer, but damn do we have a lot of ground to cover before that's a remote possibility.

I don't know if the relationship between Will and Hannibal is this intense and close in the books - I get the impression that the answer is "no." I've seen parts of the Red Dragon movie (not Manhunter,) which portrays the relationship between the men as much more of a naive student and a mentor who is hiding his terrible secret.

The weird, pseudo-romantic relationship between the two on the show complicates a future of cooperation. Whether their attraction is literally sexual in nature or not, there's an intimacy between Will and Hannibal that I don't think the latter has even with Bedelia - even if Hannibal is maybe auditioning her for such a role. In a way, it's like a romance in which Eros has been replaced with Thanatos, but with all the same sensual exploration.

Of the films, the only one I've seen in full was Silence of the Lambs - which is of course the best-liked and the one that led to an inundation of psychological thriller movies in the 90s. Clarice does achieve a certain intimacy with Lecter in that, but the movie gives the impression that Hannibal has actually been good for her - helping her move past her insecurities and allowing her to save the day. Hopkins' Hannibal is certainly still a monster, but he's not really a corrupter. At least in Lambs, he helps Clarice because he likes her for who she is, not for who she has the potential to become (not sure how things go later on, but I'm told that the subsequent books and movies kind of suck.)

Mikkelsen's Hannibal is an insidious creature. The show casts him as literally the devil (with a strong hint of Dracula, as I suggested earlier.) There's plenty of talk of God, but none of the devil. In a Western, Christian context, that's slightly odd (especially when the show is dealing with the nature of evil,) but this reinforces Hannibal as a devil figure - he has no interest in talking about the devil because for all intents and purposes, it was Hannibal who approached Jesus in the wilderness (holy shit would that be a cool scene to watch.) Almost like a creature out of Lovecraft, he warps the minds of the people around him seemingly as a simple quality of his nature.

Hopkins' Hannibal I think succeeded by being underestimated. He was ultimately a human being, but one with an inhuman level of intelligence and willpower to commit fully to his gruesome plans. Even we are shocked at how effectively he breaks out of that cage in Silence of the Lambs. People see him as just a well-read, highly intelligent murderer, and not the killing machine that he is.

But with the way that Hannibal the show has portrayed him, how the hell are we ever going to trust him at all once he's behind bars (or glass?) We've seen the effect he's had on Will - making Will doubt his own sanity and whether he is, himself, really a killer at heart (the answer is no, Will. You've just been letting those mirror neurons fire way too much in Hannibal's company.)

Short of actually killing him, which I don't think the show will ever do, it's impossible to be safe in a world that contains Hannibal Lecter. Even locked up with no possible way to escape, I wouldn't be surprised if we see him manipulate one of his captors into killing for him.

One last note and then this postscript will be done:

I think there have been some copyright issues with Clarice Starling and the whole Silence of the Lambs cast of characters who weren't already in Red Dragon. I really hope that they manage to clear that, because I'm fascinated to see what the show does with Clarice. Clarice is, I think, the only other person to grab Hannibal's attention the way that Will does. Just seeing that level of intimacy between Hannibal and another character could be a way to explore many new avenues of his character.

And also because this show could probably use some more female characters. I mean, of the two that were in the last episode, one was a hallucination (or a literal ghost - which in this show would be indistinguishable.)

Goals and the Journey to Them on Game of Thrones

Oh hell, there's only one more episode this season. Might as well just write about each of them.

Game of Thrones has used its episode nines for big events, and actually in a pretty consistent pattern. Odd numbered seasons, you get a "pulled-the-rug-out-from-under-you" character death. Probably most shocking was the death of Ned Stark - who until that point had been the protagonist of the show - which, before I read on in the books, had me wondering who would be taking over that position (the answer being no one, or maybe a split between Tyrion, Jon, and Daenerys.) Season three had the infamous Red Wedding, which was perhaps not so much shocking because we didn't expect it, but because it was surprising that George R. R. Martin would pull that shit again.

Seasons two and four had enormous battles that took spanned their entire penultimate episodes, but as we're in season five, it would seem that "major character death" was what was to be expected.

All in all, that's not what we got, but it was still a hell of a moment. Like the end of A Dance with Dragons, tonight's episode ended with the assassination attempt at the Great Pit, and Daenerys' exit by dragon from Mereen, leaving her followers behind to pick up the pieces.

We did lose two characters this episode, though they aren't nearly as central as Ned, Robb, or Catelyn. Interestingly, both characters are still alive in the books, but we're so close to the border on what has been printed that changes are bound to happen.

First, most heartbreakingly, Shireen, possibly the most kind and innocent girl we've seen in the entire show, is burned at the stake as a sacrifice to allow Stannis' army to march south to Winterfell. This entire sequence called to mind the story of Agamemnon and his sacrifice of Iphigenia. For those who are less well-versed in Greek Mythology (which is pretty foundational for fantasy as a genre, so, you know, you should check it out,) the story of Iphigenia is set during the advance on Troy before the Trojan War. Agamemnon is the most powerful Greek king, and he has raised an army to fight Troy on behalf of his brother Menelaus - whose wife Helen was stolen by Paris, a prince of Troy. The Greek fleet is becalmed, and they have been forced to camp out on a desert island. The men are dying of diseases brought on my starvation and thirst, and Agamemnon knows that his army will crumble if they do not set sail soon.

So Agamemnon ultimately sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia in order to placate Zeus and get the winds to blow again.

It's the same story with the details rearranged.

However, what Stannis might want to know is that things don't end well for Agamemnon. Upon his return to Argos, his wife Clytemnestra slaughters him with an axe. Afterward, the remaining children of the couple, Orestes and Elektra, kill their mother to avenge their father, but in so doing become kinslayers and bring the wrath of the Kindly Ones (aka the Furies,) though ultimately they are exonerated of the crime by a trial in which Apollo himself serves as their defense attorney (Greek Mythology is awesome.)

Anyway, the point is that while Stannis might achieve victory through this sacrifice, there's a good chance that he'll ultimately pay with his life for it, and with his wife Selyse clearly moved by her daughter's screams (perhaps the most haunting sonic events in the series,) there's a good Clytemnestra ready to do the deed.

The sacrifice of Shireen does raise a fundamental question for Stannis though - what the hell is the point in all of this? Stannis has always fallen on the Lawful Neutral/Lawful Evil area of the D&D grid. I've never even really thought that he truly wanted to be king - he just believes that because he legally should be the king, he therefore must act to ensure that he is recognized as such (Daenerys would reasonably argue this point.) But even if this sacrifice ultimately secures his place as king - he kills the Boltons and marches again on King's Landing and sits on the Iron Throne. Then what? If he dies, who is there to replace him? Shireen is dead, Renly is dead. You'd have to start jogging up the family tree a generation, and at that point the field opens up to other families (including the Targaryens - fun fact: Stannis and Daenerys are second cousins.) Perhaps, like a lot of religious fanatics, the far future isn't so important, because he has a role to play, possibly to fight against the White Walkers - but he's not a longterm solution to the government of the Seven Kingdoms, even if he does win.

The other important figure who needs to step back and check their goals is Daenerys. Dany is great - we like her, and she does want to be a good ruler and a good person. It was very exciting to see her stampede over the city-states of Old Ghis and free the slaves there as she went, but actually governing Mereen (and sadly leaving Astapor and Yunkai to fall back into their old patterns) has been messy at best. She has tried a lot of way to theoretically rule justly, but her theories haven't been enough to put down the Sons of the Harpy insurgency. She wants revolutionary changes to happen, but she also wants to avoid the bloodshed of revolution. And ultimately, her attempts to appease the disparate factions of the city have ultimately ended in chaos, with a massive assassination attempt and unholy slaughter within the Great Pit (like, more than it's designed for.) Her possible ally, Hizdahr zo Loraq, is one of the ones to fall in the chaos - despite the strong hints that he was, in fact, behind the Sons of the Harpy (or perhaps even more terrifying a possibility - that he was, and they've just grown so far out of control that even he isn't safe from them.)

But Mereen and Slaver's Bay has always been kind of a problem for Daenerys. She wants to ultimately conquer the Seven Kingdoms, and Mereen has been her kind of dry-run at ruling. But that's not how the world works. You don't take an entire civilization and rule it as a dry run. Ultimately, the best she could have done for Mereen was try to establish a government that could keep the peace and maintain some of the values she wanted to imbue it with (like not having slavery,) but she has been ruling as a monarch. What was her plan, anyway? To leave Mereen as a very distant Westerosi colony?

Yet just leaving isn't exactly a simple process. It's liberating when she hops on Drogon and flies out of the city, but notably, Jorah, Missandei, Daario, and Tyrion (and Grey Worm if he ever recovers from his wounds) are all left behind with one big fucking mess to deal with.

Story-wise, we want Daenerys to fly her dragons to Westeros (and torch some ice-zombies with dragonfire while she's at it,) but she has embedded herself so deeply in Mereen that pulling herself out of it will likely cause a gushing wound. We're about one chapter away from as much as we have of her story in the book, so I honestly don't know how that story is going to turn out.

But ultimately, what we have been dealing with here is a group of people who have a sense of the motions they should be going through, but they lack a longterm strategy - what is it that they ultimately actually want to achieve?

Arya's story touches on this theme as well. She has been going through the process to become a Faceless Woman - to become one of the world's greatest assassins. Yet in her training, she is expected to purge herself of everything that made her Arya Stark in the first place. Does she want to become a Faceless Woman simply to serve the Many-Faced God? Or does she want it as a means to and end to cross names off of her list? Can she actually become a Faceless Woman and still retain the thirst for vengeance that made her seek out that life in the first place?

Finally, we come to the beginning of the episode, where Jon Snow returns to Castle Black traumatized by the victory of the White Walkers at Hardhome. Unlike the others here, Jon does actually have a clear goal in mind - but it's a simpler goal because unlike the others, he ultimately has a goal of stasis - he wishes to protect the world of men from the unholy abominations coming for them from north of the wall. The Night's Watch takes no part in the politics of the Seven Kingdoms, because their entire purpose is to make sure that the White Walkers don't cross the Wall. Their goal is not to achieve something, but to prevent the Others (the name for the White Walkers in the books) from achieving their goal - which we can assume is the destruction of the living.

For Jon, there's a simple short-term goal to accomplishing that greater one, which is to ensure that as many Wildlings as possible get behind the Wall safely and help the Night's Watch defend it. He's trying to build an army that can withstand that assault.

But Jon's not in the clear either, because while that short-term goal should help with the long-term one, he doesn't have the trust of his men behind him. They're following him for now, but he's packing Castle Black like a powderkeg full of people who absolutely detest one another. Will the short-term accomplishment help the long-term one by reinforcing the Wall? Or will the resentment nullify all that Jon has worked for? I'm eager to see what the show has to say.

Hannibal Season Three - Antipasto

Well, the long wait is over, and Hannibal - perhaps the most pitch-dark television show I've ever watched (and on network TV to boot!) - is back.

I wrote a long article at the end of last season speculating on who had survived the "Red Dinner" at the end of season two, but so far, we're not getting a straight answer. Judging purely from the "Next On" segment at the end, it looks like most, if not all of them survived - even Abigail Hobbs, who seemed like a definite goner. However, tonight's episode taught us not to trust everything we see. Much of the episode featured black-and-white scenes of the late Abel Gideon, the Eddie Izzard character who Hannibal gradually dismembered and served many a personalized menu to before framing Chilton for his murder.

Are these truly flashbacks? It's possible. Gideon had a certain intellectual distance that he demonstrated during the previous season while in Hannibal's captivity. Gideon is wheeled about, witnessing the extraordinary care Hannibal is taking to ensure that Gideon's meat is prepared as well as possible. For example, there is a scene in which Hannibal has snails nibble at Gideon's severed, marinaded arm, which he then serves as escargot.

It's perfectly believable that these are flashbacks, but what makes them somewhat odd is that Gideon is capable of analyzing Hannibal's situation quite accurately. More than that, it almost seems as if he's telling Hannibal things about himself that the good doctor might not have realized himself. Gideon manages to get under Hannibal's skin, which is a rare feat indeed. The key here is a line in which Gideon remarks that, given the knowledge of his inevitable fate, he does not have to do anything at all. Hannibal is a master of creating a psychology in which there only ever seems to be one option for how to act, but Gideon, in his abject helplessness, broke free in a way would probably have Sartre nodding in approval.

We see nothing of the American setting (shot in Canada, but whatever) of the previous two seasons. The teaser is effectively a prologue, set in Paris. Never have the words "Bonsoir" been so menacing.

Yet the action moves to Florence - which just seems like the absolute best place for a guy like Hannibal, am I right? (No disrespect to Paris, mind you.) Hannibal has taken up residence at a University (if it's a real one I couldn't say, as I don't really know much about universities outside of the US,) as an expert on Dante, much to the chagrin of a colleague who doesn't like that this... Dane? Mads Mikkelsen is Danish, but I think Hannibal was Dutch (EDIT: Lithuanian apparently - though I think Mads Mikkelsen is just sticking with his own accent in the show - given that the books were written thirty years ago or so, Mikkelsen is way too young to have been traumatized by Nazis, so.. whatever) in the books... anyway, this non-Italian is taking this prestigious position.

A life in academia suits Hannibal, who strives to be the most cultured person in the world. He has created an entire new life in Italy, and remarks at one point that he is comfortable enough and tranquil enough that he has not killed all that many people while there.

Along with him, however, is Bedelia, who, is our link into this world. It's still not entirely clear why she goes with him - she has a sense that he is not interested in killing her, but I think the main reason is that she doesn't feel she has a choice. She is familiar with Hannibal's manipulations due to first-hand experience. We already knew that she had killed a patient in self-defense. Indeed, she suspected that it was not truly self-defense, and that she had been manipulated into doing so by Hannibal. We finally get to see the immediate aftermath of this act - a horrifying one that almost seems physically impossible (which fits with the nightmarish imagery of the show) and we learn that in no uncertain terms, yes, this was murder, and it was Hannibal who helped her to cover it up. How this was achieved is still mysterious (and given that the corpse was played by Zachary Quinto, there's a pretty strong chance we're going to get more of this backstory later on.)

Bedelia, like Abigail, is drawn into Hannibal's event horizon through the orchestration of the aftermath of a murder that looked a lot like self-defense at the time. Hannibal desperately wanted, and it seems still wants, to do this with Will, but the "betrayal" at the Red Dinner seems to have broken this chance (and how!)

Yet Hannibal must not have given up yet. As the episode ends, he displays his latest kill in the lecture hall at his university (a hall that evokes the large hallway with the cages in the mental institute in season two.) Yes, this fancy life surrounded by centuries-old buildings fits Hannibal like a finely-tailored suit, but he misses his friend.

Game of Thrones and the Real Threat

Generally, Game of Thrones, and the Song of Ice and Fire books series it's based on - but that it's rapidly deviating from this season - can largely be described as about medieval politics in a fantasy landscape. Yes, it's fantasy, but there's a lot of work to make it clear that these people are expected to live real lives, with the real problems that come with it. It's a hard, hard life in Westeros (and Essos, for that matter. Westeros is the easiest shorthand to describe the world-setting of the series, despite the fact that one of the three most central characters has never even set foot on the continent. As far as I know, there's no name for the world itself like we get with Tolkien's Middle Earth (which in fairness describes only one continent in the larger "Arda," though all the events of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings take place there) or Pratchett's Discworld.) If you're a nobleman, you constantly have to be considering your allies and trying to keep yourself from getting swept up in dangerous plots with assassinations and wars and the like.

Two of the important noble houses have been able to stay out of these conflicts, but even they have their scars. The Arryns of the Vale were kind of the first shot fired in the recent problems, as Jon Arryn was killed after he discovered the truth about Joffrey, Myrcella and Tommen's parentage. Lysa, in a move that might have been wise despite of herself, basically put the Vale on lockdown and decided that they were going to go full-Switzerland, not getting involved in the ensuing war and taking advantage of their geographical defensive advantage. But even that wasn't enough to keep Lysa safe, as Littlefinger took advantage of his childhood relationship with her to insinuate himself into her family and then effortlessly murder her when her instability became too inconvenient. The Martells have likewise tried to stay out of it, but their history with the Lannisters led to the death of Oberyn, and the presence of Myrcella as their guest/hostage (more of a guest though) draws them in as well.

And that's before you even get to the plight of people who aren't nobility. Most of the people we deal with in Game of Thrones are practically royalty - indeed, two hundred years before the series begins, the Starks, Lannisters, and the other Great Houses were actually royalty, meaning that the bannermen to each of these houses are already on the level of Dukes, with the reigning king (who was historically a Targaryen) more of an Emperor.

But all that social hierarchy is built on the backs of millions of common people. And if you thought things were bad when a wrong word could get a war started, imagine how it feels when it's not even you who has an opportunity to say the word. This season, as in book four, Cersei attempts to undercut the ambitious Tyrell family by giving power to a sect of religious fanatics. It works fantastically, as she sees her rival thrown in jail, but it's a foolish move, as the Queen Mother - who has hardly been living a holy life herself - finds herself imprisoned by the very people she has empowered.

Indeed, as horrifying as the Sparrows are for their fundamentalist take on the Church of the Seven, there's something oddly exciting about them as well. Unlike all these Great Houses vying for control, this is a populist organization. The people have been treated like shit for so long, and through religion, they can take power. Essentially, religion puts us in service to god or gods, and those in power are actually subordinate to something larger. It gives you an idea of why powerful people try to become part of the religious hierarchy using ideas like the divine right of kings. Yet ultimately, that can't always be maintained, especially when you have a religion that has been adapted to support a monarchy, despite its overall message implying a universality to the human condition, and thus a universality to the sovereignty of individual humans (namely, a lack thereof, with sovereignty resting with the divine instead.)

Essentially, religion supposes that there's a larger world than the one we can see with our mundane senses. It shrinks our own concerns by putting them in the larger context of a supernatural universe. And it's there that we get to the meat of what made this week's episode of Game of Throne so thrilling.

The Night's Watch is an incredibly ancient order that guards the northern border of the North - the half-ish of the Seven Kingdoms (area-wise) that is historically governed by the Starks. The Night's Watch is almost monastic, with members swearing away family property and marriage for a life of difficult armed service, and has a rich history guarding an absurdly large wall made of ice (though it has a core of stone, if I recall correctly.) But no one takes the Night's Watch seriously, because they effectively just fight Wildlings - people indigenous to the lands north of the Wall.

The Wildlings are certainly a threat - if they do get over the wall, they tend to raid villages, murdering and stealing as they do - but they hardly seem like the kind of threat that would need a 700-foot wall of ice lined with castles and an order of soldiers who dedicate their entire lives to fighting them off.

And it's for that reason that the Night's Watch is in its current state. Only three of the nineteen castles are even manned, and there's only about a thousand members to guard the 300-mile-long Wall. And joining the Night's Watch is generally more of a punishment than an honor. While the Starks send members of their family to serve there, more often "Taking the Black" is a way for convicted criminals to avoid a death sentence.

One would wonder - why the hell have something so elaborate to handle a threat that seems far better dealt with by the various houses on the northern border?

But of course, one does not need to wonder - the very first scene in show, and the prologue of the first book, shows us that the Wall and the Night's Watch was never designed to fight Wildlings. It was meant to fight the Others (White Walkers on the show, so as to avoid confusion with Lost.)

And that's been the big tease of the entire series so far. We've spent five books and now about five seasons worrying about Lannisters and Baratheons, but in the background, there has always been this much, much, much, much larger threat - a full-on zombie apocalypse is heading toward Westeros, and holy shit is it not prepared to deal with one. There are only a handful of people who are equipped to even understand the threat that the White Walkers pose, and even those equipped to deal with them (I'd think Daenerys' dragons could be really, really useful against them) are too scattered and perhaps uninformed to help.

The intrigue, even among the masters like Varys and Littlefinger, now proves itself to be pure pettiness, as a serious threat to human life on the continent (and that's assuming the Others won't turn to Essos when they're done) reveals itself to the viewers as the Wildling town of Hardhome is conquered with lightning speed, and all its dead (even that Wildling lady who seemed really cool) raised as part of the White Walkers' army.

The show has outpaced the books to a great degree in certain plotlines, but I think no event has really made that apparent more than this. We've been waiting for a full-fledged war against the undead for several years now. And well, here's the war.