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

Psychotic vs. Psychopathic

Psychotic vs. Psychopathic

They aren’t the same. Going back to at least Hitchcock (one of my faves), who brought the muddy term “psycho” into the public psyche, conflated the definitions as if all are violent, and all “crazy” is crazy. I’m sure there are briefer answers out there for those wondering what’s the difference between psychotic and psychopathic. And even though SRSLY made it into the OED because of its widespread use, lay inaccurate uses of the term psychotic will likely not. Briefly in discussing how we got here, the words are interchanged because they sound alike, and are used commonly to describe

Is Walter White a Psychopath?

Is Walter White a Psychopath?

 Walt’s pathological and Machiavellian level of manipulation of others, even those who might describe him as a friend, makes us question who the real Walter White is. Is he a psychopath? Is he a guy who suppressed his basic needs so much during his life that that now he’s just having a narcissistic tirade to prove he’s all-powerful as he approaches death? As a psychiatrist, I view the evidence that points in one direction vs. another. As a writer, I see the brilliance in how we’re led into watching his dark side unfold, while still empathizing with him. Modern psychiatry