Hannibal: Will Graham Vs. TV Tropes

By Lisa Anderson

Last Friday, faithful fans of NBC’s Hannibal were glued to the screen for the premiere of the show’s highly anticipated second season. The first season of producer Bryan Fuller’s take on the novels of Thomas Harris garnered critical praise and audience appreciation for everything from the masterful performances to the elaborate gourmet dishes prepared by the title character. One thing that stood out for me, however, was the way in which Will Graham, the protagonist and point-of-view character of the first season, undermines an increasingly common trope on television.

The trope is that of a white man, usually presumptively straight, who is so good at his job that he is allowed to continue at it despite flouting the rules around it and generally being horrible to co-workers and the public. I think of this archetype as the Jerk Genius, and variations of it are explored on TV Tropes including Deadpan Snarker and (especially) Dr. Jerk. With the popularity of both medical shows and law enforcement procedurals, there are many examples, but the two most often cited are rooted in the same Victorian soil: the BBC’s Sherlock and FOX’s House.

In the pilot episode of Hannibal, “Aperitif,” it looks for a second like FBI profiler Will Graham, played by Hugh Dancy, is being set up as a House or Sherlock-type character. He has a mysterious ability to intuit details about serial killers by empathizing with them, usually based off of crime scenes, and this makes him a subject of curiosity in both psychiatric and law enforcement circles. Special Agent Jack Crawford comes to Graham’s Quantico classroom to request his help, and ends up asking him how his antisocial nature jibes with teaching. Will explains that he doesn’t regard it as social, but rather as talking at the students. This is something a Jerk Genius might say. Perhaps we should be tipped off that we’re seeing something different, however, when Will says that he has more in common with people on the autism spectrum than with psychopaths. This is the opposite of Sherlock Holmes’s almost proud identification as a “highly functioning sociopath.”

We soon see that Graham can’t be a Jerk Genius because, while he may be awkward and shy, he’s not really a jerk. On several occasions, he manages to get the information from the relatives of people involved in killings in a tactful way: the parents of the murder victim Elise Nichols in “Aperitif,” the wife of murderer Elliot Budish in “Coquilles,” and the mother of killer Georgia Madchen in “Rôti.” Will’s approach contrasts starkly with the bullying and haranguing used by the title character in House. He also seems to have much more compassion for the victims and the bereaved than does Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes, who is more interested in an intellectual challenge than anything else

The defining characteristic of the Jerk Genius is that he is indulged. Dr. House keeps his job in spite of infuriating patients and colleagues alike, and his hospital even keeps special malpractice insurance just for him. Sherlock Holmes, too, is allowed a shocking amount of leeway: he may occasionally get dragged to Buckingham Palace, but he’ll be damned if you can make him get dressed to go there. There is no such indulgence for Will Graham. In spite of his brilliance as a profiler, he’s not allowed to be an FBI field agent because he can’t pass the psychological screening process; yet because of that skill, he’s dragged into a consulting role that is just as taxing.

The people around Jerk Geniuses also tend to take them seriously. Will Graham is taken seriously on the job . . . up to a point. Crime scene investigators Jimmy Price and Brian Zeller openly mock and contradict him on several occasions. The people who seem to like and trust him the most are Jack Crawford and forensic investigator Beverly Katz, and even Jack disagrees with him at least once. More importantly, when the horror of Will’s insights starts to wear on him (combined with an undiagnosed encephalitis and the unhelpful counsel of Hannibal Lecter), Jack keeps convincing him not to quit.

The story arc of the Jerk Genius often takes him from loneliness to companionship, with some personal growth (but not too much) along the way. Holmes has Watson; House has Wilson. Will Graham has no one to confide in but psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter, a manipulative serial killer who’s only making things worse. He’d have better prospects for romance as a Jerk Genius, too. Sherlock catches the eye of Molly Hooper and Irene Adler, neither of whom interest him, and even House finds love for a while. But Will is rejected by Alana Bloom, who admits to having feelings for him, but finds him incompatible at best, unstable at worst.

In spite of their competence, its not unusual for a Jerk Genius to end up in trouble, and here is where the trope converges with Will’s story. Holmes ended up suspected of multiple murders in the finale of Series 2 of Sherlock, and the final season of House saw the doctor in prison. In “Savoureux,” the finale of the first season of Hannibal, the dark promise of Will’s gift seems to have been realized as he is charged with five murders. The audience knows, of course, that he has been framed by Hannibal Lecter, who actually committed the killings.

Unlike the Jerk Genius, Will is failed by multiple people, including those who care about him. In this way, Hannibal is also a commentary on isolation, both individual and societal. The growing strength that Will finds by the end of Season 1, he wins on his own.

The game has changed in Season 2, as Hannibal’s lies were already starting to unravel at the end of the first season, so the writers will have to find new ways to subvert the things we’ve seen before. Whatever happens next, they’ve won a loyal following, in part by subverting the irritating and increasingly common trope of the Jerk Genius.