lovedcrime:

“What really works on the show is a subtle twisting of the trope of the cop who gets in the minds of the killers. The typical trope is that the protagonist can think like a killer. And there’s the usual darkness associated with all that, the wallowing in the things that they have to see every day. But “Hannibal” quite distinctly sets up the protagonist as not a thinker (though he’s hardly an idiot), but a feeler. It’s almost something out of fantasy noir more than crime fiction. The man who can feel what anyone feels, can feel what the killers feel as well. But the cost is ever so much more pronounced and tragic than the thinking detective, because by being able to feel what the killer feels, Graham also feels what the victims feel.
The approach allows a deeper look into the nature of evil as well. The secret underlying the thinking detective trope, is that it relies on the assumption that evil is logical, that it can be measured, and understood, and rationalized. In that way, no matter how horrific and dark the traditional stories about serial killers go, they are fundamentally tales of comfort, because they assert an order to the universe. By making the protagonist an empath instead of a sleuth, the show allows evil to be what we really fear it to be. Infinite and incomprehensible, the unseen monster outside the circle of flickering flame. Something that can be felt but not reduced to mere facts.”

— The Abyss Stares Back: Hannibal, Steven Lloyd Wilson, Pajiba