How Hannibal Fits Fuller

At first, Hannibal seems out of place among Bryan Fuller’s other shows – Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, and the pilot for Mockingbird Lane.  It’s darker, more gruesome, and less fantastical.  With the other four shows, it’s immediately clear that they’re from the same showrunner, and Hannibal appears the odd man out.  However, Fuller’s latest work shares a number of threads with his previous efforts.  Here are the Fuller-esque elements in Hannibal.

Extreme Foodiness

 

Dead Like Me had Der Waffle Haus, Pushing Daisies had The Pie Hole, and Hannibal has the good doctor’s kitchen.  Rather than dwelling on greasy-spoon breakfast food or mouthwatering dessert, Hannibal is all about ostentatious gourmet fare.  True, it’s all made of people, but it looks amazing, and Hannibal is the most verbose TV foodie since Rube.

Sumptuous Visuals

 

Because it’s not as brightly-colored as Fuller’s other shows, Hannibal’s visual feast is subtler than that of its fellows.  Still, the attention to color, detail, and eye-catching mise-en-scène is undeniably there.  Look at the saturated sunlight when Will imagines himself fly-fishing and the twisted beauty of the macabre murder tableaus.  Speaking of which…

 

Inventive Deaths

 

While I’ve yet to see anyone on Hannibal die from a water-cooler bottle or a scratch ‘n’ sniff bomb, the killers in the D.C. area are a creative bunch.  There’s the human mushroom garden, the corpse totem pole, and the color palette of dead bodies used for a mural.  Hannibal himself gets in on the fun regularly.  My personal favorite is the man turned into a human tree, with his torso opened to show that his organs have been swapped out for precisely-arranged flowers.

 

Psychological Themes

 

Jaye saw Dr. Ron, Chuck baked antidepressants into pies, and Reggie visited child psychiatrists after George’s death.  Hannibal, meanwhile, is full of psychology.  In addition to Hannibal (therapist and psychopath – a twofer!) we have Drs. Bloom, Chilton, and Du Maurier, along with a plethora of psychopaths and people with other disorders.  Plus, Will works with the FBI’s behavioral science unit.  Hallucinations, hypnosis, and psychoanalysis, oh my!

Exceptional Dialogue

 

Like the visuals, this parallel is less obvious.  Hannibal doesn’t use the whimsical wordplay of Pushing Daisies, but the dialogue is remarkable in quieter ways.  Will and Abigail’s extended metaphors on hunting and fishing are excellent, and I don’t think I’ve heard a more plaintive description of cancer than Bella’s story about a stray cell that got lost and is simply doing what it does best.  More recently, Margot’s explanation of having “the proclivity for the wrong parts” artfully says everything you need to know about her sexuality and her family’s opinion about it.