Ron Does Stuff

I heard about this show when it was first announced, and like most people back then, I really just wanted Hannibal back instead. I never really even checked it out, and considering that it’s only had one season, I guess nobody else check it out as well. But since I’ve been watching all The Silence of the Lambs-related media anyway, I thought about giving this a shot. Let’s go!

We find out at the start of this episode that this show happens a year after Clarice caught Buffalo Bill, and I think the show did a pretty good job of imitating(?) the visuals of the Jonathan Demme movie. They also hint at the stylized visuals of Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal, but I guess the true test is if they’re able to come up with something that’ll distinguish them from those two titans.

The show does seem like it’s going to acknowledge Clarice’s eventual fate in Hannibal — the movie and the book — since we find Clarice here being the data entry girl and surrounded by more senior agents who resent her fame. She’s also speaking to a therapist, although she doesn’t seem that enthused about it. However, that session is cut short when she’s summoned by Ruth Martin, the mother of Catherine Martin and now the United States’ Attorney General. And Ruth Martin is played by Erin Strauss from Criminal Minds! I won’t lie, it made me feel good seeing her on screen.

As it turns out, Ruth Martin wants to establish a special task force — ViCAP, or Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, which actually exists — so that no other family goes through what she did, and she thinks Clarice should be in on it. Of course, Clarice objects, saying there are more qualified agents for the job, but Ruth is insistent. We also find out how Catherine Martin is affected by her experience with Buffalo Bill. The show doesn’t say it outright, but it looks like Catherine now has an eating disorder because Bill specifically took her because she had a larger body.

Anyways, Ruth wants her to be part of ViCAP, where she’ll have to work with Paul Krendler, who remains an asshole. But Ruth points out it isn’t any different from how the other people at the FBI look at Clarice. They all hate her because of her notoriety and because of what she went through, and Ruth does have a point with that one.

Clarice finally gets to the crime scene, where Krendler is an asshole, as expected. Clarice, along with an Agent Esquivel, is asked to look at the body of the victim of what looks to be a serial killer, and I gotta say that whoever this actress is that is playing Clarice has done a great job at bringing the Jodie Foster essence from the movies. Dare I say better than Julianne Moore did in Hannibal? And this is no slight against Julianne Moore who I love.

After looking at the bodies, Clarice isn’t convinced just yet that these murders are the work of a serial killer, but Krendler thinks that isn’t good enough, especially since her reasoning is very woo-woo, if you get what I’m saying. I’ve been rewatching Criminal Minds, and this show has been trying to not lean too much into that since Clarice essentially is a profiler and they even have Erin Strauss over here playing Ruth Martin.

They also Ardelia Mapp back! Unlike Clarice’s therapist, Ardelia doesn’t think Clarice is emotionally unprepared to go back on the field. She also helps Clarice look at the evidence, just like they did when they were trainees trying to decipher Hannibal’s clues. And Clarice definitely needs someone like Ardelia because some of the guys on the FBI — not specifically from ViCAP — are being assholes about her at work, making fun of her experience with Bill. Oh no, is this show going to make Krendler likeable?

Anyways, one sympathetic figure in the FBI is Esquivel, who lets Clarice take the lead when they start re-interviewing the victim’s families. There’s a little bit of ~tension~ there, and Esquivel is a hottie so why not? The two of them find out that both victims had children or grandchildren with special needs, but it’s something that they’ll have to follow up on some other time because there’s been another victim and Clarice is being sidelined because her therapist thinks she might “lose it”.

And she really might just do it, because we get to see how she deals with the trauma of dealing with Buffalo Bill. It really becomes apparent when Catherine Martin tricks her into calling, and Catherine wants Clarice to spiral into despair like she is.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, Clarice has her job to keep her mind off of her trauma, and together with Esquivel they follow up on their lead of children with special needs. They find out that the women have all been part of a clinical trial of some sort, and it’s resulted in them having kids with special needs. They were going to blow the whistle on whatever company it was, but now that company is having them killed and making it look like serial killing.

Clarice tells Krendler what she’s found out about these murders so far, and the conspiracy behind it, but Krendler wants to push the serial killer angle to the media while they pursue the conspiracy angle in private. Of course, Clarice isn’t about to let Krendler do that and flat out tells the media that the murdered women weren’t the random victims of a serial killer but were being silenced for speaking out.

Now, I do have some objections to Clarice herself saying the victims of a serial killer are random, seeing as Buffalo Bill’s specific criteria for his victims is what helped him get caught. But other than that, this seems like an okay show. The problem is that it’s got so much baggage from previous adaptations that are frankly better than it that it has a hard time justifying its existence, at least from this first episode. But let’s see where this thing leads!