[Note: This is the first of a three-part series highlighting some of Hannibal‘s unique contributions to the television world, to commemorate its final week on NBC. The images and video in this post contain spoilers. Also macabre humor.]

Hannibal completes its third (and last) season this week, despite its critical acclaim and the devotion of its passionate fanbase (known as “Fannibals”). Critics have praised the program’s reconceptualization of the horror series and its compelling version of the familiar Hannibal character, but Hannibal has left its mark in other ways as well. This short series of posts examines how Hannibal has engaged with questions of gender: in remixing the markers of quality TV, in embracing the potential of its position within the fannish archive, and in privileging a complex teen girl character within its narrative.

A common exclamation for new viewers of Hannibal is “I can’t believe this is on network!” This astonishment reflects the dominant cultural hierarchies of value in which television critics have elevated non-network shows as “quality TV” for discerning viewers over network shows largely assumed to be mindless fodder for the undiscerning masses. As Elana Levine and Michael Z. Newman have argued (and critic Noah Berlatsky recently affirmed), such critical divides of taste and value perpetuate inequalities of class and gender in which quality is associated with middle class, male audiences/”masculine” tastes, and non-quality tv with mass, largely female audiences with “feminine” tastes.

This divide has become even more obvious as white middle-class audiences have largely fled the networks, preferring the suburban pastures of original programming on HBO, Netflix, Amazon, etc. In the face of this divide, networks have been even more willing to serve the audiences that remain by developing programming for undervalued viewers such as teens, women, queer people, and people of color, many of whom still watch live TV. In addition, networks have developed more programming from less critically regarded pulp genres (as opposed to “adult dramas”) such as musicals, science fiction, and horror.

NBC’s Hannibal is unusual in its ability to bridge this cultural divide by successfully developing a “class and mass” brand that has provided an innovative, unique model of program and promotion. Hannibal‘s brand appeals to and actively serves both quality TV audiences and an intensely invested fan base, led primarily by young women utilizing social media. The easy co-existence of these seemingly odd bedfellows is particularly remarkable given that the presence of young women is often seen to degrade (“feminize”) the quality bona fides of any media product. Yet just as Hannibal queered its source material, the program’s producers were able to develop a mode of promotional address that combined quality markers with overt acknowledgements of its fandom. Far from “degrading” the text, this integration has resulted in a richer, more experimental, more politically progressive program and a more inclusive viewer experience.

In 2011, amidst the backdrop of reboots, rebranding, origin stories, and sequels, Hannibal seemed to be a perfect fit for NBC. The recent popularity of horror on American television—in series like The Walking Dead and American Horror Story—suggested to the network that a reboot of the familiar character of Hannibal Lecter would allow them to tap into this growing viewer demand. At the same time, NBC sought to establish a “quality” brand for the show. For example, the network committed to thirteen episodes rather than a full season, a break with network traditions that replicated the practices of cable’s prestige programs. The network also chose to skip the pilot stage because of the involvement of the French Gaumont studio group, who purchased the rights to the novel—and thus the characters from—Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon, which would serve as the foundation for the series. The inclusion of Gaumont as a producing partner gave the show an international feel; European high-art aesthetics were evoked throughout the series, which included location filming in Paris and Florence.

Gaumont’s CEO Katie O’Connell then hired Bryan Fuller to write the first script and serve as showrunner. As the creator of several critically acclaimed series including Pushing Daisies (2007-09), Fuller brought with him his own auteur brand. He promised to reimagine the source material by altering key aspects of the original books, including diversifying the cast; focusing on character development and motivation; and establishing a signature lush, beautiful, and sophisticated style for the program that would look and feel expensive. Likewise, NBC promoted these “quality” production aesthetics throughout its publicity for the series.

Still, Hannibal struggled to find an audience on NBC, which, unlike premium outlets, needed the buy-in of at least a portion of its mass audience for the program to succeed. In this regard, the network and the program’s producers encouraged the activities of the Fannibals. Demographic research suggested that a significant portion of the audience was “young, smart, well-read women,” which delighted Fuller, who adored their creative production, their appreciation of the show’s dark humor, and their emotional investment in his development of a romance between Hannibal and Will Graham. The network embraced the community, setting up an official Tumblr account for the series and sponsoring a fan art contest (winners below). The NBC Hannibal Tumblr mods have been widely praised for their understanding of the platform and their supportive, respectful interaction with fans.

In addition, Hannibal‘s producers and cast members, led by Fuller (in flower crowns, below), have frequently used Twitter to encourage fan activity, including regularly live-tweeting episodes; re-tweeting fan art and GIFs; and giving fans access to script pages, production details, and set photos. This sense of community between the series producers and its fans generated tangible results in the form of a third season renewal, as network officials and producers have openly acknowledged. This final season has both rewarded Fannibals’ ardor and affirmed quality TV tastes by further shifting the series from its procedural beginnings. Set partially in Europe, this season utilizes an art-house style of filming and focuses on character relationships in even more depth and detail, particularly that between the two leads. By developing program content that appealed to viewers across gender and class lines and by involving and supporting their “feminized,” network audiences, Hannibal constructed both an innovative program text and a series brand that will hopefully inspire television producers working across platforms to explore more ways of blurring cultural hierarchies.

Lange’s recent television work traces back to the emotionally resonant HBO film Grey Gardens, a retelling of the famous Maysles documentary about the fraught-yet-loving relationship between the two Beale women, Big and Little Edie. Though Little Edie (Drew Barrymore) desperately desires fame on the stage and on the screen, she constantly finds herself drawn back to her mother, until both of them are at last trapped in their formerly grand East Hampton mansion, locked in a deeply pathological yet strangely resonant relationship. In AHS: Asylum, likewise, Lange’s Sister Jude stops at nothing until she has managed to imprison hard-hitting, lesbian journalist Lana Winters, only to eventually find herself a prisoner of her asylum, betrayed by the very monsignor she had once served so faithfully.

In both cases, Lange’s characters slowly slide from positions of independence and dominance into those of abjection, literally and physically cast out and isolated from the social world, typically as a result of the uncaring men in their lives. Big Edie of Grey Gardens, when faced with the rejection of both her husband and her lover, eventually decides to retreat from the world that has rejected her, staying in the crumbling mansion of Grey Gardens and preferring the ruins of its former glory to the harshness of the outside world. Sister Jude of AHS: Asylum likewise goes from the punishing and domineering matriarch of her domain into a prisoner of the very system she helped to create, trapped and ensnared in a dark cell, forgotten by almost everyone. Yet even she attains a measure of redemption, forgiven by the very people she worked so hard to keep in the asylum.

As this season of American Horror Story has unfolded, we have seen Elsa exhibit many of the traits of her predecessors, though Elsa is even more prone to violent changes in emotional state, wavering between (apparent) devotion to her “monsters”—the term she uses to discuss the other members of the troupe—and terrible fits of rage in which she threatens to destroy the life they have sought so hard to build.  And yet, for all of her cruelty, we as viewers also know that Elsa deserves some measure of sympathy, given that we know (even if some of the characters don’t) that she was brutally tortured and lost her legs as a result.  Of course, it remains to be seen just how far Elsa will fall in this season, but the odds are it will be pretty low, and she may not be granted salvation.

These texts clearly encourage the viewer to understand these falls from grace as not only deserved, but also as the logical extension of these domineering mothers’ own attempts to imprison their children into their own world. However, despite the fact that the narratives of these series consistently position us as viewers to condemn and dislike these dominating and destructive mothers, Lange’s acting style manages to inject a poignancy into these otherwise pathetic and destructive figures, the charming and quirky vulnerability oscillating uncertainly with the enraged scenery-chewing, consistently prompting the viewer to re-evaluate and reconsider their feelings about these characters.

Big Edie, for all of her flaws as a mother unwilling to let her daughter experience life outside of her care, nevertheless resists her sons’ attempts to remove her from the only space that she owns in her own right (even going so far as to assert that the only way she will leave the house is feet first). Likewise, she refuses to obey the stuffy social conventions imposed upon her by her dour husband. As viewers we may not entirely agree with all that she does; we may even grow frustrated with her. Likewise, Sister Jude (and many of Lange’s other AHS creations) begins as a ruthless tyrant but gradually reveals her depth, as we learn about her troubled past and the genuineness of her beliefs.

Lange’s acting style brings to mind the over-wrought, highly melodramatic acting personae of women like Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, both of whom also became famous for their willingness to portray abject femininity and their ability to wring pathos from their viewers. Lange’s evocation of the styles and sensibilities of the classic era of melodrama, I suspect, is in large part responsible for the wide variety of complex (and sometimes contradictory) responses her characters evoke.  While this does not necessarily undo all of the damage that such representations bear with them, it does encourage us to consider more deeply and complexly the socio-cultural forces that grant these representations their purchase and to move beyond the more condemnatory mindset that most of these narratives typically carry with them.