An episode that could very well be the series finale, as it brings us all the way up to the beginning of the Thomas Harris novels (excluding Hannibal Rising). The Italy portion of this season comes to a close, as does Mason Verger's story line. This episode brings us some of the most bizarre and upsetting imagery of the series, which says a lot. All in all a superb episode of television that doesn't pull a single punch in wrapping up its ongoing stories.
All on this episode of Eat The Rudecast, a podcast about NBC's Hannibal, and the works of Thomas Harris.
The Francis Bacon painting we spoke about in the episode, entitled Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X
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About the baby: could they transplant Margot’s uterus with the embryo to the pig? Could it be possible?
Interspecific pregnancies are a real thing scientists do, although I don’t know if it has been attempted with humans. A writer/producer of Hannibal confirmed the one inside the pig was Will & Margot’s from last season.
I found Mason to be like a kid at Christmas finally getting that very special thing he has wanted for a long time. He has no idea what to do with Hannibal once he got him. “Am i going to torture you? Am i going to feed you to my pigs? I know! I’ll eat you with Will’s face!”
That whirring sound is what i assume wind sounds like in Hell.
So couple things.
First off I love your guys comments on the original Silence of the Lambs. Not sure if you guys are aware exactly how much trouble they had in the production of that movie. It’s truly amazing for its time to deal with what they did but still have it come out to be the amazingness that it is.
I really don’t think Chiyoh was necessary. Sadly. I would have liked more Pazzi or Margot. I’m more bothered that the body Will displayed wasn’t brought up at all again…
As for the pig, I think it’s more believable there was a surrogate the baby carried to third term, died, then put in the pig. So I agree with option one as well. I don’t see a baby being viable growing inside a pig… however… I wouldn’t put it past science to find a way.
Also, not sure if you guys picked up on the original leather face (Ed Gein) being the inspiration for Thomas Harris’s Buffalo Bill. He took the skin off of peoples’ faces and wore them like Buffalo Bill stealing skin to make a suit. I liked the fact Bryan Fuller got his buffalo Bill reference with Cordel’s skinned face on Mason Verger, even if it was indirectly 🙂
Love the podcast. I love all the symbolisms you guys find. 🙂
What a great documentary on Silence! I’d read most of that, but it’s always wonderful to see.
So… this first half got a little hate. People were a little down on this season, especially the first couple episodes. “Too artsy” and “too slow” and “too pretentious.” Now i get where people are coming from. I do, sort of. It was slow. It artsyness was turned up to 11. And it was pretentious (of course the show has always been a little pretentious). But all the things that people were complaining about were positives in my book. Plus, the show kind of went in a different direction than, i think, most people were expecting. I think people expected to pick up from the season 2 finale and show who lived and instead we get a whole episode with Hannibal and Bedelia and flashbacks and no sign of the main characters whose lives were in jeopardy.
Is this season perfect? No. By taking things slow and focusing on the characters post S2 finale, Inspector Pazzi and Chiyoh and Alana and Margot’s relationship kind of got pushed to the side. I would have liked to see more of the internal struggle of Inspector Pazzi. I would have liked to see more of Chiyoh ( i like that there is a little mystery to her though. I assume she got manipulated by Hannibal, but to what extent i don’t know.)
You got to respect a show that is willing to sacrifice new viewers in order to tell the story the way it wants to tell the story. Could the episodes have been planned out differently? I’m sure they could have. But I’m willing to be that this season will be better enjoyed when people binge it. Waiting a week to see the next episode might have been what killed this show. I think the episodes really do a good job at building off one another. Especially these last three or four episodes.
But now it is over. Hannibal is captured. Will was finally able to say he wants Hannibal out of his life for good. And the Red Dragon is coming. Good times.
I’m fine with a Hannibal & Bedelia bottle episode. My problem with the season was the terrible job of inconsistent characterization. The characters’ motivation sometimes seemed to be just “it’s what’s in the script”.
That reasoning for your complain about characterization is so… odd, to say a non insulting word. They’re characters from books, how in hell they would behave if not as they were written?
I was surprised to hear you guys say that sharing a blood supply would make it easier to have an interspecific pregnancy. I would imagine that would make it much, much more difficult, given that humans can’t be given animal blood and survive.
If a human baby were transplanted into a pig – AND the pig were given immunosuppressants – AND the baby were hooked up to a supply of nutrient-laden human blood – then I think it would be, if not actually possible, then at least theoretically plausible.
My favorite of the films is Manhunter, although I completely understand why most prefer Silence. What I prefer about Manhunter is in part its heavily stylized nature, with the wonderful use of color, glowing mirror eyes and slo-mo splotlit fantasy from Dolarhyde’s perspective, and the fantastic jump cut filled finale. The other part is that I prefer Dolarhyde to Jame Gumb. Jame Gumb is just another name for Buffalo Bill, a weirdo who just exists to scare us and creep us out. The Tooth Fairy/Red Dragon’s murders mostly precede the start of the film, so we see a lot more of Dolarhyde. His relationship with Reba is also radically different than Bill’s with “it”, which is more along the lines of the creepy serial killer having a terrified woman in peril we often deride trash tv for (although Silence is well done and not so trashy).
I think I’m younger than all of you. I saw Manhunter perhaps even after the third Hannibal book or movie was released (I only saw that superfluous film between seasons 2 & 3). The “Heartbeat” song at the end is terrible, but despite my distaste for 80s synths in much music, I thought it worked well for the score (as does John Carpenter’s or Tangerine Dream’s in Halloween or Sorceror). I didn’t find it too dated, although perhaps having never seen Miami Vice I didn’t notice the similarities. I first heard of any of the films when relatives told me Silence and Blue Velvet were the two scariest/creepiest movies. I think I saw Blue Velvet in full first, although I’d probably caught portions of Silence on tv before any of the aforementioned films.
Mason promised to feed Will to his pigs after he was attacked. But he should have had time to kidnap him between Mizumono and Will’s trip to Europe.
Jack was a witness to the Questura kidnapping. Hence the necessity of his death. The method was to disguise the culprit.
I HATED the phrase “identically different”. It’s a tautology because differences are symmetric. Nor are they polar opposites. Will’s goodness is not nearly so extreme as Hannibal’s evil.
If Mason was “nonplussed”, he would have been speechless.
Is Mason a threat to Margot in the book when she kills him?
When Will was alone in the dining room and Alana arrived, she could have freed him and I don’t recall if any reason was given for why she didn’t.
Will & Jack didn’t permit many of Hannibal’s murders in season 2, because he mostly stops once Will is released (he’s focused on getting Will to kill, and is prevented from killing Lounds). The exception is Tome-Wan when Hannibal kills some of Mason’s goons that attack him.
Hannibal never agreed to kill Mason for Margot. He suggested she do it herself when she could get away with it, or get someone else to do it. She may have intended Will to be that someone.
Even aside from Alana’s earlier opportunity to free Will, she and Margot could have killed Cordell during the surgery. Freeing Hannibal would seem to be a terrible & unneccessary idea a priori.
Alien was a metaphor for rape, although birth can tie into that. Eraserhead is more about male fears of infants & fatherhood.
I didn’t understand that Chiyoh was driven to resolve a mystery, which someone used to explain why she obstructs Will & Mason’s goons before she can meet Hannibal. Fuller claimed that she was acting as Hannibal’s cage by preventing him from killing, but she never once does that.
I have never felt the slightest bit bad for Hannibal. Mason torturing and/or eating him to death would have been more satisfying than the surrender we got. Hannibal just never ceases to come up with new ways to be the worst.
Hannibal’s shift to Saturday made sense because local news affiliates were complaining about the ratings lead in. It probably should have occurred earlier, or they should have stuck to Friday. It got the same ratings on Saturday now as it was getting Thursday, so a better use of scheduling real estate. It’s okay if Cooper doesn’t understand, there are other people whose jobs depend on understanding.
Breaking Bad split its final season because otherwise contracts mandated pay increases. The build up of the show’s ratings over the last few years convinced AMC to force Matthew Weiner to do the same thing for Mad Men, which doesn’t appear to have gotten a similar Netflix boost for the final stretch.
When Hannibal’s taken to Mason’s table in his little trolly, he ends up mirroring Gideon from the first episode; not only as a throwback to ‘I’m curious how you’ll feel when all this happens to you’ or whatever Gideon said, but physically, with only the one working limb left (right arm). Apparently it’s easier to eat oysters one-handed than snails.
Re: art, on Margot and Alana killing Mason–a tumblrite pointed out that it resembles Judith Slaying Holofernes (I reckon the Artemisia Gentilischi version, with both similarly-aged women working together and their arms crossing/interlocking–yay teamwork!)
Just noticed that Cordell *does* have plaster over his stitched up cheek–you can see it when he’s telling Will he’s not going to give him anaesthetic. It’s sort of flesh-coloured and transparent but non-shiny so it’s hard to spot.
Scientists are already doing pig to human transplants. The baby wasn’t meant to grow and live, Mason did that to mess with Margot, that’s all.