10 Things You Learn Rewatching Hannibal
8. Dr. Chilton Is So Unlucky
Dr. Frederick Chilton, the general administrator of The Baltimore Hospital For The Criminally Insane and a “dangerously incompetent” surgeon who switched to psychiatry for the purposes of fame and fortune, is the unluckiest character in all three seasons of Hannibal, and that’s saying something.
Chilton is by no means an innocent victim; he used a form of suggestion therapy on Dr. Abel Gideon for the purposes of convincing Gideon that he was in fact The Chesapeake Ripper. Chilton also manipulates Will Graham, while in his care, for personal gain and seems to have no other agenda than selling ‘true crime’ novels and climbing the social ladder in Baltimore’s academic psychiatry circles.
Yet there has to be a certain amount of sympathy for Chilton for he is a guy you just can’t keep down. He’s ‘operated’ on by his former patient and murderer Abel Gideon, removing some of his less vital organs (and left holding numerous parts of himself on a gurney), then he’s shot through the head before being kidnapped by The Tooth Fairy and set on fire, incredibly, surviving that too.
Show runner Bryan Fuller stated that he had planned to bring Chilton back in season four and would continue to subject him to more horror as a running gag throughout the duration. Not sure Chilton would see it that way, it’s kind of hard to smile when you haven’t got any lips…