Oh yeah, I like the nightmarish feel it has, and how it doesn't even bother to explain some things, like how Hannibal sets up these elaborate tableaux, or how he sometimes deal with people directly (the latest episode has an instance of this with the two FBI guys at Chilton's house).
But it's still covering up for a shaky plot that doesn't really stand up to scrutiny a lot of the time. I'm fine with that, but I've heard people criticize the show for it, and it's a pretty fair criticism.
Yeah, I've seen the criticism, but for me it misses the point. I mean, they could have written the show where these things weren't so elaborate or fantastical, and either explained how it was done or made is reasonable enough that you wouldn't find it unbelievable, but what would be the point of that? For me it doesn't matter how Hannibal does these things, it matters that he does them and why, and what his master plan is.
This is a point for me that extends further than just this show. I keep reading a lot of comments about shows that they don't make sense, that the writing is "sloppy", that they've jumped the shark (which is never used correctly). Who ever said that fictional stories should be believable? In fact, they should be distinctly unbelievable. Having everything be perfectly plausible would undermine the integrity of the story. In Great Expectations, there is no reasonable way that Pip happens to show up at ruins of the old manner after being gone 11 years and Estella just happens to come back to visit at exactly the same time. That they would both go back and visit is plausible. But that they would both come back at the exact same time and happen to run into each other is completely unreasonable. However, it was the necessary way for the story to unfold.
I mean tons of classic stories have these sort of things. There is no realistic way Gatsby produces that much wealth from nothing... there's a back story, but it's not believable. Javert just running into Jean Valjean multiple times throughout the course of 20 (or whatever) years in a huge country with big cities and without the kind of modern connections we have now is unbelievable. Or in just about every fantasy novel, where the hero that is ignorant of his/her abilities first discovers them in a life-or-death situation and overcomes whatever evil is attacking him. In a "realistic" fantasy novel, that hero is dead, because even though he has special powers, so do those hunting him, and they're experienced at using them. The believable story is that the villains (experienced killers!) would not underestimate the hero, and they would simply kill him without any issue or deus ex machina. But then the epic fantasy series would be like 4 chapters, and there would be no story arcs.
Who wants to read stories that happen in the real world? That's called news, and news is boring. I think the mark of good writing is creating stories and characters that engross you enough so that these things don't matter. As long as you're sufficiently engrossed, suspension of disbelief is not really an issue. I think Hannibal does this, and I think a lot of shows that get this kind of criticism (e.g., Walking Dead, Breaking Bad) do so as well.
I do find it curious that this criticism only comes up for television/movies, though. I don't see people complaining about these things in novels, plays, operas, etc.
