Hannibal Season 2 goes SO hard.

I enjoyed the first season, but I am in LOVE with the 2nd season. It really feels like the first season was stuck trying too hard to be like other successful shows about "crime." CSI, Law and Order, etc.

Season two discards the crime-sleuth aspect almost entirely to become this feverish, beautiful nightmare of psychological struggle. The second season is more articulate and confident in almost every aspect of presentation, from the dialogue to the extravagant costuming and set design, to the kabuki-inspired soundtrack, which becomes omnipresent, lurking in every scene.

Even the murders depicted act on a different level of horror. The first season's murders seemed fixated on producing a visceral reaction to relatively realistic pain, gore, and grossness and succeeded at that, but in the second season, the murders become even more unsettling as they spool away from concrete reality. We are shown the murders from the unfettered perspective of the killers. Even the concepts for each of the murderers encountered in the season are better (the beast-man arc comes to mind).

The script and performances change drastically going into season two as well. The theatrics of the script creates a feeling of rising madness. Of characters deranged by and coping with mind-bending situations. Many conversations remind me, favorably, of the dialogue in Pathologic 2, possibly my favorite video game of all time.

They're becoming stage actors in a mad director's play. The acting *almost* feels like its becoming more wooden, like all the characters are wearing masks on top of masks, which drives the fear and drama higher. Hannibal S2 invites you to theorize all of the horrible potentials. Every episode seems determined to open up new potential nightmare-scenarios that only the next episode can finally resolve in your mind, leaving you unable to fully process each horror because of what things you imagine could be coming next until the very end.

The second seasons full-on scathing hatred of medicalism and institutional psychiatry was a pleasant surprise. It is palpable and does not fail in its message. The show seems to embrace what was done to Will Graham in the first season, and it's for the better because expressing that anger and hatred shows some respect towards Will as a character, who is deeply mistreated for being autistic by medical and authority figures claiming to act in his best interest.

Amazing season.