Digesting Hannibal – Season 1, Ep3

Digesting Hannibal – Season 1, Ep3

Episode 3 – Potage We open with Garrett Jacob Hobbs and Abigail Hobbs observing a deer. They’re hunting together. She misses the first time, but succeeds the second. Yet she’s distressed over killing it. She’s internally conflicted about killing, while her father is happy. She tells her father about how amazing deers are supposed to be, with regret. Her father one-ups her on each statement; they’re still beautiful and smart, even in death. He has the plan to “honor her” and use all of her parts, but have his daughter do the cutting with a knife. She’s distressed. He’s desensitizing

Digesting Hannibal – Season 1, Ep2

Digesting Hannibal – Season 1, Ep2

Episode 2 – Amuse-Bouche We open on bullet shells hitting the ground. Will at the firing range. He’s haunted by Garrett Jacob Hobbs. Even in his dreams. He awakens to entering a crime scene with Jack, the attic of Hobbs, filled with mounted antlers. Jack maintains that his daughter, Abigail, could be an accomplice in the prior murders. “Hobbs killed alone.” As usual, Will is very certain. But someone else was there in that attic. Someone with red hair. We meet FREDDIE LOUNDS, an online tabloid reporter. Will stands in his classroom teaching his students. And yet he is still

Digesting Hannibal – Season 1, Ep1

Digesting Hannibal – Season 1, Ep1

Episode 1 – Apertif We begin with a murder scene. A man and a woman killed. We meet WILL GRAHAM, an FBI teacher and profiler. He’s assessing the scene, and through a metronome device we watch time rewind to before the murder. Will has the ability to imagine himself in the killer’s place, conducting the murder himself, and understand the murder through this process. We watch him kill the couple, and learn about the killer in the process. The story cuts to him lecturing a class on the murder. He’s approached by JACK CRAWFORD, the head of the Behavioral Science unit (think

Fear of Mental Illness

Fear of Mental Illness

The fear behind mental illness reflects the nature of fear itself: We fear what we don’t know. We can never truly know what is happening inside the mind of another person. We as people follow fixed rules most of the time. Drive through an intersection when the light is green. Wear some amount of clothing outdoors. Don’t cross the double yellow line. So many rules. When rules are broken, it is jarring to us as bystanders. Perhaps that rule breaker is innovative. Perhaps that rule breaker is a genius. Or perhaps that rule breaker is sick. The more bizarre the

Portraying Mental Illness in Story

Portraying Mental Illness in Story

Mental illness as a term gets thrown around a lot. It’s used by politicians as a scapegoat for problems or a target for funding. It’s sought by individuals to find meaning to their experience, or sometimes a justification for their difficulties. It’s a thing, talked about like any other disease. And yet the term is a lumping of many conditions under a single term, as if all mental illnesses are the same. They are not, but we talk about them that way and “let the experts sort it out.” I get that. At the same time it maintains the mystique