Hannibal, the TV adaptation of the Hannibal Lecter books which resulted in the movies The Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon, airs its last-ever episode tonight (Saturday night). In its three seasons it's been heralded as a different kind of TV you don't see over broadcast. In fact, many critics have loved it so much that, arguably, it contends with The Good Wife as The Best Free TV Show In America.
I don't get it. At all. I finally got around to seeing some episodes this year after hearing that this acclaimed show was axed by NBC and, try as they might, the showrunners could not get a last-second reprieve to live on in new television media like Netflix or Hulu. It was on life support anyway, since this season was shunted to the summer (moreover, the first two seasons premiered mid- or late-season). Knowing that Hannibal was about to die, and seeing that I didn't have much to do in the summer, I finally checked it out.
What I saw was remarkable -- remarkable in the sense that it frustrated me in two ways, each of which almost diametrically oppose the other. I could not and do not understand the story, which is what I get for jumping in the third season. But it was scene after scene of lines spoken in very quiet, very sterile rooms, combining to form soliloquies of stuff that was pretentious whenever I could understand it. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the violence begins. There's a scalpel slicing into a face. There's a guy whose head is shoved into a large tank where, coincidentally, an electric eel enters the guy's suddenly wide mouth and ostensibly chokes him to death. And then, in last week's penultimate series ep, a bad guy runs on all fours towards a man he has tied to a chair and bites that guy's tongue off, but not before stretching it by two or three feet. Are tongues that long? Are they that elastic? And do they have the consistency of taffy?
As far as I can tell, that is Hannibal in a nutshell. Either it's haltingly purple prose or it's revolting gore. And that's what pisses me off and eventually forced me to turn it off. It grossed me out whenever it didn't bore me to death. And this juxtaposition really tests my patience in another way. These highfalutin monologues, replete with pauses as large as the Octomom's, come off as high art, which is something broadcast TV sorely needs. But then it hits below the belt, with gruesome scenes never before seen over the airwaves, ostensibly to attract the horror crowd. That is low art -- very, very low art. So, in my humble opinion, Hannibal wants it both ways. Hey, you either aspire to be Shakespeare or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. You make no damn sense if you try to do both.
The finale aired in Canada Thursday. I read the synopsis on Wikipedia, and suffice it to say, the show stays true to its maddening (in more ways than one) self all the way to the final scene. (SPOILER ALERT!!!) There is shown a stately dinner table with place settings for three. A woman is the only one there, seemingly waiting for the other two guests to arrive so they can begin to eat the meal that has already been presented. The meal? Her own leg.
I want to puke over the description. But truthfully, that whole scene actually sounds quite tedious. You "Fannibals" can have it. All of it.
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