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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: May 23, 2014
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Hannibal, “Mizumono” (Season 2, Episod 13) [Stream on Prime Video]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: The improbability of a show like Hannibal to run for three seasons on a broadcast network is enough to boggle the mind. Not just that a network like NBC would opt for straight-up horror, but that they would gift Bryan Fuller complete free reign to be as bloody, artistic, cerebral, slow, sexual, perverse, and generally unsettling as the show ultimately was.
Hannibal was also a gleefully post-modern blender-chop of an adaptation of the Thomas Harris books about Hannibal Lecter. Knowing that there already existing both a book canon and at least two film canons (the Michael Mann Manhunter and the later Silence of the Lambs series presented dueling Hannibals already), Fuller’s series chose a third path that borrowed liberally from the films and books while making changes, shifting around the order of events, and generally being just off-script enough that the audience had no safe assurances.
As an end product, Hannibal was unlike any other show on television, and was all the more thrilling for it. The psychosexual relationship between Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) and Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) felt genuinely daring; the elaborate art direction on the murder scenes was unbelievable, and their juxtaposition with shots of preparing food (and the decision to turn Hannibal into a modern-day foodie) was inspired.
The second-season finale was nearly a series finale, and it plays like it. Mostly because (seemingly) everybody dies. Hannibal gets a jump on the planned police ambush of him, he produces the surprisingly alive Abigail Hobbes, and suddenly Alana’s been thrown from a high window, Jack’s been stabbed, Will’s been stabbed, and Abigail has her throat slashed. Once we heard that the show was coming back for a third season, questions about how to move on when the majority of your cast was just left bleeding to death in the finale, but those were questions for another day. At that moment, it was fun enough watching Hannibal escape to Europe with Dr. Du Maurier, looking like the two most attractive murderers ever to fly first class.
