- Acting
- Direction
- Screenplay
- Cinematography
It’s almost holiday season, or the makings of one, on the TV series. And just like every explosive family gathering, this one ends in multiple shoot outs. Series creator Bryan Fuller has taken a new direction with “Ouef.” He’s tying together three mini subplots into one theme - family. The family creation and assassination of the week’s crime scene, Will Graham’s family of strays and Abigail Hobbs missing ties with her dead family. There’s plenty of yearning and drama that makes for this episode a great prime time watch.
But first things first, the crime scene. “Ouef” missed its scheduled weekly release in US this past week when the Boston marathon massacre led the creators of the show to pause the screening. They instead aired the fifth episode. Reason being that the episode could potentially identify with the terrorist-like bombings and the following cop chase that made for CNN news coverage pretty much like watching a fictionalised account on crime drama series CSI. But while the North American market missed out on the episode, here in South East Asia we remained unaffected - with the crime scene of course.
So here is the revelation. A sociopathic mother figure played by Molly Shannon accompanied by a 16-year-old runaway CJ Lincoln (played by Austin MacDonald) are abducting underweight, ADD afflicted 13-year-old middle children across America and creating their own little family. Of course in order to do so, the kidnapped children have been brainwashed into thinking their birth families are not real. The only way to sever old ties and make new ones is to shoot their own families in cold blood, in the temple right between their eyes. Thus begins a nation-wide hunt where Jack Crawford and his crew of behaviour analysts aided by the “designs” of Will Graham travel through dinner table to living room to poolside barbecue locales hunting the killing army of children and their captors.
The beautifully crafted crime scenes recall cinematographer James Hawkinson’s artistry around a dinner table with worm infested fresh meat carvings, beautiful side dishes and holed and bloodied heads of the victims. The moment Graham sits on the chair to recreate the crime scene in his head, the room comes alive awash with American suburban perfection.
Family is also being seeked by survivor Abigail Hobbs who is befriended by Dr Hannibal Lecter and finds herself invited for dinner at the cannibalistic psychiatrist and now accomplice’s home for dinner. Lecter drugs her with a mushroom concoction till she begins to hallucinate and start seeing Lecter and FBI assigned pscych to Abigail Dr Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhaverns) as her own parents. So much for a dysfunctional family.
Graham stays in line with his consultations with Dr Lecter who by now has figured Graham’s week spot - loneliness, when he goes to Graham’s place to feed his strays and gets an insight into the profilers mind.
Watch the promo of the fifth episode:
- The fifth episode of “Hannibal” will air on Friday, May 3, 2022 at 10 pm on AXN.
