Looking back, I can now understand why this show was basically doomed from its premise onward.

Silence of the lambs mostly owes its success to the Hannibal character but Sir Anthony H only had 25 minutes total screen time. He wasn't the film's protagonist or the primary antagonist... more of a Virgilian guide to the viewer's Dantesque tour of the darker side of Humanity.

Deciding to focus the show on the Will / Hannibal relationship is quite entertaining ... for a season, but two characters are not enough for a long term plot. Over the second and third seasons, the dialogue shifts from clever high-brow quips and exchanges between the main characters to narrations that are as purple as prose can get.

Most of the supporting characters have two dimensional personalities, motivations and no long term plots are really developed around them.

The guests (mostly killers) are only notable in how inferior they are to Hannibal before they are killed off.

In fact, everyone is inferior to Hannibal. I think it's the show's running joke. He is the Golden Age Super Sociopath.

"A sophisticated intelligence can forecast many things..."

So not just a Shark, but a toothless, predictable Shark to jump.

Its clear that a lot of time, money and effort has gone into the production of the show. However, in the scramble to please as wide a demographic as possible, the creative talent behind the show lost its soul in Season 2, and then compensated with heavy handed metaphors, borrowed lines and cyclical plots.

Season 1 is really the best and only cohesive part of the show. Perhaps it should have ended there.