Ron Does Stuff

It’s been more than a month since I watched this show, but to be fair, it’s not really helping itself by being so much like other shows. But I made a commitment to finish this one and only season, so I’ll do it!

Clarice rescued a young boy and dismantled a corrupt police force in the previous episode, so what’s in store for her in this episode? Apparently, more sessions with the FBI shrink, who doesn’t seem too fond of her at the moment. She’s not exactly cooperating when it comes to ~sharing her feelings~, and the psychiatrist has to remind her that he’s her to help her keep her job.

We also find out that she’s visited the woman she rescued from the first episode while investigating the deaths of women who have been part of a clinical trial that resulted in them having children with special needs. She tells her that the FBI will be interviewing her attacker tomorrow, and that they need her testimony. However, the woman is only willing to testify once the organization behind the man sent to kill her is caught. Tough.

It’s also here where the show tells us what’s going to be Clarice’s ~issue~ throughout the season. Because of her refusing to come to terms with the trauma she experienced with Buffalo Bill, can she really trust her senses when it comes to investigations? What if she’s triggered by something and she can’t distinguish reality from a traumatic episode she’s recalling from the past? It’s also at this point where I have to point out that this is the encephalitis storyline from the first season of Hannibal. Just replace encephalitis with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Meanwhile, Erin Strauss Ruth Martin is in front of the oversight committee and she has to defend not just the budget for ViCAP, but her position as Attorney General as well. It doesn’t seem to go well with the committee, but the media gathered look like they appreciated it.

Elsewhere, the killer Clarice apprehended is denying he ever asked for a deal, or even that he’s even a killer. He claims he’s just a handyman and that the Feds burst in, guns a-blazing, so now Clarice has egg on her face. Is the show going to bring up her PTSD now?

Thankfully, it doesn’t, and Krendler doesn’t question Clarice saying that she heard the guy ask for a deal. The team is thinking of the best way to crack this guy, especially with Ruth Martin putting pressure on them to come up with a conviction, as her committee hearing didn’t go well. There’s a bit here where they try to soften Krendler, but if they really thought this show was going to have legs and that they would adapt further books, how are they going to show him turning into the person he is in Hannibal, the book and movie? Am I being nitpicky? Hannibal the show changed and moved a lot of things around, but they got the essence of the characters down first before they started doing that. I think this show hasn’t done that yet with Clarice, which is why it isn’t grabbing me at the moment.

One thing I am interested in is how they’re following Catherine Martin and how her time with Buffalo Bill has affected her. Because Buffalo Bull picked her because she’s a bigger girl, she’s now obsessed with keeping the weight off. I’m interested in where her story is going, because as seen in the first episode, she’s determined to bring Clarice along with her.

But for now, Clarice is joining in the interrogation of the killer, who she has determined has a strict moral code when it comes to women. It’s something she shares with the rest of the team, and at first I thought they didn’t listen to her, but it appears that Krendler did! He does the good cop/bad cop routine with Esquivel, where Esquivel insinuates that the killer’s a rapist.

Then…there’s this whole sequence where the characters tell us that the killer isn’t afraid of them and basically a lot of telling and not showing, which really is a disservice to the actor playing the killer because he’s doing okay! This show really is shooting itself in the foot. I mean, I guess I wouldn’t have minded something like this in Criminal Minds, because Criminal Minds knows what it is. This show is trying to align itself with predecessors that quite honestly are a league above it.

So far, the only interesting thing for me is the storyline happening between Ruth and Catherine Martin, which they insert between the scenes in the FBI. And it’s not really a good sign when another character is much more interesting than the character the show is named after.

Things aren’t going well for the character the show is named after. The killer “isn’t afraid” of them, as she and two other characters loudly declared, and now Ardelia is telling her that the bite marks on the other victims don’t match his teeth. Clarice tells Esquivel to go in there again since he and the killer has a sort of rapport since they were both snipers in the military, and his scene is actually pretty gripping stuff. Which wouldn’t have been a bad thing if the show wasn’t called Clarice. Some of the characters that surround her are more compelling than she is! And I don’t think it’s the fault of the actress, it’s just the cards she was dealt with by the production.

But when it looks like all hope is lost, Ardelia’s here to the rescue! She figures out that the bite marks don’t match because the killer used a dental…thingie, and she and Clarice realize that the killer was ordered to make the killings look like the work of a serial killer. When Clarice tells Krendler this, and he isn’t receptive to it, her PTSD takes over, and she throws a cup of coffee at a glass wall. This does get Krendler’s attention, allowing Clarice to explain that Krendler saying that the kills were the work of a serial killer has the killer thinking that he and the other agents are part of the conspiracy that ordered him to kill those women. She can, once again, go in and save the day since the killer thinks she’s the weakest link.

With Clarice in the room, the killer finally cracks, but before he can reveal anything, he starts to convulse and then dies. He’s been poisoned by the root beer brought in by one of the cops, something that Clarice quickly figures out. Even worse, the sole survivor of the killer leaves town, bringing along all the evidence of the conspiracy that Clarice has stumbled into.

Three episodes in, and this show is feeling a little uneven. Which really isn’t a problem if it were just any show, since it does take a few episodes before things stabilize. But because of its predecessors — Hannibal the show, especially — you can’t help but think that the money could have just been put into making a fourth season of Hannibal and letting that team tackle Clarice’s story.

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