Reviews
[TV Review] “Hannibal” Season 3 Episode 02 – ‘Primavera’
The second episode of Hannibal’s third season, ‘Primavera’ served up a gigantic rehash for its first course. While the fate of Will Graham was made abundantly clear rather quickly, it was delivered in a heavy retread of last season’s finale. It wasn’t the most exciting way to begin the episode but is perhaps the only bad thing about the hour.
The episode begins with revisiting the moment that Will is betrayed by Hannibal. Will lies in bed broken and hurt, and descends into the red the ocean of blood – the image of a shattered teacup in his guise shows that his psyche is coming apart only to be put back together. He’s alive and on life support. Thank god for that.
Abigail is alive too! Which rubbed me the wrong way at first. Of course I was very happy to now that I was being maniuplated. It wasn’t supposed to sit right, and just as I came to justify it in my own way – Hannibal pulls the rug out from under me. (More on that later) I bought that it’s intimate that he knew exactly how to cut them – he’s a master and he wanted them to live – but left them to die. It’s beautiful, chaotic, and speaks to Hannibal’s malignant love for Will, and Will’s delusional devotion to a man who perhaps tried to kill him.
But Will is certain that Hannibal didn’t give him an ending just yet – he wants Will to find him. Will’s on this righteous quest believing he can never do the wrong thing – that he’s just doing what he’s supposed to. The surreal dream sequence brought it all together in Hannibal’s office. As Will stood dazed in a sea of floating notes we’re reminded that Will knows this memory palace. Will is too intimate with Hannibal to not know his next move. It’s surreal in a brand new way.
With the 8 month flash, we’re in Italy. Will and Abigail enter the chapel. Will is on Hannibal’s trail. And he’s close. “God’s not who I came here to find.” We’re shown a much more fixated and obsessed Will than ever before. He doesn’t believe in the divine but as he spits out dialogue about his beliefs it’s difficult to determine if he’s talking about God or Hannibal. For Will, defying God is Hannibal’s idea of a good time.
Will is speaking for Hannibal now. Almost that he’s in his head – not realizing how behind he is and his visions still cloud his sense of reality. But just as we begin to doubt Will’s hold on reality its revealed that Will knows Hannibal better than we think. That doubt – it was wrong. Will is brilliant but fixated.
And with that fixation, Will meets a fellow traveler in this strange world of obsession. Rinaldo Pazzi’s monster of Florence created images like beautiful paintings only it was 20 years ago. We watch as Will learns about Hannibal’s past and can’t help but also be transfixed by the idea of this young Lithuanian man. For the first
And, for the first time we see Will use his gift on Hannibal’s crime scene. We get to see just how well he knows him in one of the most disgusting and violent hallucinations the show ever tossed at us. The torso unfolding and evolving into the stag-man will be with me for a while. God only knows where the show would be without the horrific visualizations. It’s a powerful sequence because it reminds us just how broken Will is.
Hannibal is playing with them – always. He misses being hunted. But he’ll always be ahead. This proves true right in that moment after they decide to hunt him. It’s all about Will being bold and brash basically learning nothing from his final moment in season 2.
This season’s theme is all about contradictions. About the idea of figuring things out just for the reality to be the furthest thing from that. Immediate juxtapositions that undermine what you’re seeing. Like good philosophy that spends its time convincing you the world works in a certain way only to undermine everything, you’ve come to believe with the next theory.
Abigail is dead. Will is alone and deeply troubled and Hannibal is toying with him. She is the manifestation of his underlying need to go back to Hannibal. Will was seemingly at peace with everything but it’s clear he’s a jilted lover. This is a man reborn with a singular and scary purpose: to forgive the man who left him for dead.
You know that when prolific director Doug Campbell is involved in a thriller, it’s going to be a ridiculously good time. So although The Manny, written by screenwriters Tamar Halpern and Scotty Mullen, isn’t on the same level as this year’s She’s Obsessed with My Husband, it’s still got plenty to recommend.
Lani McCall (Joanne Jansen) is a food vlogger on the rise. She’s on the cusp of signing a major network contract, thanks to love interest Zack (Brendan Morgan), but her recent divorce from unreliable husband Darren (Jamaal Grant) has left her in a precarious child care situation.
Lani tends to rely on assistant/producer Mercedes (Hailey Summer), but it’s not a sustainable situation. What she really needs is a nanny for her son, Jaylen (Ashton Ayres); ideally as soon as possible.
Enter Morgan (Michael Evans Behling), a hunky 23 year old who cooks, cleans, and dotes on Lani. He’s too good to be true, which – in Lifetime films – is code for “he’s a completely homicidal wacko.”
The joy of these thrillers isn’t piecing together who the villain is; that’s usually obvious from the opening scene (that applies here: The Manny opens with Morgan putting away notepads on his previous “families” and starting a fresh one with a picture of Lani and Jaylen on the cover).
Instead the fun comes from watching the ridiculous gaslighting the villains do before they get their inevitable comeuppance. And, in the case of The Manny, Halpern and Mullen understand that silly is often better than serious.
Which is why when Morgan begins disposing of Lani’s closest friends and confidants to secure his position in the household and her heart, his technique is hilariously unusual. For example, Lani’s sex-positive neighbor Shannon (Jenny Itwaru) is first painted as a gossip before Morgan poisons her smoothie with (get this) expired prosciutto in order to give her a stomach bug.
Morgan’s psychotic behavior quickly escalates to include identity theft, catfishing, and eventually murder, albeit even the latter action is sublimely silly. I can’t honestly say I’ve ever seen asphyxiation by Murphy bed in a thriller before, but I hope to again!
Considering Morgan ingratiates himself into Lani’s life partially via cooking, it’s amusing how many of his violent acts involve kitchen items. Mercedes is removed temporarily from the equation when she breaks a leg falling down cooking oil-greased stairs and, in the kitchen-set climax, Morgan even threatens to tip a pot of boiling water on top of Jaylen’s head.
In different hands, this could be genuinely scary, but Campbell’s directorial approach tends to lean into camp territory. Halpern and Mullen’s screenplay adopts a similar approach, peppering Zack’s dialogue with affirmations of the Manny’s model good looks, including the observation that his “lips are distracting.” Even serious moments, such as when Morgan alleviates Lani’s stress by rubbing peppermint oil on her neck, is accompanied by the double entendre “Yeah, you are pretty tight.”
Evans Behling is having a great time as the perpetrator, striking the right balance between unhinged and doe-eyed innocent. Not unlike The Stepfather films, Morgan is basically a family annihilator in search of the perfect pair, though the traumatic origin of his obsession feels slightly at odds tonally with the goofiness of the rest of the plot.
As the gaslit protagonist, Jansen is saddled with the least interesting role, though Lani’s struggle to balance her career while dating and single parenting is relatable content. Secondary characters are enjoyable enough, particularly when they are given opportunities to be suspicious of Morgan.
At its core, The Manny is a silly and entertaining entry in Lifetime’s catalogue of thrillers. Any film that ends with a battle in the woods and features a ski pole as a weapon is alright by me.
The Manny premieres on Lifetime Thursday, May 9.
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