Obligatory thoughts about Margot and Freddie in Hannibal 2.10
I've been really aggravated (and okay, somewhat amused) at the fandom response to "Naka-choko" in the last 24 hours or so, particularly in regards to what happens with Margot and Freddie. Mainly because so many people don't seem to understand what they're seeing. (I'm not saying that anyone who has a problem with the episode doesn't understand, by the way, but I have seen tons of people who CLEARLY do not.)
Spoilers, naturellement.
My own response to the Margot thing is that her lesbianism is something the show has been VERY subtle and suggestive about (rather than declarative). ("Button stitching"??) But having sex with one man one time does not make someone not a lesbian, and good grief we only just met her and there hasn't been time to develop her that much. I think her portrayal so far, though it's not without its issues, is a vast improvement over the way her sexuality is portrayed in the book. We get one reference to her being gay in "Shiizakana" ("I don't have the right parts ... or the right proclivities for parts.") and in the most recent episode her being a lesbian is almost exclusively tied (seriously, like, every time it's mentioned) to her situation with Mason and the heirship. She's been written out of her father's will because, to the Verger patriarchy, women are only good for breeding and since she's gay she's not capable of that in any way that's legitimate to them. She wants to be independent of Mason, and she wants to literally kill him. But if she merely kills him, she'll be destitute, because without a "legitimate male heir," all the money goes to the Southern Baptist Convention. It seems like she'd resigned herself to not getting her rightful inheritance until Hannibal mentions making her own legacy.
So if she wants to make her own legacy she has to have a child. Many MANY people have been at pains to point out that methods which are available to other lesbians are not an option for Margot. Mason holds the purse strings and controls almost every aspect of her life. There is NO WAY she could have an expensive procedure like IVF or go to a sperm bank without Mason knowing, and if that happens she's as good as dinner for those pigs. I've seen people say "well, what about sticking to canon?", to which I can only say are you serious wtf have you read the book??? In the book, Margot sticks a cattle prod up Mason's ass and takes his sperm by force (also, in that version, Margot has become infertile due to steroid use and her lover Judy is the one who's going to have the baby). I don't care what kind of monster Mason is, if they're not going to show a woman getting raped on the show, they're not going to show that happening to a man either.
So she does the only thing she feels she can do to secure her legacy. She has sex with a man in hopes of getting pregnant. As a straight person, I don't get a say about whether this is hurtful or not. I certainly sympathize with fans who were excited to get an LGBTQ character only to have to watch a sex scene between her and a man (and another woman and another man and a manstag), and I do think that a couple of Fuller's responses on Twitter were pretty childish (not that Twitter is even a place to have a nuanced discussion of an issue like this). I'm not trying to excuse him (and God, the people rushing to his defense in the most awful, unhelpful ways are disgusting), but it must have burned for him, as a gay man who has fought real, losing battles with networks (as opposed to arguments on the internet) over honest portrayals of homosexuality on television, to be called homophobic. I also think that, if your response to a piece of entertainment is to tell the creator that he's a piece of trash and should die, you've lost any power you might have had to make me take you seriously. But for me, Margot having sex with Will seemed more like an act of desperation, something she was doing PURELY to secure her legacy. She wasn't attracted to Will, and she's not suddenly straight (or, worse, never really gay to begin with, which is the trope people are seeing with this and I just can't make my eyes see it that way).
Freddie is a different matter. My immediate response to Will dragging her off screaming was "well ... but you can't do that, you need her for future events." This was also my immediate response to Chilton getting shot in the face - not "oh no, I was starting to like him" but "dude, what about when you get to Silence of the Lambs???" (Also, it's my strong opinion that no one gets to kill Chilton but Hannibal.) Of course almost as soon as the episode was over I was sure Freddie wasn't really dead. That there was a reason Will arranged to meet her at seemingly the exact same time that Hannibal was hanging out in her room in his murder suit. That the "longpig" in the final scene was Randall. That it's all a clever ruse and she's tucked away like Chilton is and this is all part of Will's and Jack's plan to ensnare Hannibal. That, no matter how far he's willing to wade into the darkness, there was no way he'd actually kill Freddie Lounds. Randall Tier was one thing - he was defending himself and the man messed with his dog. There's just no reason for him to kill Freddie, especially when she was starting to believe that he was right about Hannibal.
But some comments Bryan Fuller made to TVGuide.com (here) have given me pause.
When you have Will take a life in self-defense, it is not necessarily a psychotic move because he's trying to preserve his own life. The idea of him taking a life had to be the next step.
***
[Hannibal]'s not going to put himself out there until Will makes it a safe bet. We needed Will to take a life. And of all the characters Will might want to kill, Freddie was the first one to get what was coming to her in Will's mind.
I can still fit this in with just being what Will wants Hannibal to think. He's always been combative with Freddie, which Hannibal knows, and Will must have also known that what Freddie has apparently told Alanna would have been the last straw for Hannibal and Freddie couldn't be allowed (in Hannibal's mind) to live anymore.
[Q:] Are Will and Hannibal definitely eating Freddie? I was hoping otherwise until Will referred to the meat as longpig, which is a phrase I wasn't familiar with.
Fuller: [Laughs] I guess you're not hanging around the right cannibals.
Successfully dodges the question.
[Q:] So, in your mind that makes it clear what Will has done to Freddie?
Fuller: It's pretty clear. Will has gone to the dark side and we should be fearing for him. It is very much a slippery slope for Will Graham because he is taking lives and that changes the way you think and interact with the world.
Plenty of wiggle room here, I think.
[Q:] Maybe my struggle is with how quickly this change is happening in Will. Is Hannibal at all suspicious that Will is playing him, or does he think this is the natural progression for Will's "therapy"?
Fuller: This seals the deal [for Hannibal]. It's such a huge move for Will and it is very convincing and effective. He took the biggest, most important step in that descent, and we wanted to make sure Will is in psychic danger of completely losing himself to Hannibal Lecter.
Obviously, great effort would have to be made to not make Hannibal suspicious. I do wonder (assuming Freddie isn't dead) how they're going to deal with the issue of a body. Hannibal would certainly be suspicious if there were no display for this particular kill, since this is much more of a boundary-crossing kill for Will and would be significant to Hannibal. [spoilers from next week's promo] [spoilers from next week's promo]I'm guessing the flaming wheelchair is meant to be Freddie, or at least what people are supposed to *believe* is Freddieand[not insignificant spoilers from NBC's summary of next week's episode]the thing about Jack and the team finding out about Freddie ... perhaps the evidence is faked? Are Jimmy and Brian going to be in on this now as well? There's also the bit about Alanna responding to Freddie's death, which I guess could be part of a cover-up as well, since her closeness to Hannibal means she has to be made to think Freddie's dead too.
But dude. How far is Jack willing to allow Will to go to catch Hannibal if Freddie *is* actually dead? I guess immunity covers murder, or they could just pin it on Hannibal, but ... how does the FBI play that kind of collateral damage? Speaking of Jack...
[Q:] Where does Jack land in all of this? Does he buy Will's flimsy defense for why Freddie went missing near Will's house?
Fuller: I would challenge the audience to look closer and not mistake Jack Crawford's restraint as cluelessness. He is a man who is listening to the opinions of everybody around him and yet offering nothing of what he's thinking. Jack has been very close to the vest with how he has been interacting with Hannibal and Will since Episode 7. There is a sense of he knows more than he is letting on to the audience or other characters. And I would say that is true to the spirit of an FBI agent: They don't volunteer information; they ask questions.
Still fits with the "clever ruse" theory.
[Q:] I was relieved that Freddie was smart enough to call Jack, although she probably should have done so before going out there alone.
Fuller: I found it kind of fun that she was as scrappy as she was. She's doing everything you would do as a smart person in that scenario, yet it's terrifying. I found this episode went a long way in making Freddie likable. You root for her. So, when she dies, you go, "Well, g***ammit, I was just starting to like her."
"So, when she dies..." That's the part that troubles me. I know there's no way for Fuller to actually answer questions in a way that would even subtly confirm that Freddie isn't dead - especially when the fear that Will has killed her is important to the suspense leading up to the finale. But I'm nervous. And even though I'm not on the Fridging Alert train (oh man, SURELY Fuller wouldn't have made that crack about "a female character and a refrigerator" if this is actually how Freddie went out), Freddie was one of my remaining arguments against all that.
Spoilers, naturellement.
My own response to the Margot thing is that her lesbianism is something the show has been VERY subtle and suggestive about (rather than declarative). ("Button stitching"??) But having sex with one man one time does not make someone not a lesbian, and good grief we only just met her and there hasn't been time to develop her that much. I think her portrayal so far, though it's not without its issues, is a vast improvement over the way her sexuality is portrayed in the book. We get one reference to her being gay in "Shiizakana" ("I don't have the right parts ... or the right proclivities for parts.") and in the most recent episode her being a lesbian is almost exclusively tied (seriously, like, every time it's mentioned) to her situation with Mason and the heirship. She's been written out of her father's will because, to the Verger patriarchy, women are only good for breeding and since she's gay she's not capable of that in any way that's legitimate to them. She wants to be independent of Mason, and she wants to literally kill him. But if she merely kills him, she'll be destitute, because without a "legitimate male heir," all the money goes to the Southern Baptist Convention. It seems like she'd resigned herself to not getting her rightful inheritance until Hannibal mentions making her own legacy.
So if she wants to make her own legacy she has to have a child. Many MANY people have been at pains to point out that methods which are available to other lesbians are not an option for Margot. Mason holds the purse strings and controls almost every aspect of her life. There is NO WAY she could have an expensive procedure like IVF or go to a sperm bank without Mason knowing, and if that happens she's as good as dinner for those pigs. I've seen people say "well, what about sticking to canon?", to which I can only say are you serious wtf have you read the book??? In the book, Margot sticks a cattle prod up Mason's ass and takes his sperm by force (also, in that version, Margot has become infertile due to steroid use and her lover Judy is the one who's going to have the baby). I don't care what kind of monster Mason is, if they're not going to show a woman getting raped on the show, they're not going to show that happening to a man either.
So she does the only thing she feels she can do to secure her legacy. She has sex with a man in hopes of getting pregnant. As a straight person, I don't get a say about whether this is hurtful or not. I certainly sympathize with fans who were excited to get an LGBTQ character only to have to watch a sex scene between her and a man (and another woman and another man and a manstag), and I do think that a couple of Fuller's responses on Twitter were pretty childish (not that Twitter is even a place to have a nuanced discussion of an issue like this). I'm not trying to excuse him (and God, the people rushing to his defense in the most awful, unhelpful ways are disgusting), but it must have burned for him, as a gay man who has fought real, losing battles with networks (as opposed to arguments on the internet) over honest portrayals of homosexuality on television, to be called homophobic. I also think that, if your response to a piece of entertainment is to tell the creator that he's a piece of trash and should die, you've lost any power you might have had to make me take you seriously. But for me, Margot having sex with Will seemed more like an act of desperation, something she was doing PURELY to secure her legacy. She wasn't attracted to Will, and she's not suddenly straight (or, worse, never really gay to begin with, which is the trope people are seeing with this and I just can't make my eyes see it that way).
Freddie is a different matter. My immediate response to Will dragging her off screaming was "well ... but you can't do that, you need her for future events." This was also my immediate response to Chilton getting shot in the face - not "oh no, I was starting to like him" but "dude, what about when you get to Silence of the Lambs???" (Also, it's my strong opinion that no one gets to kill Chilton but Hannibal.) Of course almost as soon as the episode was over I was sure Freddie wasn't really dead. That there was a reason Will arranged to meet her at seemingly the exact same time that Hannibal was hanging out in her room in his murder suit. That the "longpig" in the final scene was Randall. That it's all a clever ruse and she's tucked away like Chilton is and this is all part of Will's and Jack's plan to ensnare Hannibal. That, no matter how far he's willing to wade into the darkness, there was no way he'd actually kill Freddie Lounds. Randall Tier was one thing - he was defending himself and the man messed with his dog. There's just no reason for him to kill Freddie, especially when she was starting to believe that he was right about Hannibal.
But some comments Bryan Fuller made to TVGuide.com (here) have given me pause.
When you have Will take a life in self-defense, it is not necessarily a psychotic move because he's trying to preserve his own life. The idea of him taking a life had to be the next step.
***
[Hannibal]'s not going to put himself out there until Will makes it a safe bet. We needed Will to take a life. And of all the characters Will might want to kill, Freddie was the first one to get what was coming to her in Will's mind.
I can still fit this in with just being what Will wants Hannibal to think. He's always been combative with Freddie, which Hannibal knows, and Will must have also known that what Freddie has apparently told Alanna would have been the last straw for Hannibal and Freddie couldn't be allowed (in Hannibal's mind) to live anymore.
[Q:] Are Will and Hannibal definitely eating Freddie? I was hoping otherwise until Will referred to the meat as longpig, which is a phrase I wasn't familiar with.
Fuller: [Laughs] I guess you're not hanging around the right cannibals.
Successfully dodges the question.
[Q:] So, in your mind that makes it clear what Will has done to Freddie?
Fuller: It's pretty clear. Will has gone to the dark side and we should be fearing for him. It is very much a slippery slope for Will Graham because he is taking lives and that changes the way you think and interact with the world.
Plenty of wiggle room here, I think.
[Q:] Maybe my struggle is with how quickly this change is happening in Will. Is Hannibal at all suspicious that Will is playing him, or does he think this is the natural progression for Will's "therapy"?
Fuller: This seals the deal [for Hannibal]. It's such a huge move for Will and it is very convincing and effective. He took the biggest, most important step in that descent, and we wanted to make sure Will is in psychic danger of completely losing himself to Hannibal Lecter.
Obviously, great effort would have to be made to not make Hannibal suspicious. I do wonder (assuming Freddie isn't dead) how they're going to deal with the issue of a body. Hannibal would certainly be suspicious if there were no display for this particular kill, since this is much more of a boundary-crossing kill for Will and would be significant to Hannibal. [spoilers from next week's promo] [spoilers from next week's promo]I'm guessing the flaming wheelchair is meant to be Freddie, or at least what people are supposed to *believe* is Freddieand[not insignificant spoilers from NBC's summary of next week's episode]the thing about Jack and the team finding out about Freddie ... perhaps the evidence is faked? Are Jimmy and Brian going to be in on this now as well? There's also the bit about Alanna responding to Freddie's death, which I guess could be part of a cover-up as well, since her closeness to Hannibal means she has to be made to think Freddie's dead too.
But dude. How far is Jack willing to allow Will to go to catch Hannibal if Freddie *is* actually dead? I guess immunity covers murder, or they could just pin it on Hannibal, but ... how does the FBI play that kind of collateral damage? Speaking of Jack...
[Q:] Where does Jack land in all of this? Does he buy Will's flimsy defense for why Freddie went missing near Will's house?
Fuller: I would challenge the audience to look closer and not mistake Jack Crawford's restraint as cluelessness. He is a man who is listening to the opinions of everybody around him and yet offering nothing of what he's thinking. Jack has been very close to the vest with how he has been interacting with Hannibal and Will since Episode 7. There is a sense of he knows more than he is letting on to the audience or other characters. And I would say that is true to the spirit of an FBI agent: They don't volunteer information; they ask questions.
Still fits with the "clever ruse" theory.
[Q:] I was relieved that Freddie was smart enough to call Jack, although she probably should have done so before going out there alone.
Fuller: I found it kind of fun that she was as scrappy as she was. She's doing everything you would do as a smart person in that scenario, yet it's terrifying. I found this episode went a long way in making Freddie likable. You root for her. So, when she dies, you go, "Well, g***ammit, I was just starting to like her."
"So, when she dies..." That's the part that troubles me. I know there's no way for Fuller to actually answer questions in a way that would even subtly confirm that Freddie isn't dead - especially when the fear that Will has killed her is important to the suspense leading up to the finale. But I'm nervous. And even though I'm not on the Fridging Alert train (oh man, SURELY Fuller wouldn't have made that crack about "a female character and a refrigerator" if this is actually how Freddie went out), Freddie was one of my remaining arguments against all that.