10 Reasons Hannibal Was The Best Show On TV

Of all of Hannibal’s qualities, it’s the food preparation scenes that often catch the eye most. These are Hannibal Lecter’s grand displays, and the fruits of his labour—that is, the organs of his victims—become delicate ingredients with which he will masterfully prepare his meals, his masterpieces.

It shouldn’t feel artistic to watch a man puncture lung and carve shin-meat for his own gustatory pleasure, but it is, and it’s in these scenes that Hannibal asks one of its most vital philosophical questions: can something so horrendous accomplish beauty in the right hands?

That one’s up for debate, but what’s certain is that the scenes are so well crafted one has to at least ask the question. The food scenes are pivotal to Hannibal’s nature as a show: on the one hand they are brutal, devilish acts of violence; on the other they are the deeds of a man who believes that ‘ethics become aesthetics’, his cannibalism nothing more than a means to an end in terms of creating art and continuing an age old tradition of man as the sacrificial lamb.