Hannibal 1x05: "Coquilles"

[cleolinda]

Welp, if any of y'all are reading the recaps instead of watching the show, or before watching the show to know when to scream and cover your eyes, this is the recap for you.As a side note, if you enjoyed the recaps enough to read them a second time, sometimes I go back and link to conversations we end up having in the comments, because God knows I

Comments

Re: Super-long comment ahoy!

[goldenusagi]

I can't believe that it took this recap, along with this v. symbolic gif, for me to put it together...is the Dire Ravenstag Will's subconscious manifestation of/warning about Hannibal?

Ooooh, I like this. Now I'm going to have to think about all the times we've seen the stag. I just always sort of associated with when Will was dreaming about things to do with Hobbs, but Lecter was very close to the Hobbs case. Maybe the stag is sort of like the shadow of Lecter that's hanging over everything?

Re: Super-long comment ahoy!

[cleolinda]

It's nightmarish (well... literally, I guess) to me no matter why it's there, but I have wondered if it's meant to be predatory or not. I mean, does it represent the worst of Will, the parts that he's trying to battle, or is it more an embodiment of the actual struggle there? Like the way it collapsed when he dreamed about killing Abigail. In other words, does it want to defeat him or does it sympathize with him? On the road it seemed to be like, no, keep going, keep endangering yourself. But if it's more, like, the neutral embodiment of a threat, Will's mind trying to tell him that something is shadowing him... I don't know. Dreams are weird.

Re: Super-long comment ahoy!

[lotus0kid]

Like the way it collapsed when he dreamed about killing Abigail

This is probably nitpicking, but I read that shot not as the Ravenstag collapsing, but crouching down to leap and run away, like the deer that almost escaped Abigail and Hobbs. Not sure what that says about the "Ravenstag = Will's subconscious warning bells about Lecter" idea, which makes a lot of sense to me, but yeah.

Re: Super-long comment ahoy!

[cleolinda]

Yeah, someone else thought so as well. I'm sort of fascinated by the way there's obviously a lot of symbolism on this show, but it's not entirely clear what it means.

Re: Super-long comment ahoy!

[cleolinda]

My favorite line of this episode was probably 'my kitchen is always open to friends' (AHHHHHH) followed closely by that 'ethical butcher' byplay. Oh, Hannibal.

Mine was unquestionably "it was an especially supercilious pig." Wait, no, that's a lie--it was "Did you just SMELL ME?" because obviously.

I can't believe that it took this recap, along with this v. symbolic gif, for me to put it together...is the Dire Ravenstag Will's subconscious manifestation of/warning about Hannibal?

Oh  my Goooooood. Bryan Fuller keeps tweeting that it's a combination of  the stag Cassie Boyle was impaled on and the ravens pecking at her body, which... was a murder Lecter committed. OH MY GOOOOOOD.

1) a reminder that Will is a possibly-unreliable narrator (pretty much every time we see a murder or lead-up to one, it's explicitly or implicitly Will's POV, and he's usually right but that doesn't make him infallible. It made me question, for example, whether Budish ever *really* saw his victims as crowned in flame, or if that is just Will's post-facto

Re: Super-long comment ahoy!

[goldenusagi]

Oh my Goooooood. Bryan Fuller keeps tweeting that it's a combination of the stag Cassie Boyle was impaled on and the ravens pecking at her body, which... was a murder Lecter committed. OH MY GOOOOOOD.

Somebody make gif compilations of all the stag appearances, quick! lol

Re: Super-long comment ahoy!

[cleolinda]

I think I was maybe thinking of it more as the Ravenstag was something inside Will that Lecter would want to bring out, rather than foreshadowing Lecter himself. The stag nose/smelling thing seems like a pretty strong hint, though.

I'm not sure why I'm generally staying away from the tags on Tumblr (as rich a source of gifs as they must be). It may be that I'm afraid I'll get so overwhelmed with other people's thoughts that I won't be able to corral mine into recap format. Although, if y'all see anything interesting, definitely bring it over.

Re: Super-long comment ahoy!

[grackles]

Does "I can bring it out of you" mean "I can remove this violence/guilt from you" and Will says "Not all the way out," or does it mean "I can bring it out in your character (i.e., make it worse, make it manifest)" and Will's resisting and saying, no, I refuse to let it all the way out?

I feel like Will's saying there's some evil in him that can't be removed because it's part of his nature. If he didn't always believe that, he may have started believing it after he killed Hobbs and felt good about it.

Re: Super-long comment ahoy!

[cupcakery]

Which is not to say Hannibal's not evil, because holy #$@% he's definitely evil. My feeling is that he's all about control, possibly because he sees himself as the only real person; the rest of humanity are all animals, to be made into pets or food as his whims dictate.

Hannibal is a tribe unto his own self, so everyone else is not-him, so he can eat them happily.

Re: Super-long comment ahoy!

[sea_of_tethys]

So I'm not the only person getting flashbacks to anthropology lectures, then? :)