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.