“…And the Beast From the Sea” is the series’ most stressful episode to date, surpassing the tense, but exciting battles between Jack and Hannibal and the tragic, but inevitable Red Dinner with a pulse-pounding central set-piece that sees the Dragon come for Molly and Walter.
We knew it wouldn’t be long before Frederick Chilton was a goner for several reasons, but one can’t help but think it came a little too soon. Not only has Raúl Esparza provided the series with some much needed dark humour and a superb performance, but his character has a prominent and important role in both Thomas Harris’s novels and in their cinematic adaptations. That said, this is an adaption and a very different medium, and so Fuller is wise in deviating away from the original source material. Nobody needs a page by page, word by word, reenactment of the books; so while Fuller is using Harris’s novels as inspiration, this is his baby, and based on the week to week quality of the show, we shouldn’t complain. It’s unsurprising that the many literature-based TV series currently on the air have approached their source material with varying degrees of success
“Futamono” marks the halfway point in season two of Bryan Fuller’s small screen masterpiece Hannibal. The plot burns forward, setting up the romance between Hannibal and Alana, and placing enough proof of Lecter’s crimes directly in front of Jack and Chilton. There are lots of clever nods to Silence of the Lambs, from Will’s talk with Jack mirroring Hannibal’s conversation with Clarice about Buffalo Bill’s motives, to the discovery of Miriam Lass, trapped in a cellar. “Futamono” inches forward at such a speedy rate that it won’t come as a big surprise if the events in the season’s cold open take place before the finale. “Futamono” isn’t the most exciting instalment of the series, but there are a number of interesting twists, and an ending that could make most gore hounds gag.
