Hannibal Should Have Eaten Alana Bloom

I have been re-watching the Hannibal TV series, and I cannot express strongly enough how much I hate Alana Bloom in the third season.

She spends most of the third season strutting about in ridiculous pantsuits with big shoulders. The Beetlejuice jacket is by far the most ridiculous, but the shoulder pads are ever-present. She engages in conspiracy to commit premeditated murder, and then she murders a man with her own hands. Later, like the petty bitch she has become, she lords her power over Hannibal in her psychiatric hospital, threatening to take away the only thing he cares about, his dignity. And then she does that.

One of the really confusing and infuriating things about hating Alana Bloom is that any time you hate a female character, people view this as misogyny. For example, a quick Google search of "hate Alana Bloom" yields this quote: "If you hate Alana Bloom, then seriously, enjoy your little waltz with misogyny." Lucky for me, I don't really care if all of womankind thinks I'm a misogynist. I'm perfectly happy to state the truth and let them bitch about me.

Incident to the feminists' hatred for people who hate Alana Bloom is their strident insistence that she is a "strong" female character. Another thing that popped up in a Google search was this poor guy backpedaling:

I didn’t actually think she’s a dumb whore. I typed those words and wasn’t calling her promiscuous ...I just made up some reason why she’s promiscuous when she isn’t. She’s not a dumb whore. She’s a very smart and reasonable woman and she is in no way promiscuous. I didn’t want to admit that I didn’t have a good reason to hate her...She’s a good example of a strong female character.

That's just sad. If you think she's a dumb whore, then stand by your words. I for one don't think she's a dumb whore. I think she's a common, petty, murderous, loathsome bitch. She's definitely not strong. She gets wafted about like a leaf. After getting pushed out a window, her whole personality changes. A strong person's personality doesn't change based on circumstances. They endure.

As I have mentioned before, there are plenty of strong female characters on TV. See Buffy, Xena, or even on the same show Jack's wife Bella, played by Gina Torres. Gina Torres can't help but play a strong woman in anything she does.

But Alana just being a loathsome bitch in shoulder pads isn't quite reason enough for me to hate her like I do. Ultimately, it's because a creature like her should never have power over someone like Hannibal. And seeing him caged with her holding the key is an abomination. She is beneath him. And again, to the strident feminists, it's not because she's a woman. It's because she is petty and small. She is stupider, and lesser in every way. She momentarily holds borrowed power over Hannibal when in the natural order of things he is superior.

So, yes, I wish the series had ended with Hannibal eating Alana Bloom rather than Dr. Du Maurier.

Hannibal. Why do we love him?

In case you are not aware of it, Hannibal is a TV series that ran for three seasons from 2013 to 2015. The titular character is Hannibal Lecter of Silence of the Lambs fame. I recommend the show. You can currently watch it on Amazon Video.

If you are entirely unfamiliar with the character Hannibal Lecter—or if you only think you know about him because you have some idea of a mad man who eats people—then read on, because that is not what Hannibal is. Hannibal is not insane. He knows full well what he is doing at all times. He's also urbane, surpassingly intelligent, and an excellent cook.

Undoubtedly the most famous appearance of Hannibal Lector in any medium is the movie The Silence of the Lambs, where he was played by Anthony Hopkins. People seem to adore Hopkins' performance. Frankly, I think it lacks subtlety. I've read the books, seen the movies and now the TV adaptation. It's that thing Hopkins does during the most iconic scene—he says the line, “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti”, and then he does that weird air-slurping thing.

It makes Hannibal look like a goddamn lunatic. While Hannibal is most certainly a sociopath with no sense of empathy with other human beings, he would never appear to be a lunatic. Hannibal is worldly and sophisticated. He does not appear insane. That is my problem with Hopkins' performance. He made Hannibal appear insane.

Mads Mikkelsen of the TV adaptation gets it right.

The show is an extended cat-and-mouse between Hannibal and the FBI. Most of the time Hannibal is well known to the FBI as a consulting psychiatrist. All the while he is killing people and leaving them to be found in tableaux that are grotesque and sometimes beautiful. Even if you cannot possible conceive of these tableaux as “beautiful”—and I admit it may be a poor choice of word—they are certainly designed with a sense of purpose and aesthetic, just as much as any painting.

There is gore, quite a lot of it. Some of it may be quite shocking. But that isn't really the main event. For every gory scene, there is a scene of Hannibal preparing some exquisite and artistic meal, either just for himself or for himself and a guest or for an entire lavish party complete with cater waiters. (Hannibal appears to be quite wealthy in the TV adaptation.) Do the meals contain people? Often, but not always. And the preparation is always interesting. For example, one dish he prepares involves encasing the meat in clay before putting it in the oven. Afterward, the clay is hardened and he brings the entire dish to the table and theatrically cracks open the clay to reveal the meat.

Hannibal cares very much about presentation and beauty. He writes beautiful letters in delicate calligraphy. He folds origami. He composes and plays harpsichord music. He despises rude people and, when possible, he eats them. He maintains a Rolodex of rude people for use when he is planning a dinner party. He removes things that are not beautiful.

Criminal Law: Procedure Above All

I've been re-watching the 3rd season of The Practice, which is available on Hulu. I watched this show originally back when it aired in the late 90s and early 2000s. I find myself wondering how much shows like this have influenced the way I feel about the criminal “justice” system even though they are all just fantasy written for the sake of drama.

For example, in the 3rd season episode “Infected”, Rider Strong (the guy from Boy Meets World plays a kid who lies in court to get his father acquitted on a murder charge.

After that, prosecutor Helen Gamble goes completely off the rails and charges Strong's character with felony murder and promises to get him life in prison.

My hair is cutting off the circulation to my brain.

I think we, the viewers, are supposed to sympathize with Gamble. She wants to punish evil doers, and she has clearly had some kind of mental break-down after the nun-killer got off “on a technicality”. While speaking to the judge on sentencing, she gets confused and starts raving as though the defendant is the nun-killer. The woman can't even keep track of who she is trying to railroad.

By the way, they call elements of due process “technicalities” when they correctly free a man because the police abused their power and because the State cannot make its burden to imprison and torture him. They call due process just and proper when they sentence a man to 20 years for lying because his lie corrupted “the process”.

That latter thing is exactly what happens in this episode. Gamble makes a deal with Rider Strong. She dops the felony murder charge and he pleads guilty of perjury. At sentencing, Gamble makes a ridiculous argument about how she and the judge “work for the room” and they have to uphold the process of the law. Then the judge, citing the importance of criminal procedure, hands down a sentence of 20 years in prison for perjury.

I'm locking you away so you can't continue to hurt people by, like, saying words.

A quick Google search shows that in real life people have been sentenced to 20 years in prison for perjury, but 5-10 years is more common.

Which leads me to my point. Shows like The Practice leave me feeling like the main purpose of the criminal justice system is to ruin people's lives—to ruin people's futures because of mistakes they made in the past. Unfortunately, while The Practice is undoubtedly exaggerated for dramatic effect, everything I know about criminal law in the real world leads me to believe that this is true. Life ruiners—that is what judges and prosecutors are.

Sometimes they ruin someone's life just because they can't get the guy they really want, so they settle for anyone nearby.

The judge in this episode says that he's giving 20 years because of the court's need to “ensure the integrity of this criminal justice process”. The process has no integrity, and never did, if the judges and prosecutors are more concerned with the process than with the actual facts and circumstances at hand.

Lost: Man of Science, Man of Faith

At the moment, I'm re-watching the first season of Lost. In the first season, the show had not yet become all about mystery and weirdness for its own sake. Since I know what's going to happen (mostly), I know I'm going to really enjoy the appearance of Ben Linus (and Michael Emerson's performance). I know that I'm only going to hate Michael more and more every episode. I seriously wish someone would drive wooden stakes through Michael. For me, though, the most interesting aspect of this show is the relationship and dichotomy between John Locke and Jack Shephard.

The thing I find most puzzling about these two characters is the characterization of Shephard and Locke as “man of science, man of faith”. In particular, everyone—including the writers unless I'm mistaken—seems to be suggesting that Jack is the “man of science” and John Locke is the “man of faith”. And they have it backward.

Insofar as Jack continues to ignore the weirdness he sees with his own eyes and clings to what he has always believed, Jack is a man of faith—blind, arrogant, stupid faith. John Locke, on the other hand, immediately accustoms himself to learning based on what he sees, no matter how strange it seems. John is a man of science. Is that what the writers had in mind all along? I really don't think so. Somehow they don't seem quite smart enough to realize the irony of their own creation.

The Fall's Hacky Cliffhanger Ending

Gillian Anderson's Only Facial Expression

A TV series ending a season on a cliffhanger is the work of a hack. It says to the audience and to everyone two important things:
(1) The writer(s) can't keep you coming back for more based on the quality of the show, so they need some gimmick to try to keep the audience waiting to see what happens next;
(2) They can't write a decent conclusion to a story that leaves the audience feeling like something has been accomplished but there is still more worthwhile story to come.

The Fall's cliffhanger ending at the end of Season 2 fails spectacularly. It's not even good as far as cliffhangers go. The season ends with Spector in custody. Is there anything more to say about their whole cat-and-mouse thing? It ends with Spector shot and bleeding out in Stella's arms. She seems desperate to save him, which is completely out of character. It would be much more in character for Stella to walk over nonchalantly and with cool disdain order one of the nearby male cops to call for an ambulance and then walk away to take a phone call—and then sleep with that cop later. That would have been a conclusion true to character and to the story. Suddenly Stella cares if a man dies?

But anyway, my point was that the episode didn't even show me that there was more story to be told. Do I particularly care whether Spector lives or dies? I already know he lives, else there is no more story. That other cop that Stella slept with got shot too, but I don't give a damn about him—just like Stella in that regard.

Ultimately, I'm not sure I'll be back for next season.

The worst you can say about Spector...

Now I'm up to Season 2, Episode 6 of The Fall. The drama is still compelling. Stella shows emotion for the second time in the history of the show: while watching a video of a capture girl, she sheds a tear. For a moment one might believe she has been a feeling human being this whole time. The police have Spector in custody and it looks like everything is falling into place for the police. Stella, ever the man-hating cunt, gets her man and gets to stand with her boot on his face.

I'm conflicted watching this show because I don't particularly want either of these two antagonists to succeed. Stella is just horrible. She spends her time sleeping her way through all the male cops and, if any of them suggests and substance or emotional involved in the transaction, she quickly shuts that down by referring to it as "fucking". She's a man-hater who chooses to sleep with men in order to exert power over them and demean them.

The worst you can say about Spector is that he kills people.

Also, by the way, the show ends this season on what might generously be called a cliffhanger. It's more like someone just took a script and chopped it randomly in half with an ax and sent the top half to production. Sloppy, cheap writing. The cliffhanger is the tool of a hack. I'm not sure I'm interested enough to return for the next season.

The Fall, Antifeminist

I'm only up to Season 2 Epsode 4 of The Fall so far.

I've written before about how certain people view The Fall's Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson) as some kind of exemplar of feminism. She plays a high ranking cop who, among other things, tells her driver to stop the car when she sees a fellow officer she wants to bed. As soon as she meets him, she invites him to her hotel room. He visits her, and she beds him. He gets murdered later and she doesn't give a damn.

Some would argue that she's acting like any man would, and why would a woman be held to different standards? I'm not sure a male cop would try to bed any random subordinate who catches his eye, but that isn't really the point. The point is this: is that praiseworthy? No, actually. Such a man should be fired. And so should Stella Gibson.

Now in this episode it looks like she's on the prowl again. She oh-so-casually mentions wanting to add a new guy to her task force—a man her assistant describes as charismatic and good-looking. To that, she defensively counters that when she met him he was wearing a full forensic mask. Trolling for ass again, and using her position and authority to do it. Hoorray for feminism.

When Good TV Shows Disappear Forever

I remember so many wonderful shows that you just can't see anywhere except maybe by downloading them illegally if you're lucky.

What happened to Murphy Brown? Sure Candice Bergen has been making guest appearances everywhere and basically just playing Murphy Brown—and those of us who were alive in the 80s and early 90s will always think of her as Murphy Brown because the show was iconic and unforgettable.

Murphy Brown was a newswoman. She was crass and tough-as-nails and she was often mean-spirited and petty. It was fun to watch her. She was the kind of woman who would send hookers and mariachi bands to the houses of her enemies at night. If you ever see Candice Bergen on anything, it's because Candice Bergen IS Murphy Brown and we all loved Murphy Brown.

So why can't you get the show on DVD? Well, that's what I was asking 5 years ago. Now I'm asking, “Why isn't it on Netflix?”

It's the same with The Practice. I loved that show back when it was on. Unfortunately, if you weren't alive and watching TV at the time, then you have missed out on The Practice. It's nearly impossible to find now. It was a legal drama, and one of the best of its kind I've ever seen. It was high drama through and through. It was riveting. The stakes were high. The actors were good. The show made you really care about the jury's verdict.

What happened? The Practice ran for 8 seasons—a very solid run for a TV show. Shows don't run that long without an audience. Even if you ignore the last season, and you should, that's still 7 seasons, which is still a great run.

The Practice, much like Roseanne, had a very bizarre last season. In Season 8 of The Practice, the show fired most of the main cast, and they completely changed the show. It was literally an entirely new show with, like, two of the cheapest actors from before remaining. For the historical record of The Practice, I'd recommend just throwing away Season 8 because it is not even part of the same show.

Like Murphy Brown, most of the seasons of The Practice are not available for purchase on DVD or online. The only way to get them is to find someone who recorded them from TV and copy those recordings. If you know something about pirating TV shows online, then you know that that is exactly what pirating is all about. But it's not even easy to pirate these shows because so few people have copies.

It's so sad when good TV shows disappear forever.

As of this writing, Hulu has season 1-3 of The Practice. Why not all of them?

Quantico Terrorist

Spoilers regarding the most recent episode: Season 1, Ep 20. So, Spoiler Alert!

We're supposed to believe that Drew was “voice”—or even that Drew is the terrorist. I don't buy it at all. He's a patsy. I think Senator Haas is involved in this. I can't guess her motive yet, but think about it. What was the deal with that power outage at Columbia? It's like they have all completely forgotten about that during this episode, but Haas chose to speak at Columbia, and then something was stolen from one of their labs during the confusion.

Plus she just seems like an evil bitch.

Quantico

I caught up on Quantico quickly by watching it on Hulu. The show focuses on a class of new students at the FBI Academy at Quantico—thus the name. They are all beautiful people with exaggerated credentials of excellence. Most have some kind of painful past that haunts them.

The show isn't really about FBI training. When the do show the trainees in a classroom, the instructor is always, always delivering some grandiose speech about being an FBI agent rather than offering actual education. Every day of class feels like the first day introduction. I'm not sure when they learn things like lawful arrest and chain-of-custody.

The show is really about some terrorist attack that happened some months later after the trainees have either washed out or become special agents. The evidence seems to point to our protagonist, Alex Parrish, the strong, sexy female lead.

Most of the fun of watching this show is trying to figure out who the real terrorist is. The show strongly suggests that the terrorist is someone Alex knows in the FBI.

It's entertaining. I'd recommend it do a friend. I have some thoughts on who the terrorist is.

The Fall, with Robotic Gillian Anderson

I think the British TV show The Fall came to my attention because it stars Gillian Anderson. I've been somewhat smitten with her since her appearance in Hannibal. In the brilliant TV series based on Thomas Harris's books, Anderson plays a character not created by Harris as far as I can recall, and I've read the books. She plays Hannibal Lecter's psychiatrist, a woman named Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier.

Anderson plays this character with a kind of stiff, halting, affectless demeanor. She looks like she had some botched botox that left her permanently incapable of making facial expressions. It would not be terribly surprising to learn that such a thing had in fact happened to actress Gillian Anderson who looks more beautiful now than she did in her 20s on The X-Files. She looks more gaunt now, and yet somehow more feminine.

I began watching previous episodes of The Fall on Amazon, buying them one at a time. It's a cop-and-serial-killer show. I don't care how many shows there are about serial killers, I think I'll always find them fascinating so long as they are well written. And this one is.

In The Fall, Gillian Anderson plays the cop. Actually, she's some kind of high-ranking English police investigator, and she arrives on the scene to take charge of searching for a serial murderer. Anderson speaks plausibly enough with an English accent to my ears, but I'm an American after all. The really jarring thing here is that Anderson plays her cop character, Stella Gibson, with the same kind of affectless, robotic monotone she used in Hannibal. Granted, it's not quite the same. Stella Gibson doesn't speak in exactly the same halting cadence of Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier—and that's an impressive feat—but she never displays any emotion at all until Season 2, Episode 3 (I think) when she discovers that the killer has been in her home and written a note to her in her own personal journal. For just a moment, she displays something that looks like surprise and fear.

Why has Gillian Anderson taken to playing these robotic, emotionless women? And why do feminists call this a “strong” woman? I came upon this article while reading about Anderson and her character: The Fall: feminist, anti-men and sadly accurate. It seems to support my idea that would-be feminists view her unyielding lack of humanity as some kind of vanguard of feminism into television. She displays characteristics that aren't exactly “feminine” (nor exactly human), and that's some kind of win for females everywhere.

I think what is interesting about The Fall is that both the serial murdered and the cop who is chasing him (Anderson) are sociopaths. That is the thing nobody else seems to have put to words just yet. Gillian Anderson isn't playing a strong female lead. She's playing a person devoid of all emotion, empathy, and restraint. She's playing a sociopath. She's playing a very high-functioning sociopath who has been very successful in climbing the ladder of her choice and gaining power over men. If you want to see a strong female lead who isn't a sociopath, watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Murphy Brown or Mary Tyler Moore. Being a strong woman doesn't mean being an affectless sociopath.

None of that is an indictment of the TV show—only a disagreement with some of the idiots who have commented on it before me. It's an interesting show: sociopath versus sociopath. Very watchable.

Adam's TV Blog

Updated: May 12, 2016

This marks my first time ever blogging about TV. I don't know why I never did it before. I'm a huge fan of TV, and I have much to say Of the things I know about, TV ranks up there. Here are some of the TV shows of which I've seen literally every episode—several of them more than once. I'm only counting shows that are completed, not shows that are still running.

• 30 Rock
• Angel
• Breaking Bad
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Damages
• Daria
• Dead Like Me
• Dexter
• Dilbert
• Dollhouse
• Don't Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23
• Firefly
• Futurama
• Hannibal
• House
• Newsradio
• Nurse Jackie
• Parks and Recreation
• Reba
• Roseanne
• Seinfeld
• Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Star Trek: Voyager
• Tru Calling
• The West Wing
• Will & Grace

I don't even know if that list is complete.

Here are some of the current shows I'm up-to-date on (meaning I have watched all released episodes to date) and plan to watch every episode in the future.

• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
• American Dad
• The Americans
• Bob's Burgers
• Family Guy
• New Girl
• Once Upon a Time
• Orange is the New Black
• Quantico
• South Park
• Squidbillies
• The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

Here are some shows where I've seen a substantial number of the episodes, but not quite all of them. Perhaps more than 50%.

• Batman: the Animated Series
• Battlestar Galactica (new series)
• Bewitched
• Bones
• Boy Meets World
• Charmed
• The Drew Carey Show
• Frasier
• How I Met your Mother
• I Dream of Jeannie
• I love Lucy
• iZombie
• Law & Order SVU (I've seen hundreds of these, but there are so, so many.)
• Lost
• The Practice
• Sabrina the Teenage Witch
• Scrubs
• The Simpsons (I've definitely seen everything before Season 7 many times.)
• Smallville

Shows I'm familiar with but probably haven't seen 50%.

Cheers

Friends

Murphy Brown

I love TV. I love GOOD TV. I don't even think I'm that picky about it. I don't care too much about plot holes or other pedantic bullshit so long as I am entertained. (But I'm not entertained by crap like Big Bang Theory.) From the lists above you can see the kinds of shows I like.

This education in TV I've had informs my opinions on what I see. I'll be blogging about the things I watch as I watch them. This may include old things that I've never seen before.