SecondoHannibal : Season 3 Episode 3
The series is based on characters and elements appearing in Thomas Harris' novels Red Dragon and Hannibal, with focus on the relationship between FBI special investigator Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) and Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen), a forensic psychiatrist destined to become Graham's most cunning enemy. The episode revolves around Will Graham travelling to Hannibal Lecter's childhood home in Lithuania in order to discover more about him. There, he discovers a woman that makes some revelations about Lecter's sister.
SecondoHannibal : Season 3 Episode 3
In October 2014, Bryan Fuller announced that the second episode of the season would be titled "Primavera".[1] In March 2015, Fuller announced that Vincenzo Natali would direct the episode.[2] NBC would confirm the title in May 2015, with producer Angelina Burnett, Fuller and executive producer Steve Lightfoot writing the episode and Natali directing. This was Fuller's 24th writing credit, Burnett's first writing credit, Lightfoot's 13th writing credit, and Natali's fifth directing credit.[3]
According to Fuller, the repercussions of the second season finale would not be revealed until "episode 2 or 3." The episode reveals Jack Crawford's fate, revealing he survived his wounds.[4] In September 2014, Laurence Fishburne confirmed that despite his commitment to Black-ish, he would return as Crawford on the third season.[5]
At the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, Fuller confirmed that Lady Murasaki would make her debut in the episode.[6] In October 2014, Tao Okamoto was announced to play Lady Murasaki, "who possesses an alluring and classical beauty with a dark secret."[7] However, Fuller clarified that Okamoto would play Chiyoh, Lady Murasaki's attendant.[8]
The episode was watched by 1.69 million viewers, earning a 0.5/2 in the 18-49 rating demographics on the Nielsen ratings scale. This means that 0.5 percent of all households with televisions watched the episode, while 2 percent of all households watching television at that time watched it.[9] This was a slight increase from the previous episode, which was watched by 1.66 million viewers with a 0.5/2 in the 18-49 demographics.[10] With these ratings, Hannibal ranked third on its timeslot and eleventh for the night in the 18-49 demographics, behind an the 2015 U.S. Open Golf, Aquarius, Elementary rerun, Mistresses, a The Odd Couple rerun, a Mom rerun, The Astronaut Wives Club, a Mike & Molly rerun, Dateline NBC, and a The Big Bang Theory rerun.
Molly Eichel of The A.V. Club gave the episode an "A-" and wrote, "What's so impressive about 'Secondo' is it allows the show to take us back into Lecter's past, back to his origin, but refuses to give the audience, or Hannibal, an easy out. Hannibal was never a victim. He was always in control. So thoroughly in control, in fact, that he's used this explanation of his tragic childhood to control the lives of others."[13]
Brian Moylan of The Guardian wrote, "The most intoxicating aspect of Hannibal has always been the creepy atmosphere, the shrieking score, and the swamps of blood that the characters are wading through in a bleak landscape. This episode was a little bit more Gothic allure than it was substance, but I'll take being bewitched by an episode of Hannibal than most other shows anyday."[17] Keith Staskiewicz of Entertainment Weekly wrote, "A true communion. Hannibal comes to the inevitable realization that the only way he can truly forgive Will is to eat him, an act that's for once not out of dominance, but pure terrifying love."[18] Chuck Bowen of Slant Magazine wrote, "This is all growing rather fussily symbolic, occasionally bordering on the tedious, as parallels upon parallels are affixed to the primary thread existing between the leads."[19]
SecondoSeason 3, Episode 3Air dateJune 18, 2015Written byAngelina Burnett and Bryan Fuller & Steve LightfootDirected byVincenzo NataliEpisode GuidePreviousNextPrimaveraAperitivoNavigationSecondo galleryCast"Secondo"[1] is the third episode of Season 3, and the twenty-ninth produced hour of Hannibal. It aired on June 18, 2015.
That appears to be the primary theme and question surrounding the events of last night's episode of Hannibal, 'Secondo.' In the book series by Thomas Harris , it is revealed in the novel Hannibal Rising that Hannibal's cannibalism stemmed from being forced to cannibalize his sister. In Bryan Fuller's series, Hannibal's sister plays a similar role in Hannibal's fractured psyche. But the characters in Hannibal's life, especially Will, are able to approach this notion with skepticism. This allows the show to give a potential reason for Hannibal's monstrousness, but it also doesn't deny that Hannibal may very well have ended up this way anyway.
Bedelia's comfort with Hannibal is startling. Gone is the manic worry that she exhibited in the first episode of the season. She feels at ease around Hannibal, even knowing what he is and he's capable of. She's so at ease, one must start to question her motives. This confidence allows her to really prod into Hannibal's psyche. Bedelia wants Hannibal to see if he can actually truly be capable of forgiving Will.
Hannibal slices up a human arm for dinner. He is preparing dinner for the pretentious Italian academic, Sogliato (Rinaldo Rocco), who challenged Hannibal's academic knowledge of Dante in the first episode of the season. It doesn't appear that Hannibal is totally above a petty crime of passion; as the boorish Sogliato prattles on, Hannibal puts an ice pick through his temple, forcing him to laugh and go blind all at one. Bedelia pulls the pick out.
While Will has started exhibiting some of the curious and treacherous traits of Hannibal, it appears that Will's deep empathy has rubbed off slightly on Hannibal likewise. Hannibal is delicate with Bedelia in this episode, perhaps even sweet. She takes a bath as he washes her hair, and it's revealed that Bedelia also knows about Misha. Bedelia seemed so frightened in the first episode, but she seems to be more in control than even Hannibal, prying answers out of her psychotic companion. She asks him if Misha made him Hannibal.
Director Vincenzo Natali, who also directed the premiere 'Antipaso,' has done a stunning job of shooting these episodes. Much like his underrated film The Cube, Hannibal takes place in the mind; not so much in dreams, but in motivations. In perspectives. But at the same time he delivers us classic horror, when Will displayed the old man's head on a cross at the end, I was reminded of the horrific flair displayed by Dario Argento's giallo horror classics like Tenebre, in which horror is given an erotic allure.
In which we take a jaunt with Will Graham to inspect the expectedly Dracula-like childhood home of Hannibal Lecter in Lithuania, and begin brushing up against a tonnage of backstory involving the gentleman-cannibal. Interestingly, however, Bryan Fuller and his crew smartly avoided getting caught up in Hannibal's origins story, primarily his relationship with Mischa, his sister, whom he was seemingly forced to dine on at a young age. This is not to say that "Secondo" is the last we'll hear of what went down in the literal castle where Hannibal started to become who he is, but the third episode of the season didn't slow down to allow for a deluge of the past to take over the kinetic present that Hannibal Season 3 has been most prominently marked by thus far.
A favored symbol in the season has been snails, first seen being plucked off of Gideon's severed arm, one by one, as Hannibal prepared one of Gideon's last meals, which often included his own flesh as the primary protein. In that scene, Hannibal relays that snails carry the taste of what they've eaten, that you can taste their diet and, in essence, their experiences when you eat them. As Will makes his way into Hannibal's old home, specifically the dungeon, the snails are seen hanging off of pieces of rotted, decrepit wood and other dusty or rusty knick-knacks, and one is even plucked and scarfed down by the imprisoned derelict (Julian Richings) that Will finds in the dungeon, right before he is properly introduced to Chiyo (Tao Okamoto), one of Hannibal's old acquaintances. Just as the snails that Hannibal sautéed carried the taste of the meat that they had been living on, Hannibal still carries the impression of what he did and what was done to him in this Lithuanian castle, and that very same abode now carries the unmistakable impression of the monster that was borne within its many, many walls.
Similarly, Hannibal has left his indelible mark on Will, who now freely toys with others to make them kill as he was forced to kill by his former psychiatrist. Though the aesthetics of Fuller's series remains every inch as intoxicating and alluring as they have been so far this season, "Secondo" is a script-first episode, clearing up motives and intentions that have been hard to pin down in this series. For Hannibal, his interactions with Bedelia are offering increasing clarity into his relationship with Will and their...let's call it "complicated" partnership; she is, after all, his psychiatrist. It's Bedelia who sees that, as much as Hannibal may just be embracing his true self by sticking an ice pick into a stuffy art historian's head, his reintroduction to killing in Italy is also a calculated move to draw in Will and, now, Jack, who has come to Palermo to find and help Will. "Aesthetics become ethics" said Hannibal in "Antipasto," and as confusing and wrong-headed as that might sound, he seems to be embracing the double-or-triple meaning of his actions, though there's no mistaking the certainty of his final line in "Secondo."
"All sorrows are borne if you put them into a story" says Chiyo at one point in the episode, quoting the Danish author Isak Denisen, who penned Out of Africa and, more importantly, Babette's Feast, a story (and subsequent film) about a grand meal meant to bring a small community together. In actuality, Denisen was the pen name for Karen Blixen, who also wrote Seven Gothic Tales, a famed collection in Denmark, and her use of an alias gives some sense as to what Hannibal and Will are up to. Unable to face the horror of what happened with Mischa, Hannibal created stories of himself, used his intellect to create a maze of half-truths and outright lies to divert anyone from getting ahold of what really happened when he was a boy and young man in Lithuania. He has purged his past by creating the well-tailored genius-killer he is today, but Will is beginning to see his beginning, to understand why all the stories and endless knowledge were necessary to Hannibal going on in his life. When Hannibal says he must he Will at the end of the episode, the declaration might sound like a threat but, as Bedelia points out, it's also suggests a certain fragility in Hannibal, an instant connection made between his love for Will and Mischa, whom he could only forgive or ask forgiveness from by consuming. 041b061a72