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alwaysthinkingoutloud · 3 years

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Hannibal Episode-by-Episode Meta/Analysis: Episode 6, Season 1 (Entrée)

In this episode where facts keep being unraveled and a lot looks much clearer, Jack and Will go to Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane to get insight about the late murder. When Dr. Chilton is explaining how he feels responsible for what happened, he says “He sat directly across from me and I had no idea what he was hiding.” talking about Dr. Gideon but pointing his finger symbolically against Will. Will looks slightly shaken, almost offended from the statement. He knows what Dr. Chilton is saying about Dr. Gideon is somehow true for himself as well. When Dr. Chilton reveals by referring to that thing he does, that he actually does know about Will Graham unlike his ‘clueless’ questions in the beginning of their meeting suggested and tries to analyze him, Will gets surprised and irritated, which we can say destroyed any chance of Will feeling any sympathy for him right at that second. When Will asks Dr. Chilton where Dr. Gideon is, he replies Will with a disturbing smile that is directed to him when he says in his cell, clearly hoping to see Will one day in one too. Who knows, maybe just like we predicted Franklyn’s demise only by a gesture of his, Dr. Chilton’s too was obvious right from the start when he met Will.

When Jack comes to Hannibal’s office basically to talk about what is troubling him, Hannibal learns that it is not only his wife’s dying but something more. So, it is no surprise nor a coincidence that Jack starts to get calls where the sound of Miriam Lass is played right after that commiseration. This happened before Hannibal knew Dr. Gideon was suspected to be the Chesapeake Ripper, so it had nothing to do with attempting to disprove that. It was solely about that conversation of Jack and Hannibal, and it was personal.

“Whoever made that call thinks you were close to Miriam Lass and feel responsible for her death.”

,Will later will correctly suggest to Jack since the Chesapeake Ripper did know that and that is only because Jack just told him so.

Just as each time the Chesapeake Ripper or the Copycat Killer makes a move, the stag comes into Will’s hallucinations; it happens again after the call made to Jack’s house. At this point, Will’s own mind does not differentiate if it is the Copycat Killer or the Chesapeake Ripper that draws his evil out. Although consciously he will put the pieces together much later to see that in fact they are the same person, as suggested in earlier articles as well, Will subconsciously already knows this.

We, again, see a Jack who is okay pushing a serial killer into broad daylight even if it means one more body, just to rule out one wrong suspect. How far Jack can go to catch killers is not only limited to putting his own employee’s mental health at stake, but it reaches far enough to think even a glimpse of chance to get insight about the killer is worth risking human life along the way. So, with this agenda, Jack gets an article written by Freddie Lounds that suggests the infamous Chesapeake Ripper is Dr. Gideon, hoping that the real one would do something just to blow it apart. During the whole episode, while we see Jack getting too bold as to risk people’s lives in the means of catching a killer, we see Hannibal almost caring. It humanizes Hannibal while it dehumanizes Jack. (it will be clearer at the end of the post as to how)

Expectedly, there comes a second call from the Chesapeake Ripper and unlike the first one, this is not personal. This is a silently displayed outrage shown when somebody else takes the credit for what you do best, be you. Making the call from Jack’s bedroom has an overpowering ring to it, the Chesapeake Ripper is dauntlessly showing off. He is not only making himself known, but he is doing it in a way that shows his resentment to the limited perception of what he is capable of. I have doubts though, if his rage was actually caused by the perception that someone else was believed to be him, or it was because he felt like FBI insulted his intelligence by thinking he did not know what was going on and that the news was a bait, and he decided to teach some kind of a personalized lesson to Jack for doing that.

As Hannibal draws Dr. Chilton into the picture, I do not think he has a definite plan about what to do with him. He rarely has. What Hannibal does is to collect every piece that may be somehow useful one day and wait for events to unravel themselves up to some degree and decide on the way if he is just going to induce purposeless chaos or going to bend events to his own liking and/or self-preservation. So, when he supports Dr. Chilton’s psych-driving Dr. Gideon, I do not think he necessarily had the plan of setting the scene of framing him in his mind. He may have just wanted to have something in his hand against him. Like, a secrecy/alliance-demanding sharing of a sin.

In the last scene, where Hannibal and Jack sit together by the fire, like two good friends, “What would be the benefit of making you believe your trainee was alive?” asks Hannibal to Jack, trying to make him question what just happened and why it happened. Jack begins his answer right, saying it was to give him hope. Then he continues saying that hope was given to get his vision clouded. Hannibal brings up Bella into the topic and encourages Jack to hope, tells him that hoping is a brave thing to do and encourages him to do so. When Jack stays down and claims he does not have a control over how he feels, we see Hannibal, for the first time, almost furious about Jack’s beaten-up mode in his own Hannibal way. He pulls himself back together, but we are shown what we are meant to see. Hannibal does not want Jack to lose hope and actually this whole thing may have been a way of reminding Jack the concept of hope. Jack is wrong, the benefit of giving Jack hope making him believe that Miriam was still alive is not only to cloud his vision, but contrarily also to open his eyes and make him see what Hannibal wants him to see: there is hope. Maybe that is as close as Hannibal goes to giving a friend what he needs, in his own distorted way. I will not be, of course, naïve enough to suggest this was just about giving Jack hope. Surely it was more about reclaiming the Chesapeake Ripper name from Dr. Gideon and taking this bittersweet revenge from Jack after the shenanigan he pulled with Freddie Lounds.

The point is Hannibal is never unilateral. What he does or says never has only one aspect. Not only his words are full of puns, so are his actions. And his actions are more supplementary to each other, than they are ambiguous.

#hannibal #hannibal lecter #will #will graham #hannibal and will #will and hannibal #hannigram #brian fuller #nbc hannibal #hannibal analysis #hannibal meta #jack crawford #dr chilton #mads mikkelsen #hugh dancy #murder husbands #hannibal loves will #will loves hannibal #entree

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kalinara · 7 years

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As I said in my last post, one of my biggest complaints about fandom discussion about Rip Hunter is how it always resorts to easily debunked accusations rather than an honest and interesting discussion about the man’s ACTUAL flaws.

Rip is a complicated guy. He has a lot of flaws. That’s part of what makes him interesting. Unfortunately, since I generally end up finding myself motivated to defend the guy from baseless accusations, I never really get around to talking about what I think his flaws actually are.

So this is my list of what I, as a biased Rip fan, see as Rip Hunter’s primary flaws. (This is by no means exclusive, by the way.)

1. Rip Hunter is single-focused. This can be a strength and a flaw. But the fact of the matter is that when Rip has a goal in mind, he tends to ignore other people that can be helped, other good that can be done and thoughtlessly puts himself and other people at considerable, and sometimes unnecessary, risk.

2. Rip Hunter is secretive and dishonest. Rip is a funny guy when it comes to honesty. He seems to be a pretty terrible liar, and any time he does overtly lie to the team, it comes out within the same episode. But that doesn’t generally stop him from trying. Even at times when the lie is less useful than the truth. (For example, the crew probably would have been more inclined to help rather than less, if he’d openly admitted that his own family had died at Savage’s hands.)

Rip is far better, however, at lying by omission. The man keeps a LOT of secrets and a good many of those secrets directly impact the team and their safety. The team had the right to know about the spear of destiny, or at least that it was likely to make the mission they’d signed on for more dangerous. Sara had the right to know about Laurel’s death long before she actually found out.

3. Related to #2: Rip does not trust his team. I think he wants to trust them, and certainly, he wouldn’t have recruited them for either mission if he didn’t trust them on some level. But the fact of the matter is that most of Rip’s suffering in season two was absolutely unnecessary and brought about, primarily, because Rip never chose to share his burden with the team.

If the team had known about the spear, or at least that Rip was protecting part of an artifact from people who’d stop at nothing to get it, then it’s possible they could have helped him. He might not have had to lobotomize himself. He might not have fallen into Eobard’s hands. And it might not have been so catastrophic that the only person who had any idea of where the spear pieces were ended up under Eobard’s control.

4. Rip makes unilateral decisions for the team. This connects to 2 and 3 of course. Possibly, it’s all the same flaw in the end. Rip does most of what he does with noble intentions, but the fact of the matter is that he generally doesn’t consult them first. ESPECIALLY when he gets it in his head to try to protect them.

Rip freaks out after Snart’s death and abandons the team in 2016, with no discussion and no closure or choice.

Rip decides to fly the last meteor piece into the sun, risking his own life in the process (and possibly stranding the team in 2033, though I doubt he was thinking about that), again without consulting the team.

Rip scatters the team to protect them from the nuclear blast, again, without consultation. It’s very likely that, had they known what was at stake, most of the team would have wanted to stay on board.

Similarly, Rip decides to lobotomize himself without even Gideon’s input (going so far as to shut her down temporarily so she can’t stop him.)

Rip means well, in each of these situations, but the fact of the matter is that he owes them the right to make these decisions for themselves. They deserve to know what he’s prioritizing and why, what dangers he’s expecting, and to have a say in their own fate.

5. Rip is somewhat judgmental. Especially early on in season one. He had a clear idea of who (he thought) the team was, and why he was recruiting them. There were certain characters that he was pretty quick to get along with: Sara, Martin, Jax, Kendra, even Ray to some extent. And then of course there was Snart and Rory. One of the quieter themes of the first half of season one involved Rip having to re-evaluate his initial thoughts on each team member, as he realized that Martin was more idealistic and rebellious than expected, that Sara and Kendra had their uncontrollable berserker qualities, that Leonard Snart actually did care about (some) people on the team, and so on and so forth. And of course, this ended up coming to a head with Mick Rory.

6. Rip is hot-tempered and emotional which gets in the way of his good sense. A LOT. I maintain that the Marooned confrontation was provoked, and NOT by Rip, but that still doesn’t excuse his harsh reaction. Or the stupidity of having it out while being prisoners on an enemy-controlled ship!

I always get amused when I see Rip characterized as cold in fanfics, because I think the show gives us a character who is the exact opposite. And that’s where he tends to fuck up. Rip burns hot. He’s impulsive. He has a temper. And we’ve seen him, more than once, disrupt his OWN plans because of guilt or altruism or anger.

He had a grand total of ONE workable plan against Savage, which he tossed out the window to get Carter’s body back. He knew that he was going to be leaving the team very soon, but had to explode into a temperamental lecture about everything they’d done wrong. He couldn’t follow through with killing Savage, the one time that it was actually fool-proof because his conscience got in the way. And so on and so forth.

Hell, even his capture by the Legion kind of fits this, because it’s pretty clear that whatever his post-Time Drive lobotomy plans ACTUALLY were, they didn’t involve Phil Gasmer stupidly jumping out into an ambush, getting captured, getting his tooth extracted, and then having his backup mind drive re-written.

Honestly, I doubt that Rip Hunter has ever made a cold, clear-headed, unclouded-by-emotion decision in his life. And if he had, he fucked it up about three minutes later in a fit of pique.

7. Rip is stubborn and arrogant.

This is a pretty consistent character trait. Rip is a Time Master and knows he’s a Time Master, and as mentioned, wasn’t particularly inclined to consult with the group. Often times, he’s right. He does generally have a superior knowledge base than most of the rest of the team. But then we have situations like River of Time, where Rip’s insistence that he had piloted the Waverider for thirteen years and knew what she could do, exploded pretty royally in their faces.

Rip’s trust in the Time Masters overall is a pretty good example of this. It was somewhat understandable in White Knights, even though he ignored Mick’s realization that Druce had set up an obvious trap. By River of Time, there was no reason to expect that they’d be dealt with fairly.

His handling of Sara’s issues in Star City highlighted this arrogance too. He was dead set in the way that he was looking at the issue and refused to consider her side. He was, at least, smart enough, and cared enough, to wait for her longer than he promised. But it was a good thing that Martin talked sense into him when he did.

8. Rip is ridiculously self-destructive.

I don’t really think I have to elaborate on this one. Do I? Just watch like ANY episode of the show that features Rip. Yeesh.

9. Rip is A SOCIAL TRAINWRECK.

I mean, really, does this need an explanation? The man is pretty much incapable of anything resembling a normal social interaction with anyone! I think the closest thing we’ve seen to a casual conversation with anyone who wasn’t Gideon was with Doctor Mid-Nite right before he killed him!

His general social interactions with people he actually LIKES seems to be: make unilateral decision, apologize, get punched in the face, apologize again, move on.

Honestly, I think the only character who’s ever gotten anything personal about the guy that didn’t directly have to do with whatever disaster was directly at hand was Jax, when Rip revealed his candy preferences.

There are some implications, I think, that he was pretty friendly with Mid-Nite and Commander Steel in the JSA. At least there are implications that he actually did discuss some personal matters such as his family and his concern about the Time Masters. But they were still pretty formal with each other.

Presumably, he managed some kind of positive social interaction with Miranda and Jonah. But then, Miranda was from the same fucked up society and thus likely had the same frame of reference. And Jonah...well, he was pretty quick to forgive Rip in the end, which probably implies he’s used to Rip being fucking weird. Also, remember how he came back to the ship after being rescued in Outlaw Country and only once inside did he go “where’s Rip?” Like he actually expected the guy to be hiding in his office AGAIN.

And to round it out to an even 10. Rip is a TERRIBLE LEADER.

Bluntly speaking, he is. He was from the pilot onward. He’s known from day one that he cannot control any of these people. He’s never been willing to take any steps necessary to control any of these people. He doesn’t even try to manage tempers, or rein in idealism. He doesn’t try to forge emotional connections with the crew, or maybe clear the air with the people that he clashes with the most BEFORE things explode horribly.

He seems to do well enough in field missions or pitched battles, when he’s right there, they’re all in the thick of it, and there’s a very clear objective. But as soon as it gets to a more general mission, when people go off on their own, he’s sunk.

So, there you go. Ten flaws. I could probably expand that list farther pretty easily. Rip’s actual flaws are part of what makes him such an interesting character, which is why it gets so frustrating when people are lazy critics, and resort to blatant misrepresentations instead.

#rip hunter #legends of tomorrow #rip hunter defence squad #...does it count as a defence post if it is critical?#Should I be tagging this ANTI-Rip Hunter?#Oh well

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