“Hassun” is perfectly distilled Hannibal. It takes the conventions of a well established television format - the courtroom procedural - and mutilates it into a nightmarish message about the kind of love that compels you do horrible, violent things.
Where as last season, Hannibal was content with leaving our minds to do the job, this year we don’t get the ability to just shrug off the horror as CSI clowns Scott Thompson and Aaron Abrams describe it with practiced wit and perfect deadpan. Now, we see the stitches tear.
The great mandala that is Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal is only just beginning to reveal itself. We know slightly more than the characters about the overall design, and this new territory will be adding a different nightmarish colour to our palate.
Hannibal’s greatest strength, the one that produces the most gut-wrenching moments, is the most viscerally sterile: Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham in a room trying to destroy each other while falling irretrievably deeper into a mad sort of love.