Ah, thank god. We're back on track! After last week's near jump-the-sharkfest, this episode came roaring back with brilliance, and then some. That surreal sex scene between Hannibal and Alana, with the sheets melting like vanilla liquid, and beauty and sensuality and menace all in the same breath, was just perfect.…

On second viewing, this episode wasn't AS bad as I thought at first, once I picked up more of the details. Still it seemed sloppy and over the top, even for a show that prides itself on being baroque. That said, I think it's an aberration because the next one sounds like it's going to be great. Back to cat and mouse…

Maybe I'm making a bigger deal of it than it is. But heretofore, we have always seen Jack on every scene, whether that's been realistic or not. And Chilton has been a colleague, so you'd think he'd be there to personally do the honors.

Au contraire, I did give an answer. As have many people. This episode did not strike me as psychologically interesting as the others. It felt more like a typical police procedural than the masterpiece it usually is. We just find out Miriam is alive, and right off the bat, she shoots Chilton? I would have saved that…

By lazy, I mean things like how Jack and the Sassy Science team didn't show up at the Chilton Crime Scene, even though they have been first on the scene EVERY SINGLE TIME before this. This is the Ripper they think they've caught, so you'd think Jack would be right on it. But the writers had to send in an anonymous…

More ghosts! ROFLMAO.

I am too, and for the reasons the original poster on this thread cited. The surrealism was beautiful and what made this show distinctive. But it operates on two planes—the artistic surrealistic, philosophical plane, and the police procedural plane. And if you make the police procedural stuff so unrealistic and full of…

And yet, those little tidbits she drops have me wondering. Who says, "Funerals make me want to have sex" during pillow talk?

He shall be missed.

That's one of the many problems I had with this particular episode. That was so contrived. Send an anonymous team in FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, because you can't kill off Jack and the Sassy Science guys. I felt like the smart writers went on vacation this episode, and send in the writing team of the Following instead.

It IS one of the few pieces of art on TV right now. That's why I have a much higher standard for it. I totally buy into the surrealism of the show, but I also expect it to be intelligent. This last episode was the first time I felt like the writing was lazy, and the plotting, disingenuous. And by showing us…

Well, Mads M. says that Hannibal is like a fallen angel (though not literally) who lives on the threshold of life and death. He's not afraid of death. He thinks it's beautiful. I think he would more afraid of leaving the earth before the game has played out. I also think he has a very strong will to survive, not…

And notice he had a grand piano, which Lecter would consider a more mundane instrument compared to a rare harpsichord. Like Chilton is the Hannibal wannabe, but just doesn't quite have the stuff.

I'm a professional writer, so I sympathize with the writers. It's very difficult to sustain that psychological cat and mouse stuff for weeks on end. You have to introduce action and plot twists. But how many times are we going to see Hannibal framing someone? I think the problem I'm having is that we're seeing too…

I am hoping this episode was an anomaly, because for the first time, I felt bored and disengaged from the show. It didn't jump the shark, exactly, but it suddenly felt hackneyed to me—not like the original work of beauty that it usually is. The beauty of this show is the psychological tension between its two main…

His appetite being back, his unfinished work—that may be part of it. But there is more to his tipping the FBI off to Miriam Lass. If he were finishing his work, he'd kill her and eat her, or set her up in a murder tableau. Hannibal is not that simple, nor are his motives.

I don't see it as a willing suspension of disbelief. I see it as magical realism. It's like a stage play or a dreamscape. It's not meant to be literal and it's grounded in its own reality. That's what makes it so brilliant.

I was confused with that scene. I watched it again, and it looks like there are the guards and Gideon going up the stairs, then they cut to a third person, hiding behind a corner with the baton. Maybe it's a bad edit (though this show doesn't have bad edits), but I would swear there was a third person lurking there.

You're not in the minority at all. I think it's deliberate, because I've seen Mads in other movies, and he has chemistry with everything that moves. But in Alana's case, his sexuality is calculating. I think he is fond of Alana, in his way, but she's a means to an end. Now Hannibal and Bedelia, on the other hand,…

Oops—didn't see your post, but you pretty much said what I did about sex. The thing about the glass though. If there are drugs in it, why just wipe off the lip print? Wouldn't you rinse the entire glass? A nitpick, I realize. But they made such a big deal out of his wiping the glass, it kinda bugs me.