A Deliciously Disturbing Meal

You guys.  You guys!  You watched Hannibal, right?  RIGHT???  The season finale actually occurred the other week while I was, as Arsenic Pie termed it, decamped to parts unknown, but finally caught up now that I am back home.  And damn.  That’s how you do a season finale. 

"I feel like this won't end well for all of us..."

We’ve talked about Hannibalhere a couple of times in the past.  It remains the show that I am continually most flummoxed by on television if only because I have no idea how it is that this show is airing on network TV and has not yet been pulled by the censors or cancelled by the network.  Hannibalis artful in its presentation of murder.  It spends just as much time focused on the presentation and styling of the cinematically murdered dead bodies as it does on the cuisine.  The fact that it often merges those two worlds is completely intentional.  This is, after all, a show about a serial-killing cannibal. 

Creator Bryan Fuller is known for highly stylized television (he’s the mind behind Wonderfalls¸ Pushing Daisies, and Dead Like Me) but that style tends to be hyper-saturated and fairytale-like.  Hannibal, by contrast, is just as visually stylized but is far more grounded in the real world.  All those whimsical colors are de-saturated and made cold and steel-y.  The visual representations of Will’s inner mind, including the frightening representations of the Stag Monster that Will sees as the emblem of his relationship with Hannibal and his own growing inner madness, are muted, dark and disorienting to say nothing of the insanely creative and visually stunning ways in which people die on this show, which has included a human body being made into a string instrument so that the killer can "play" the body's vocal chords with a bow and bodies with the skin of their backs flayed and then displayed like wings while the bodies are posed like angels.  I mention all of this because these aspects of the show came into pitch-perfect place during season two’s finale.

Human being grown into a tree. That...can't feel good.  

For those needing a brief catch-up, Hannibal the show has been following the early years of Hannibal Lector (Mads Mikkelsen) during his time as a respected psychologist, aesthete, and member of Baltimore society.  His friend, FBI profiler Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) uses Hannibal to care for Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), a fellow profiler who is uncanny in his ability to understand killers but whose ability to do so has made him emotionally and mentally vulnerable.  Of course, turning Will over to Hannibal Lector for safe keeping is like asking the Republican Party to watch after women’s rights initiatives.  Which is to say, Hannibal is essentially on a psychological feeding frenzy with Will, distorting him throughout season one and manipulating him into his own deranged psyche.  

Season two follows Will’s descent into madness and suspicion that his friend is not the kindly man we believe, but instead is “The Chesapeake Ripper”, a serial killer known for a highly inventive and poetic murdering style. At the start of season two, Will has been incarcerated in a mental institution based on Hannibal’s convincing the FBI into believing that Will is the Ripper.  Will is eventually released and begins a dangerous game of cat and mouse with Hannibal, trying to convince him that he has become Hannibal’s protégé and is, like Hannibal, a superior being able to murder and maim just as poetically and meaningfully. All the while, Will is playing double-agent by working with Jack Crawford to bring Hannibal to justice.  Or is he? 

Will’s madness and instability is a key theme throughout the season and it’s left mostly ambiguous as to whether or not Will is truly working with Jack or has become an honest to God killer like Hannibal is training him to be.  The back and forth culminates in a season finale where everything comes to a head – Jack confronts Hannibal in his home, attempting to bring him down but in the process is attacked by Hannibal and possibly left to die from a mortal stab to the neck in Hannibal’s own pantry.  Fellow psychologist and sometimes-friend to Will Alana Bloom is shoved out of an upper story window in Hannibal’s home and left to die, broken and bleeding in the rain on the sidewalk.  Will himself is stabbed by Hannibal and, you guessed it, left to die in the kitchen (of all places) after coming clean about his attempt to bring Hannibal in.  Hannibal himself displays what might be the most unhinged moments of his life as we’ve seen them so far in this series, clearly hurt by the betrayal of Will whom he has come to invest so much in.  “I gave you a precious gift,” Hannibal tells a dying Will, “but you didn’t want it.”  The homoeroticism of Hannibal’s attack on Will, the intermingling of their relationship with each other, and the almost tenderness with which Hannibal carries out his final sentencing on Will is one of the reasons why I am amazed this show is still on the air.

Subtext entirely intended.

Season two ends with Hannibal leaving his own home as three of our main characters lie extremely close to death behind him.  Hannibal walks off into a cleansing rain, away from the police who are about to arrive and discover exactly what has gone down.  His life under the radar is over; Hannibal knows this.  And so our final shot is of him fleeing on an airplane to France with a surprising traveling companion: Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier, his own therapist who had previously been open with Will about her beliefs that Hannibal was dangerous and Will innocent of the crimes he was accused of.  Why Bedelia is on that plane and why she smiles so lovingly at Hannibal in the final shot given how clearly terrified she has been of him throughout the season is one of the mysteries that Fuller has promised we will learn in season three.

A special note about Bedelia Du Maurier – she’s played by Gillian Anderson at her iciest.  Everything about Anderson’s concept of this character, a mysterious former colleague of Hannibal who has been seeing him as her only patient after being attacked herself at some point in her past by another patient, is dead on.  Everything about her communicates a frozen person, from her almost white-blond hair that never moves to her slow, controlled walk.  This is a woman who has been traumatized and is so terrified that she’s concluded the only way to stay safe is to remain utterly still.  Anderson is an amazing actress and manages to make that iciness come off as damage, rather than bitchiness.

But at least she has a well-apportioned kitchen?

Hannibal will definitely be back next year and I already can’t wait.  The focus will reportedly be on Will Graham’s hunt for Hannibal, leading into the events from the books that fans of the characters will already know.  (The first book about Hannibal Lector, Red Dragon, is set after the events we’ve seen so far in Hannibal with the most famous volume, Silence of the Lambs, occurring after that.  Fuller has said that the show has a plan to include the events of both of those stories, including that most famous compatriot of the good Dr. Lector, Clarice Starling.)  Hannibalprobably isn’t one of those shows that I can tell you to start watching if you’re not already inclined – the disturbing visuals coupled with the general concept are high bars for folk who aren’t particularly interested in this genre.  But if you can stomach (heh) the concept, the show is so well worth the watching that you won’t regret the attempt. 

When you were a kid, your mom likely told you just to try a few bites of the food on your plate before you could say you didn’t like it.  Appropriately enough, the same is true for Hannibal. 

True Blood Special - All Shirts Half Off!

So, the True Blood episode "At Last" this week finally brought us back to some of the classic Season 1-era good stuff, with all the vampire-lovin' and crazy V Juice hallucinations and some good, old fashioned slaughter. It took us four episodes, but we're finally getting to the good stuff, people. 

We begin with Sookie and Ben distracting themselves from their nascent hormones to notice that Jason’s “I’m Totally Fine It’s In No Way A Problem” related sickness from last episode is, go figure, a problem now that he’s passed out on the floor. While Sookie goes to call 911, Ben vamps out (!!!)and bites into his own arm to feed Jason his blood. Why Ben – you sly dog you! So that’s why Sookie is so into you.  And it couldn’t possibly be in no way shape or form because you’re totally maybe not really Warlow. I mean, there’s absolutely no possible way our blonde heroine could be fooled by a handsome man who’s secretly the big bad, right?

Oh. Right. 

Nora is fleeing but is stopped by Grandpa. Nora has figured out that Warlow is the only one who can kill Lilith, but no one knew before now due to a mistranslation in the Vampire Bible. Don’t you just kinda wish there was also something about wearing mixed textiles or selling your daughter into slavery for not being a virgin as well? Anyway, It’s right about then that Nora realizes she’s talking to a yummy, yummy faerie and Grandpa has to literally blast her half a mile away, right into a troop of the Gov’s armed men, who bag and tag Nora like it’s their job. Of course, that’s because it is.

Back at the house, Jason has made an astonishing recovery and is back to normal in, literally, seconds. Ben feigns ignorance as Grandpa returns to remind Ben that Sookie is the one who is Fey and needs protecting, not Jason. Tough love, Jason. Don’t look to Grandpa to be your new father figure.

The werewolf pack is finishing up their meal of Hipsters Au Gratin when Martha notices that Sam made away with Emma. Alcide orders the wolves to give chase. Sidebar – did the writers this season just decide to throw out all of Alcide’s characterization from the past three years? He’s approaching serious dick-itude. Sam is helping the wounded Nicole get to Lafayette who’s waiting with the getaway car.

"I know. We're almost halfway through the season and we're both stuck in this plotline."

Ginger, meanwhile, is doing her best to keep the Governor talking, but his patience is up and his men raid her house with “silver oxide” tear gas. Ginger gets yet another chance to scream her trademark scream as the Governor orders her taken to the Camp as well. Given how often she’s been glamoured, the Camp may actually be restful for her. Eric and Pam, however, have already escaped to find Tara, who has says she’s hidden Willa at the county fairground.

At the Bellefleur’s, the Quintuplets are listening into Terry’s thoughts about Patrick, the dead fire-monster Marine from last season. Terry tries to tell them he’s just sad that Patrick had to go away, but the girls are like, “Um… we’re mind-readers. You killed him, dude.” These four are rapidly becoming the Mean Girls of Bon Temps with all their giggling and laser-hand blasting. Andy arrives to put the girls to bed. “You haven’t slept since you were three,” he tells them. He kisses them goodnight and turns out the light and closes the door, which is right when the next growth spurt hits and the girls instantly mature to late teenagers. “I don’t want to stay in bed,” one of them says. “We might be 30 by the time we wake up.” They decide to do what teenage girls do best – sneak out and find a rager somewhere.

"Maybe a pillow fight will break out while we're still developmentally age-appropriate for one."

At Sookie’s, Jason is working out (shirtless, naturally) and managing pull up reps in the upper 200s. Hrm… Sookie is tidying up the living  room when she sees a drop of blood on the floor. She remembers Grandpa showing her last episode how the blood that was all over the slaughtered faerie Go-Go club reacted strangely to faerie light and this drop does the same. Remember how Ben was supposedly walking around for a day before finding the place and I was asking if it was bad writing or a plot point? Guess we know which.

The Quintuplets meanwhile have stolen Andy’s police cruiser and headed to the liquor store in Aunt Arlene’s best “gal on the town” clothes, unaware that they’re being followed by Bill and Jessica. Inside the liquor store, the girls tell the skeezy cashier that they forgot their IDs, but they’re totes 27. The cashier says if they want to follow him to the back there’s a “little known trick of anatomy” that he knows that can tell him for sure if they’re of age. Jessica saves the day, glamouring the cashier into leaving. Jessica tries to bond with the kids before inviting them back to her place, but the girls notice that she “smells funny” and isn’t like them. Jessica admits that she’s a vampire, but tells them not to worry because she’s “Like, totally old and I can totally control myself and I have, like, a ton of faerie friends.” Sounds good to the girls! (See my repeated comments re: faeries and their lack of critical thinking skills.)

Jason, meanwhile, is shaving (shirtless, naturally). With Ben’s help. While Barry White style music plays in the background.  “Do you want to do me now?” Ben asks, winking. Jason lathers his face with shaving cream before accidently cutting Ben’s neck with the razor, causing a trickle of blood. Ben asks him to taste the blood and Jason moves in, mouth open, tongue out aaaaaaaand you TOTALLY knew this was a weird sex dream, right? Jason bolts upright in his bed, looking hilariously freaked out.

Ho-yay ahoy!

Bill talks one of the girls into letting him take some of her blood, under the guise of it being a foreplay thing. He then brings the blood to the professor that Jessica brought in last episode who’s being held in a makeshift lab in the basement. Bill asks him to use the girl’s blood to replicate this blood, just like he did with human blood to make True Blood, telling the professor “failure is not an option.”

Eric has found Willa in the fairgrounds. She reiterates that she’s on his side, not being happy with what her father is doing and she wants to help in any way that she can. Eric digs a grave in the earth and helps her into it before joining her (shirtless, naturally). “Is it going to hurt?” She whimpers. “Not the way I do it,” he responds before biting her, spilling blood all over her white nightgown. He then uses her crucifix to open his own neck and has her drink from him. FINALLY, TRUE BLOOD! Only took you, like six years to get to this classic dangerous, Dracula-y, sexy, sacrilegious vampire stuff. 

Jeez, way to make a guy wait for it, you know?

The next day, Sam and Nicole are patching up Nicole and breaking the bad news that her Vampire Unity group was killed. By Werewolves. There’s a joke in there, but I’m not sure exactly where it is. Nicole tries to leave town, but Sam points out that’s ridiculously stupid given that there’s a whole pack of werewolves on her tail that can follow her anywhere.

Sookie finds Ben at his hotel (shirtless, naturally). She offers to fix him supper for his trouble, but it’s totally not a date. Actually, it’s probably totally not since Sookie has uncharacteristically seemed to figure out that Ben’s not being totally upfront here.

Jason finds Grandpa at the kitchen table and decides to “coyly” ask about his sexytime dream. Grandpa immediately knows what’s going on, amusedly noting that Ben is “a handsome fella.” It could all be a good opportunity for a Bon Temps It Gets Better video, when it occurs to Grandpa that if a vampire could turn a Fey, the end result could be a vampire who can be out in the sun. Grandpa and Jason find Ben in his hotel room about to get into the shower (he apparently put a shirt on after talking to Sookie, however quickly takes it off, naturally) and move in for the kill. They try to ambush him in the shower, but Ben is already behind them, taking Grandpa out with a light blast and glamoring Jason into believing that they never found him, and suddenly speaking in an English accent. Jason is sent to the car, leaving Grandpa with Ben who feeds on him.

Andy Bellefeur is going nuts looking for his missing daughters and wants to put out an APB on “four Caucasian girls between 4 and 7 feet tall, 60 and 260lbs. and the ages of 10 and 50.” Arlene and Terry correctly point out that they’re probably just being teenagers and his reactions are exactly what parents go through. They’re not wrong, but, as usual, they’re so not right at the same time.

Sookie has set the table all nice and Southern-like, however like a true Southern Gothic novel character, she’s got a bottle of liquid silver poison next to her recipe box.  Upstairs she makes herself pretty (shirtless, naturally. Hey, everyone gets a little sumthin’ sumthin’ in this episode).

"Let me show you how a shirtless scene is done, boys."

In the lab, the Professor has figured out that the girl’s blood is highly unstable and will turn into regular human blood once outside of the girl’s bodies. The Professor refuses to work as long as Bill is holding anyone else hostage, but Bill’s not hearing it, throwing the Prof to the ceiling with his brain.

Willa, meanwhile, has awoken and is feeding off a young man until Eric tears her away, handing the young man some money as “short notice hazard pay.” Willa wants to either hunt or have sex, but Eric sends her home to her father. Eric tells her that in 1000 years, she’s only the second vampire he’s ever made and it wasn’t done lightly – if her father can see that vampires were once human and aren’t something to be hunted, it will be worth it. Have to say, I can’t see this going the way he thinks it’s going to.

Pam and Tara are trying to find an underground speakeasy for a willing human meal and fighting about Willa. Tara is pissed at Pam’s “This is war” attitude and runs away just as Pam is shot by an approaching Army guard and taken captive.

In the Governor’s mansion, Sarah Newlin is trying to distract the Governor from his missing daughter. Sarah, it seems, has embraced the mistress-y parts of modern politics. Just then, Willa arrives, and tells her father he has to stop persecuting “us vampires” and if he still loves her, he will call off his plans. “This is my daughter” he says, seemingly willing to agree. Too bad he’s still got that wound from earlier, leaking fresh blood which just sets Willa off. Thankfully, Sarah’s there to shoot Willa down like a dog. “You’ve got to send her to the camp,” Sarah tells the Gov.

On the bridge, Ben is feeding Grandpa his blood when Grandpa makes the connection that Ben is Warlow. Ben tells Grandpa that what made him spare Grandpa all those years ago was the struggle that he feels between his own dark and light impulses before opening the portal that he came through and tossing Grandpa into it.

Sam and Nicole hide out in a hotel room as Nicole has serious survivor guilt over being the last hipster standing and Sam is just now thinking about how Luna died in his arms. Well, this is a good time to make out, right?

Sookie is about to give up on Ben having stood her up when he shows up at the door with flowers. She serves him the plate of silver-infused chicken which he eats with gusto, confounding Sookie.

At Bill’s house, the girls are getting restless and ready to go and no amount of Jessica’s dress up clothes is going to keep them here. Jessica suddenly looses control and lunges at one of them, biting her neck. 

"None of you even have names. I'm just going my part to clean up the character roster."

Andy and Jason, meanwhile, have found Andy’s abandoned cruiser and the cashier who can’t recall the girls ever coming by. Jason says that its possible he was glamoured “or he might just be an idiot.” Right on both counts, Jason. Jason lets slip that faeries are catnip to vampires, sending Andy running for his car.

At Bill’s house, Jessica has fallen off the wagon in a major way. Like, in a “sorry I ate all of the Sheriff’s daughters, but at least we’ve resolved this aging plotline before they got to middle age” kind of way. Bill finds her sobbing over their bloody bodies, praying that they’re not dead.

Sookie and Ben are getting friendly on the couch. This being Sookie and Ben being a vampire, “friendly” means going from a kiss to straddling and unzipping within literally seconds. (I never have dates like this.) The shirts come off one last time (naturally) and Ben is about to get lucky when Sookie whispers all soft and sexy-like into his ear, “You can get the fuck off me now, Warlow.” We see she’s got her Faerie Nuclear Light Bomb ready to go in her hand as we cut to black.

"The writers never give me moments of awesome. Don't take this from me, Jerk."

Primeval: New World

You gotta hand it to SyFy. Why spend your own money making an expensive supernatural or fantasy show when you can just get some Canadian stuff cheap and slap it on your network as an "original series?" And let's be honest, they totally blew their allowance making Defiance which probably costs 1 million dollars per episode in silicone prosthetics alone.

I know about prosthetics because I watch Face Off!

In the past few weeks, SyFy debuted two new summer series, Sinbad (which fellow TV Slut Arsenic Pie will be reviewing soon) and Primeval: New World. Both are international imports like Lost Girl, but unfortunately, both are kind of terrible.

If a show called Primeval seems vaguely familiar to you, it's because it was first a British series. It lasted several seasons and involved a group of scientist and military types that investigated fractures in time and space (called "anomalies") in London that allowed prehistoric creatures to wander into our modern era. Basically, someone at the BBC was like, "we need a show about dinosaurs rampaging through downtown London" and this is the concept that was agreed upon.

The original Primeval was actually a fairly entertaining program. It was fun escapism and the characters were interesting. Also: dinosaurs. They are always a good thing. CHOMP. The original Primeval also managed to pull off one of the most ballsy, unexpected storyline twists in its second season that had me breathless. Even if you didn't like the changes (I won't spoil anything here in case you want to check the series out on Netflix streaming), you gotta give the show props for being willing to go there.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Primeval: New World. I don't think Primeval was all that successful in its 62 episode run, but apparently the people in Canada really like dinosaurs. So they just took the same basic concept (anomalies opening up with dinosaurs coming through) and moved it across the pond. There's some attempt to connect it to the original series, one of the characters show up in the pilot and in later episodes, but for the most part, Primeval: New World is operating independently.

"Oh, excuse me sir, you dropped something back there...."

And that's kind of the problem. In the original British series, you followed a cohesive team of people trying to contain the monster threat. But on Primeval: New World it's just a bunch of random people all running around trying to figure out why there are dinosaurs in Canada.

The main character, Evan, first encountered the anomalies six years earlier when his wife was eaten by  T-Rex. Whoops! Good thing he's a millionaire with his own tech company and can create a special R+D division dedicated to investigating the anomalies. He's aided by some folks from within his company and a few people from the local Predator Control division (is that a thing?), but they aren't a coherent team by any stretch of the imagination. This means that the first few episodes basically consist of everyone conducting their own investigation and then running into each other at the anomaly sites being all, "what are you doing here?" I'm sure the point of the first season is watching them all come together into a badass group of dino hunters, but who's got the time for that?

All in all, it's somewhat entertaining I suppose, but the didn't hold my attention. The acting is kind of hit or miss and like I said, there are some basic plotting problems. You're much better off watching the original Primeval which is available on Netflix streaming.

Well, they get points for putting feathers on their dinosaurs. Science!

Primeval: New World airs on SyFy Saturday nights at 10pm.