Hannibal (TV Series), finally a depiction that lives up to Silence of the Lambs

[Riva]

I thought breaking someone's neck would kill that person.

I should try it on someone.

 

[Totenkindly]

On his precision, cunning, control, expertise:
It's so perfect that he chooses a scalpel up his sleeve, just in case, when Mason comes for therapy. That is Hannibal. A fucking scalpel.

Hannibal while eating with Crawford: "Whomever is pursuing whom in this moment.....I intend to eat them."
nyuck nyuck

Yeah, I know. Only fucking Hannibal would have a razor-sharp scalpel there. Always be prepared, you know.

And yeah, that was the capstone line to that whole loaded discussion. Just hilarious.

RE: Breaking necks.

Breaking a neck doesn't actually kill anyone. You're just breaking vertebrae -- the ring of bones that protects your spinal column.

Once you break the neck, there is nothing there to protect the fragile nerves, which can be easily severed or damaged or squeezed by pressure from the inflammation created by breaking the bone.

That is what people die of, depending on which vertebrae have been damaged. The higher up the damage occurs, the more you move from losing voluntary movements (limbs, etc.) to involuntary (breathing, heartbeat, etc.)

EDIT: It's why, when you have a neck injury, they don't want you to move and they immobilize you ASAP. Your bones have been broken; but if you don't move, your nerves might not be harmed.

 

[Riva]

Yeah, I know. Only fucking Hannibal would have a razor-sharp scalpel there. Always be prepared, you know.

And yeah, that was the capstone line to that whole loaded discussion. Just hilarious.

RE: Breaking necks.

Breaking a neck doesn't actually kill anyone. You're just breaking vertebrae -- the ring of bones that protects your spinal column.

Once you break the neck, there is nothing there to protect the fragile nerves, which can be easily severed or damaged or squeezed by pressure from the inflammation created by breaking the bone.

That is what people die of, depending on which vertebrae have been damaged. The higher up the damage occurs, the more you move from losing voluntary movements (limbs, etc.) to involuntary (breathing, heartbeat, etc.)

Ah thank you for that.

 

[johnnyyukon]

RE: Breaking necks.

Breaking a neck doesn't actually kill anyone. You're just breaking vertebrae -- the ring of bones that protects your spinal column.

Once you break the neck, there is nothing there to protect the fragile nerves, which can be easily severed or damaged or squeezed by pressure from the inflammation created by breaking the bone.

That is what people die of, depending on which vertebrae have been damaged. The higher up the damage occurs, the more you move from losing voluntary movements (limbs, etc.) to involuntary (breathing, heartbeat, etc.)

I don't have the source right on me, but from what I understand, you can ABSOLUTELY kill someone that way, but it would take a very strong person with knowledge required to know right where to grip/push and twist. It can be done, but takes a LOT of torque. It's a myth that it's a myth. Oh yeah, I was reading about it in a Jiu Jitsu forum.

[MENTION=6164]Riva[/MENTION]
edit: but you're right, you'd have to break the vertebrae AND sever the spinal cord at the same time. Again, a LOT of force, but if you use your opponents body and/or your own body weight + gravity, and the right neck cranks/spine cranks or locks.

I don't know if you watch The Americans, but in one episode, a highly trained black ops soldier kills someone this way, and he doesn't do it like the typical movie, he gets a full wrap around grip with both arms and pulls down, just the right angle, hugs/squeezes and cranks, it actually looks awkward, but from what I know from Jiu Jitsu, seemed totally legitimate. Victim dies instantly. Plus there's stories of Marines or Navy SEALs doing it in real life. But doubt will be getting any evidence from that.

 

[Totenkindly]

I don't have the source right on me, but from what I understand, you can ABSOLUTELY kill someone that way, but it would take a very strong person with knowledge required to know right where to grip/push and twist. It can be done, but takes a LOT of torque. It's a myth that it's a myth. Oh yeah, I was reading about it in a Jiu Jitsu forum.

Well, I'm not sure how that changes what I said. Until you damage the nerves, you're just breaking bone, like breaking a leg. So you break the bones so that the nerves can then be damaged.

But I agree it takes more specialized ability. The way they show it in the movies all the time -- grabbing someone and just twisting/snapping their neckbones -- isn't as easy to do as they pretend.

EDIT: Yeah, what you said in your edit. You can do it if you know how and are precise... but the movies make it look cheesy-easy.

Here Hannibal does have precise knowledge. He broke Mason's neck at just the right place to make him a paraplegic. I guess he didn't actually want to kill him, but did want to disable him?

 

[johnnyyukon]

Well, I'm not sure how that changes what I said. Until you damage the nerves, you're just breaking bone, like breaking a leg. So you break the bones so that the nerves can then be damaged.

But I agree it takes more specialized ability. The way they show it in the movies all the time -- grabbing someone and just twisting/snapping their neckbones -- isn't as easy to do as they pretend.

EDIT: Yeah, what you said in your edit. You can do it if you know how and are precise... but the movies make it look cheesy-easy.

Here Hannibal does have precise knowledge. He broke Mason's neck at just the right place to make him a paraplegic. I guess he didn't actually want to kill him, but did want to disable him?

Yes the movies are ridiculous. A smallllllll few have gotten it right, but still surprises me, with all the knowledge on how to do something like that, it's not usually portrayed, even in todays movies/tv shows. You can also kill a man relatively easy doing a "rear naked choke" where you come from behind and with one arm, hook the neck in the crook and use your bicep to cut off one carotid artery and your forearm to cut off the other. I've seen this done correctly a few times (it's a move I DO know and have executed) but the choke is NEVER held long enough to kill someone. about 10 seconds for unconsciousness, 20 for brain damage, and anywhere from 1-5 minutes for brain death, due to lack of oxygen.

Hannibal couldn't kill him, because if he dies, Margot Verger gets no inheritance.

 

[Totenkindly]

Yeah, there are certain TV/movie tropes, one being "grab someone by the head, twist, and they die." Even if you don't know what you're doing. Silly.

Another is how you can go from starting to feel labor pains to delivering a baby within about 3 minutes, including active pushing for what amounts to only mere seconds. Most women are in labor for hours, sometimes even longer than a day. It can also take time to push out the baby. I consider this a "time" issue -- since TV shows and movies run from about 30-120 minutes, they can't afford to be realistic.

The other is how long it takes to kill someone by suffocating them. The movies and TV show someone dying from air loss in about 15-30 seconds. I think if you block blood to the brain (not just choke the windpipe, but preventing the blood flow from reaching the brain), then yes, ten seconds -- kind of like those reports of how long a human head can last after being decapitated, it's about ten seconds from anecdotes. But the person will start breathing again if they're still alive, if you let up; it takes a good 4-5 minutes.

This is why strangulation murders are so bad. you can shoot someone in the head in less than a second of rage or fear, and you can't take it back. But to kill someone through manual strangulation, you have to really want them to die. You don't "suffocate someone" by accident.

 

[johnnyyukon]

This is why strangulation murders are so bad. you can shoot someone in the head in less than a second of rage or fear, and you can't take it back. But to kill someone through manual strangulation, you have to really want them to die. You don't "suffocate someone" by accident.

Yeah, good point. Only a cold blooded killer could do that, or someone on meth, or perhaps a disarmed soldier in a survival situation. It would be quiet. But I read that elite soldiers can dispatch silently with a knife, and severe the spinal cord at the neck. Hardcore, dude.

 

[Totenkindly]

Scripts: Looks like someone captured the closed captioning for all the hannibal episodes, so if you're trying to remember a line, you can skim these scripts.

They didn't specify which character says what, but at least you can search on and find particular lines that you can't totally recall.

Hannibal Episode Scripts | SS

 

[93JC]

I don't think Hannibal will cannibalize [Dr. Bloom] or anything, I just think she's in for a well-earned "I told you so."

 

[Totenkindly]

"And, oh, Dr. Bloom? You got a call back from the lab.... you're pregnant."

 

[johnnyyukon]

"And, oh, Dr. Bloom? You got a call back from the lab.... you're pregnant."

Wouldn't that be Rosemary's Baby?

 

[Totenkindly]

Wouldn't that be Rosemary's Baby?

No, that one's inside Rosemary.

(Although "demonspawn" comes to mind.)

 

[Totenkindly]

Well, I love the fact my son's coming to visit tonight through Sunday and then I'll see the rest of my kids as well...

... but it means I need to postpone watching the season finale of Hannibal until MONDAY. Yikes and awaaaaaay!

 

[johnnyyukon]

Well, I love the fact my son's coming to visit tonight through Sunday and then I'll see the rest of my kids as well...

... but it means I need to postpone watching the season finale of Hannibal until MONDAY. Yikes and awaaaaaay!

And that's why I'm never having kids. I'm NOT missing Hannibal.

 

[Ginkgo]

So here's an interesting perspective -

Hannibal Lecter is a known quantity. He is the thinking man's boogeyman, made larger than life first in Thomas Harris' novels, then in a variety of films. The character was, is, iconic. So when NBC announced it was developing a series revolving around the character in 2011, conventional wisdom declared it a terrible idea. After all we knew about Hannibal Lecter, how would it be possible to revisit the character and his world in a new and interesting way?

The answer, perhaps unsurprisingly, was through upsetting expectations.

It's a shockingly obvious solution, perhaps, but one that has worked gangbusters for the series now finishing its sophomore season. The show, once thought doomed to languish as an unnecessary rehash of an overexposed story, instead found resurrection and transformation by exploring ... well, resurrection and transformation. There was horror and there was cannibalism, sure, but they were flanked by examinations of friendship and fidelity, trust and redemption.

But perhaps what would have been most surprising to those who wondered what was left to explore in this story of brutality is Hannibal's exploration of love, particularly between Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham, the criminal profiler pursuing him. Though Tumblr may have you believe otherwise—respect, 'shippers — Will and Hannibal are not in love. No, the love Hannibal has for Will is something so much bigger than that. The term "agape," or unconditional love, was co-opted by Christianity to describe the love that God has for humanity, and Hannibal takes that idea one step further: What if instead of referring to the love Christ has for man, agape instead referred to the love the Antichrist has for a man? It's just the most notable reversal on a show chock-full of them. But they all lead back to this one.

It's true that the focus on this relationship can reveal some of the show's shortcomings — Hannibal can become so focused on the relationship between the two male leads that the story's women end up a bit underserved. But the show's position with regard to gender stereotypes is far more nuanced than a simple eclipsing of the women by the men might suggest.

This central relationship between Will and Hannibal is a far cry from male/male friendships as typically seen on TV. In place of the posturing and testosterone-laden exchanges the medium often favors, the bulk of Hannibal's male bonding takes place in the refined confines of a therapist's office or around an immaculate dinner table.

More than that, Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham are both characterized in a fashion that decidedly feminizes aspects of their personalities without diminishing their overt masculinity. Lecter is a complicated man with sophisticated tastes. (Of a sort.) His hobbies are often delicate: elaborately cooked cuisine (of a sort); composing on his harpsichord. And that's to say nothing of his clotheshorse tendencies. Even the man's kill-suit is tailored within an inch of its life.

On the other hand, Will Graham is a brilliant criminal profiler who excels at his work because he literally feels too much. He's too empathetic — and not in the cliched "rogue cop who cares too much (about being right)" kind of way. No, Will suffers in an "empathy disorder that enables him to feel the feelings of every person" kind of way. It's no surprise that outside of fishing, Will's main hobby seems to be collecting stray dogs to add to his merry band of fuzzy misfits.

Often, male relationships are depicted exclusively through gruff exchanges of grudging respect. But here, affection is tackled head on, as are accusations. As foreign as the concept may seem with regard to a serial killer and the man he is painstakingly trying to manipulate into becoming one, it's not much of a stretch to say that the burgeoning friendship of Lecter and Graham is underpinned with love.

So at heart, the show's primary bond is the love between a cannibalistic culinary fashionista and a crazy cat/dog person. On the surface, that reads like the worst episode of Sex and the City ever, but it's that inversion of the bluntly obvious masculine power struggles of most of television that allows Hannibal's main relationship to bloom into something new and different where something like True Detective shrivels on the "been there, done that" vine.

Lecter views Graham with a gentle camaraderie that fuels all of his manipulations. In fact, this gregarious expression of his love is spread equally across most of the characters on this show, if evidenced only by the fact that he hasn't killed them yet. The characters exist, yes, as people whom Hannibal can manipulate to his ends, but Hannibal can manipulate anyone. That Alana Bloom and Jack Crawford and, yes, Will Graham, are still alive is a function of the respect and admiration Hannibal holds for them. For now.

In Hannibal love — affection — is always underwritten with manipulation. The manipulator cares too much for the manipulated not to bend him to his will if it's for the best. Hannibal manipulates Will because he recognizes Will as someone special and rare, a potential equal. Will manipulates Hannibal because, well, he's a serial killer. But a fascinating serial killer.

Ultimately it is Hannibal's love for Will that drives the show. Perhaps the purest form of agape on television, it's not something born from sexuality but from inception. Hannibal loves Will the way a god loves his creation, unwavering and true, with pride and tenderness.

This pious love is also the center of Hannibal's most blatant, and most daring, undermining of expectations. In interviews, showrunner Bryan Fuller has mentioned that it's entirely possible that Hannibal Lecter is the devil himself made manifest. And while such a revelation would not be far from the realm of possibility given Lecter's nearly supernatural gifts, the show often paints the character in a far more divine light.

Getting to that bottom of this particular duality requires a long, hard look (or at least a brief, simplified look) at the framework of early 20th century German theology. (Naturally.) Rudolf Otto introduced the idea of the numinous in his book The Idea of the Holy in 1917, in which he describes it as the concept that underlies all religion and has three parts: mysterium, tremendum and fascinans. Mysterium encapsulates that which is "wholly other" and exists as something completely separate from ordinary life; tremendum is that which terrifies and inspires awe, that sense of nothingness in the face of ultimate power. That leaves fascinans, the element in which charm and attractiveness win out even in the face of said terror.

You can see where this is going.

Intentional or otherwise, Hannibal Lecter is not the devil; he is god. He is that force in his universe that exists in concert with but still wholly outside the world at large. He is something unnatural. Uncanny. He is the danger. He is the unknowable presence lurking in the shadows. He is omnipotent. He is omniscient. And he will beguile. He will persuade. He will manipulate. He will undermine your fear with fascination and your seduction will be your undoing.

Devil as god, manipulation as love, feminine as masculine, these are how Hannibal crafts a story and re-imagines a known quantity. And in doing so, Fuller et al. have succeeded in making not just a cogent adaptation but one of the finest dramas on television, all by tapping into the inherent terror of being made over not in God's image, but in Lucifer's.

God, The Devil And 'Hannibal' : Monkey See : NPR

 

[johnnyyukon]

Ok, I have Mr. Snuggles, time for the Finale

 

[johnnyyukon]

A few observations:

Huge Spoilers

For a show that doesn't have that many action sequences, when they happen they are WICKED.

Move your fucking ASS Alana!!!!

OMFG Alana, you are a fucking idiot, you don't check your gun for fucking BULLETS!!???? (sadly, this is believable)

Hey uh, responders, backup, could you like, get over to Hannibal's house please? Aaanny minute now.

Hannibal is a bad man.

Why was I not that surprised to see Abigail alive? Well, I know, she was Hannibal's Misha, and Will's surrogate daughter.

EPIC Finale.

What gets out blood?

 

[lue]

This episode is so quotable.

And Hannibal's handwriting couldn't be any other way.

 

[lue]

A few observations:

Huge Spoilers

For a show that doesn't have that many action sequences, when they happen they are WICKED.

Move your fucking ASS Alana!!!!

OMFG Alana, you are a fucking idiot, you don't check your gun for fucking BULLETS!!???? (sadly, this is believable)

Hey uh, responders, backup, could you like, get over to Hannibal's house please? Aaanny minute now.

Hannibal is a bad man.

Why was I not that surprised to see Abigail alive? Well, I know, she was Hannibal's Misha, and Will's surrogate daughter.

EPIC Finale.

What gets out blood?

So freaking wicked. I was cussing her out, until she pulled out more bullets.

Towards the end, I was like, ok like four people have called 911--where are they?

What is a misha?

And I agree about it being an epic finale.

p.s. The scene where Hannibal stabs Will was ridiculous (you could see the hurt on Hannibal's face).