Manhunter vs. Red Dragon.

I'll take season 1 of True Detective. By my lights, Hannibal gets more fanciful and implausible as it goes on, but it has been awhile since I watched it and my interesting and viewing diminished along the way.



So, I take it that you strongly recommend Season 3?

Even though Dragon was better than it had any "right" to be due to the strength of its cast/source material, it's definitely Mannhunter, since it's a movie that succeeds because of its direction, and not despite of it, with the hacky stuff Ratner tried, like the sudden zoom-in into the dolls' eyes for a cheap scare during Will's investigation of the Leeds crime scene; c'mon dude.

I liked Hannibal a lot on the whole, but I like season two the best, since season one relied too much on stand-alone cases/guest stars for its episodes (remember when Lance Henrikson showed up and did nothing?), while season three relied too much on Harris's source material, while two found the right Goldilocks balance between serialization, along with adding new, show-original plotting to the mix.

Maybe.

But one benefit of the "monster of the week" format of the first season is that it gives time and space for Will and Hannibal to bond with one another without engaging in direct conflict.

Considering that later in the series we need to SPOILERS, I think that the slightly more episodic first season actually serves its function quite well.

Also, even early on there are moments you notice, like

It seems like your problem is that you're expecting Hannibal to be tonally and stylistically in step with the mold that SOTL created (a mold TD follows pretty well). However, the show shirks that in favor of Gothic, expressionistic and surrealist presentations of this story. It seems to have more narratively in common with Poe than Harris, and visually with Jeunet than Demme.

I think that is the greatest strength of the show and is what keeps it from feeling like a retread of the previous film adaptations (even when it covers similar plot lines, ala Scott's Hannibal and Red Dragon/Manhunter). It also allows it to be among the most unique shows on television, even if it begins in the tired realm of procedurals.

I think that if you embrace its style and how that informs the narrative and subtext in unexpected and profound ways (the shattered structure of s3 evokes the motif of a tea cup shattering, a visual metaphor for entropy, etc), then yes. Absolutely recommend it.

If going to dismiss it for implausibility and expectations of realism, then no. Because s3 is the showing reaching its aesthetic and artistic apex, fully shedding any pretense of being a standard adaptation or procedural. Despite riffing on narratives I've read and seen before, I've never seen anything quite like it.

I hold s2 and 3 to negligible levels of excellence for different reasons. S2, for the reasons you mentioned, but I found the way s3 weaves familiar stories into its own voice, aesthetic and thematic concepts was a towering acheivement in what could've been, in what you describe, a derivative work.

Differences are not necessarily problems.





I don't think that's it. I like, for example, the relative narrative compactness of TD. Good rhythm and rate, nice climax, and we're off the ride. Conventional seasonal television will typical elongate and telescope the action, retarding the delivery of the goods which have been promised. It's nice to have things tied up at the end of an arc.





Well, I am split on this one. I enjoyed the grotesquerie. It was a bit like The Cell in serving up beautiful ugliness. And I don't mind trippy stuff either.


On the other hand, I am familiar with the source material, and I have a sense of what this world is -- it is a world where science works, where monsters are merely humans, where we're bound by the laws of physics, and therefore, also by basic narrative plausibility. Is it, for example, plausible that Lector would be released from the psych ward to serve as bait for the Tooth Fairy? Would this bromance between Graham and Lector possibly have been sustainable for this long? Are we to write off any possible criticisms like this off as a rejection of Gothic Surrealism? If so, then yes, I guess I object to it.





Well, it wasn't that much of a religious experience for me. They made some interesting choices and I was quite hooked for a time, but (for me) it kind of unspooled. Hard to say way. Sometimes mileage just varies.



I'll give it another shot one of these days. I might vibe with it more on a binge watch than as a show I slowly last track of in weekly watching and waiting for new seasons.

It’s a world that consistently flouts plausibility for heightened engagement with the psychology of its characters. The tone and aesthetic dictate expectation of realism (or lack thereof). It’s clearly more aligned with Fuller’s body of work, like Pushing Daisies and American Gods s1 rather than something like the Wire, or even True Detective. By ep 2, it’s got a killer growing mushrooms in people and is predicated upon a hyper empathy= super power crime solving presentation that clearly set the stage for how this show isn’t interested in the science and procedure of catching killers. It is focused on beautiful tableaus of death and the “artists” that create them.

You cited something from s3, so now I’m uncertain as to how much of the show you have seen.

I do think the show plays much better in a binge than weekly. The rhythm and structure begin to feel more hypnotic and intentional. I wish it had been on Netflix or HBO, rather than NBC, but I guess it wouldn’t be as much of a miracle that it got made how it’s made if that were the case.

I hope you do give s3 a binge one of these days. Or rewatch the whole thing. I did a rerun through the whole series last October and it climbed the ranks of favorite shows. Maybe it’ll do the same for you.

That's at variance with the source material (Thomas Harris). What you're describing is also the internal logic of a soap opera.

There is a difference between the science being the focus of the OR science serving as a boundary parameter for the story telling. I wasn't expecting or desiring CSI: Will Graham, but I was expecting the terror of realizing how much mind bending terror can be found in the real world.

And a show can do all of this within the parameters of the realism of Harris.

I checked Wikipedia to see if I had seen Season 3 at all. The entry has an abstract for all the episodes.

Sounds about right. All of that foreplay and then months later you're expected to still be in that head space, when in fact you're trying to remember where you left off because you've been watching five other shows.

I'll pick up with it from the start, as I was quite taken with the first season.

I mean, I wouldn’t be averse to someone describing the show within the realm of soap opera. It certainly revels in the melodrama, despite the characters being relatively reserved in expressing their emotions. At its core, it’s the melodramatic and homoerotic obsession of polar opposites, a super-empath and a super-psychopath. Every murder, meal and therapy session are taken to heights that aren’t out of place in a soap opera. There’s just also a far greater emphasis on craft than your average soap, which lends an intentionality that elevates it to higher art (than most other tv shows as well).

It COULD be done within the realm of Harris’ source. But it isn’t. Just as Kubrick could’ve done a straightforward adaptation of The Shining. What we’re left with are two (or more) fine works defined by the distinctive voices of their creators (and I adore Fuller’s voice. Only David Simon has a better track record in my eyes).

My talk about the show makes it seems as though I don’t also love s1. I do. I think the way it played with conventional tv norms and begins to push them is necessary and foundational to what the show eventually becomes. I just usually prefer art when the growing pains are done and the artist is free to be as indulgent as possible.

I respect that, but I still wish the episodic, er, episodes they did early on were still more impactful on the whole. I mean, if you'll finish Cowboy Bebop, I think you'll see that it had plenty of stand-alone episodes that didn't tie into the larger backstory of the characters, but a lot of these were still just as impressive as the ones that advanced the story, even in one as seemingly frivolous as "Toys In The Attic":

I agree with most of that. I think the visions, for what that’s worth, were there to emphasise his “excessive” empathy and show us how the murders disproportionately and personally affect him. I was quite fed up with it towards the end, though, as well as the kind of comic book pastiche level of violence such as when . I did love the concept and the characters.

Re: your second point, sure, but then, why do we assume Will is the hero? (Again, for what that’s worth, in Hannibal you can at least argue Will doesn’t see it because he’s so personally attached and feels “seen”, as is typical with those kinds of perceptive people). I didn’t like that bit of Breaking Bad either because a) I didn’t believe Hank had the personality to actually crack this one, even in a super-lame way with the book as we’re shown and b) I almost never find it believable/engaging when a detective is “obsessed” with any case. Anyway, with Hannibal the show I still very much see Hannibal as the hero/antihero, especially by that stage, so I almost thing the narrative dilemma becomes the very corny “Is Will still going to like me once he knows what I am?”

On a separate note, yes, it clearly has a pacing problem with things somewhat dragging on and then getting, as a friend said once, extremely allegro vivace in the finale.

What? That reveal with the book was pretty much perfect in Breaking Bad, Agri.

I find the entirety of Breaking Bad to be pretty much perfect, so I’m not here to criticise anything about it. Overall I have my own sense of exasperation with such “reveals” because they feel very Chekhov’s gun.

When I first watched the show, I was very much in the “this is the best bit” camp. But now that I’ve seen it a few times, I think this is where I can somewhat relate to the people who say Breaking Bad ties things up too neatly compared to, say, The Wire.

All I was getting at is that when I watch anything involving detectives now, I find it extremely cliche that they must always get “obsessed” with the subject/the case (my post probably really belongs in the cliches thread). It would have made logical/“psychological” sense for Hank to let it go imo (before he knows it’s Walt). His “keep digging” thing was top-notch TV/storytelling, of course it was, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t find it a bit forced. As ever, this is just what I’ve felt on an emotional level, it’s in no way related to the objective narrative merits of the book reveal/Breaking Bad as a whole.

This is genuinely the reason that I don’t watch Killing Eve - I couldn’t bear the “obsessed with each other” narrative.