Poor Frederick Chilton. After Will gets released and a severely damaged Miriam Lass returns to the FBI, Hannibal figures now is the time to pull the trigger on his “fall guy,” setting up Chilton.
All on this episode of Eat The Rudecast, an unauthorized podcast about NBC's Hannibal, and the works of Thomas Harris.
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I don’t know if I disagree more with what you’ve said this podcast, or I just managed to remember more of the stuff I disagreed with.
Alana is only in the interrogation room to get Hannibal talking, not to interrogate him. Hannibal realizes she’s just there to get him talking (since he’s comfortable with her, it’s a reasonable choice from Jack’s perspective) regardless of the content of what he says, and willingly steps into Jack’s trap knowing he’ll get out. He even refers to the witness as “him” to disguise his knowledge that it’s Miriam.
Eyewitness testimony is unreliable, but Miriam was kidnapped for two years, which is enough time to become familiar with someone. It just happens to be the case that she only saw him infrequently and/or was subjected to enough drugs/disorientation that she can’t recognize him. I do still wonder how he orchestrated that recorded phone call to Jack though, and how he managed to tell her he was taking her arm while still sounding like Chilton.
The only time the show has displayed something imaginative/hallucinatory that was not immediately obvious as such was when Will imagined impaling Abigail. I can’t recall any instance where it’s ambiguous whether what we’re seeing is “real” by the end of the episode.
Chilton would have eventually been exonerated because he was incapacitated after getting gutted. In contrast, there was overwhelming and absolute evidence against Will, who not only had trophies in his fishing-gear but also evidence under his fingernails and in his sink. His swallowing an ear whole isn’t “inconsistent” with anything, is there a “normal” way to swallow an ear? A show that ignores how sore Will’s throat would be after being intubated would also set aside the etiquette for cannibalistic ear consumption. People were not being blinded, Will himself admitted in Savoreux the evidence said he killed Abigail. He only realized he was innocent because he was aware of his own symptoms starting later than the copycat killings (which he didn’t remember committing).
Hannibal could easily continue killing and eating people without leaving Ripper-esque bodies. He could imitate Hobbs (sans his “apology” due to liver cancer) by not leaving bodies. He has also gone in disguise as the copycat killer and mixed other murders alongside the organ-harvester’s.
Will is angry when he meets Alana, but it’s important to note that his anger is restrained. He says “You see the best in Hannibal, I… don’t” it’s as if he’s searching for a way to put it which isn’t too angry.
I didn’t think Miriam calling Jack “guru” was too shoehorned in. We’ve established earlier that’s how she thinks of and refers to Jack, and in her mind he continued searching until he found her. Since she was a trainee at Quantico where Will has taught, I wonder if she already knew Will.
Chilton didn’t seem scared at all when Will was recovering memories, he was just surprised and unsure how to react. This is the episode where you really get to see Chilton scared!
Hannibal doesn’t just play the “don’t you want to know more” card. He also feigns innocence, saying Will knows what it’s like to be falsely accused and that he’d be killing an innocent man. If Will had been recording Hannibal, the evidence would not have supported any charge against him (he also remembered to only leave a partial fingerprint which couldn’t definitively incriminate him).
I’m less confident that vomit indicates someone is innocent. People sometimes do things and then vomit, although I suppose a serial-killer as prolific as the Ripper might have gotten habituated.
The last thing Chilton says isn’t “Don’t say I didn’t warn you”. It’s that he’s not saying anything more without a lawyer. Minor quibble, I know.
I’d like to say in defense of Anthony Hopkins that he wasn’t an extreme scenery-chewer in Silence of the Lambs. In the later films they unfortunately added too much Hannibal material and Hopkins played him more broadly.
As Manhunter is one of my all-time favorite movies (easily my favorite Thomas Harris film), I must speak up in its defense. William Petersen’s portrayal is not “put together”: he’s disturbed. Hugh Dancy’s performance is basically an amplified version of that (I’m not putting down either, they’ve been given different plotlines and amounts of time). The Nostaglia Critic is incorrect in preferring Bret Ratner’s version, but he’s correct on Petersen’s performance.
I really liked it. A lot. But (don’t hurt me) I’ve never been a big fan of Mads Mikkelsen and, well, still not.His acenct and weird (lisp? sibilance? whatever) annoyed me. But I’m willing to hang in there.