“Ceuf,” which would have been the fourth episode of Bryan Fuller’s rather good if extremely gory NBC series “Hannibal,” was pulled due to the Boston bombing last week. Fuller wanted “to be sensitive to where we are as a nation,” according to the network’s announcement, and decided it was better not to air the installment, which was centered around a storyline in which guest star Molly Shannon played a character who brainwashes children to kill other children.
Instead, “Hannibal” will continue right to its fifth episode tonight, Thursday, April 25th, at 10pm with no reported major continuity issues. To bridge the gap, NBC is now offering up portions of “Ceuf” online, with the Shannon plot excised, as a web series to show the developing personal relationship between Mads Mikkelsen’s Hannibal Lecter (who’s not yet been revealed as a serial killer himself) and the other characters, particularly the daughter of the killer tracked down in the series’ pilot.
“We have cannibalized one of our episodes to create a web series that details the relationship between Hannibal Lecter [Mads Mikkelsen] and Abigail Hobbs [Kacey Rohl],” Fuller explains in introducing the first online video. “You’ll notice that as the series goes on this relationship gets much more complicated and becomes a load-bearing element of our storytelling, so we wanted to make sure that you have all the scenes in order to follow the story along.” Check out the web series version of “Ceuf” below — the episode will not be aired on NBC, but will air in international markets.
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