Hannibal Review: “Antipasto” (3×01)

What I love best about the titling scheme Bryan Fuller has chosen for Hannibal—this season, each episode is named after an Italian course; the previous seasons were French and Japanese, respectively—is how it at once constitutes gimmickry and structural importance. Not every episode is perfectly aligned with its title, but many come pretty close. “Antipasto” is such an episode. It's a peculiar episode. There is not even the remotest doubt that Will, Jack, and Alana survived the bloodshed of season two's finale (not least, their names are in the credits), and so, assuming that its audience is not necessarily on pincushions waiting to find out what's happened to them, “Antipasto” is instead thoroughly unconcerned in addressing the cliffhanger at all. This serves to generate considerably more suspense than the cliffhanger itself, such as it was, ever did. We are launched several months into the future, and our first glimpse of Will and company doesn't come until the preview for next week. The question becomes not if they survived, but how on earth they managed it.

Imagine an alternate premiere, a perfunctory episode of television that picks up right where we left off and doles out, piece by piece, the process that brought our maimed heroes back to life. It's boring, and moreover, it's uncharacteristic of Hannibal as a series. What a relief, then, to see in “Antipasto” that Bryan Fuller retains a full understanding of the sort of show he's making, and how that sort of show works. Very little actually happens in “Antipasto”, and yet every second is engrossing; every shot, every frame, is dense with meaning. This is a show that begs to be savored.

The episode wastes no time throwing us right back into the stylized glory that is Bryan Fuller's vision of the Hannibal Lecter story. When we meet Hannibal in the season premiere, he is wandering around a party, floating adrift from frame to frame. He is newly unknown, freed not just from the weight of the Chesapeake Ripper, but freed from the reputation of Hannibal Lecter himself. Not that he doesn't fall quickly into old habits. A new name and a new companion don't change the fundamental aspects of his character.

So Hannibal and Bedelia are trotting around the continent, stealing identities and living perfectly frivolous lives among the French, then Italian elite. One of their acquaintances happens upon in both countries, and twigs to their scheme. Suddenly Hannibal falls into the cat and mouse rhythm he developed so thoroughly with Will. Meanwhile, Bedelia du Maurier spends the episode becoming increasingly unraveled, despite her deceptively cool exterior. Gillian Anderson plays her as a reckless, curious woman, in way over her head (and she plays her brilliantly, at that. I have never been happier with opening credits than to see Gillian Anderson's name added to this week's).

The episode climaxes (or perhaps, the antipasto cleared away, and the main course glimpsed) when, suddenly, Hannibal is bludgeoning his new friend to death, just as Bedelia tries to run away. Is she observing or participating? Hannibal asks this question of her implicitly throughout the episode, and explicitly here, as he calmly murders the poor man, and Bedelia looks down helplessly as he deconstructs her carefully considered rationalization. She has been participating all along; passivity is not an excuse. The game of cat and mouse has been with her all along.

The relationship between Hannibal and Bedelia is fascinating, giving the episode a driving energy that more than serves in the absence of the show's typical characters and rhythms. Her interest in him darts back and forth from intrigue to wariness. She discusses his murderous, cannibalistic habits frankly, not as scared of them as she should be—and that is what scares her most. There are many shots of blood flowing in “Antipasto”, being washed off the bodies of our intrepid Eurotrippers, or dripping off the corpse of a freshly killed rabbit hanging from a butcher shop. But there is no washing away the blood they've spilt. There's no getting around the fact that Hannibal is, as Abel Gideon says tonight in flashback, truly the devil. He has an uncanny gift for brining out the worst in all around him, and Bedelia is no exception, as much as she'd like to think he is. The phrase “professional curiosity” comes about again; before this was the rationalization Alana used to justify her interest in Will Graham. Yet another parallel is drawn.

The story, then, is excellent, a brilliant first course as we set the stage for, at last, the adaptation of Red Dragon proper. But as always the real main course here is the visual experience. The episode's pace is deliberately languorous, as Fuller chooses instead to immerse us, slowly, in the new lives that Hannibal and Bedelia have established for themselves. As he does so, he lets us sink slowly back into the cinematography, the visual rules and motifs that govern Hannibal's cinematic language. “Ethics become aesthetics,” Hannibal and Bedelia conclude in their philosophical exchange. No longer is the show interested, necessarily, in portraying Hannibal's crimes as murders, as evil. That's for granted now; now, the interest lies in portraying the nature of evil.

There is of course the recurring visual of blood running, dripping, splashing, but there are a few other choice shots as well. For instance there is a striking contrast between the composed formality not just of Hannibal as a character, but of the settings and the framings that contains him, and the brutality with which he mains and murders. As the camera moves and wavers in the open sequence, it will be interesting to watch if the formal aspects of the show become increasingly unhinged as Hannibal does the same.

There are also some black and white flashbacks with Abel Gideon, that serve to paint Hannibal's previous life in a different, separate light. But the shot of the episode this week is the sequence of Bedelia, slowly sinking into the black murk of her bath, the depth of which for a moment becomes that of an ocean. What a stunning visual representation of her journey. Fuller describes this season in various interviews as a trashy ‘80s art film, and he's not wrong; I just think his modesty oversells exactly what he's managed to achieve. Hannibal is arguably one of the greatest dramas on the air, period, but it is inarguably the best-looking show on television right now.

“Antipasto” is slow and atmospheric, setting the table for the rest of the season, and doing just enough to whet its audience's collective appetite. In other words it does just what it's meant to. Bring on the next course.

Stray Observations:

• “Antipasto” is also, for me, a bit of a palate cleanser. I'm thrilled to be writing about this amazing show, and I'm looking forward to being a sight more positive than I got to be about Scandal and American Horror Story. (I hope I haven't jinxed it.)
• As always, the greatest guilty pleasure of Hannibal is THE FOOD. Every dish looks magnificently appetizing—even the dishes that we know for a fact are people. It is this show's greatest trick.
• Yo, how insane was season two of Hannibal? That previously on is just a mashup of crazy shit.