Ron Does Stuff

Well, here we are again, watching this show. I don’t know why I’m a glutton for punishment. Like, I gave up on watching Geordie Shore because I’ve just outgrown it, why can’t I just give up on this?

Clarice was on the verge of uncovering a conspiracy in the previous episode, but Big Pharma — I think it’s Big Pharma — got to her witness before he could spill the beans. What’s Clarice going to do now?

We start this episode with Clarice jogging in the snow, which I guess is referencing the opening scene from The Silence of the Lambs when Clarice is jogging and traversing the FBI obstacle course.

The killer’s death from the previous episode is being investigated, because it happened within law enforcement premises. Again, are we seriously going to make Krendler an empathetic figure? Since Krendler is the head of ViCAP, his leadership is now being questioned, and Clarice is being pushed to the forefront by the investigating bureaucrat. She shouldn’t be held back, he says, so is this how they’re going to deepen the rift between her and Krendler? And through it all, Krendler is reasonable. Gimme a break.

So, what the bureaucrat does to throw a spanner into the works is to have Ardelia Mapp to conduct the internal investigation into what happened. Ardelia’s involvement complicates things, because she and Clarice are roommates, and she has had an even tougher time in the FBI than Clarice. Ardelia’s not just a woman, she’s a Black woman, so she’s already got two strikes against her compared to Clarice. Getting a job as important as this one is something that isn’t always available to her.

ViCAP is supposed to man the complaint lines while the investigation is ongoing, but Clarice isn’t just going to sit around and do that. She’s going to find the assassin that took out the killer from the previous episode and solve the river murders so that ViCAP stays intact. Joining her on this is Esquivel and Shaan, with Esquivel looking at the recovered cop uniform and Shaan heading to Baltimore with Clarice.

And it’s a good thing Shaan’s with her, because his years in the FBI has taught him where to look for clues. After talking to the copy lady — damn, I remember those copy ladies from when I used to work for a newspaper — he gets a lead to a doctor that was at the clinic where all the dead women had their clinical trials. Clarice also gets a chance to unload a lot of her feelings about the events of the first three episodes on Shaan, which must have been therapeutic for her.

Back at the FBI, Krendler is leveraging his ~unconventional methods~, and I’m really sorry, but I am just not into this show making Krendler an anti-hero. I’m just not. Where were they going to go with this if they got more seasons? When the time comes that Hannibal has to eat his brains, they’re going to have to destroy his character again to make that scene palatable.

Anyways, while that’s happening with Krendler, Clarice and the guys manage to track down some information on Marilyn Felker, the doctor that was part of the clinical trial the dead women were involved in. Even better, they also get a call from her sister, who apparently hasn’t seen her either.

Ardelia’s investigation, on the other hand, has uncovered who the possible assassins were, but the computer records are changed by someone using Krendler’s account, because of course, Krendler is being framed for this. There’s also the beginning’s of a plot for Ardelia and her future career prospects in the Bureau, which is one development I find interesting.

Meanwhile, Clarice and Shaan manage to find and talk to Marilyn Felker’s twin sister, who hasn’t talked to Marilyn in a while and who thinks that her sister’s conducting a clinical trial in Ghana. Clarice thinks there’s something more there, but the conversation is turned towards Krendler and oh boy. Krendler was looking out for Clarice all along. She shouldn’t have been just handed over to Hannibal willy-nilly. Again, gimme a break.

Clarice and Krendler have a conversation once she’s back in the office, and it really is just a complete 180 for Krendler when you compare it to his characterization in the book and the movie. Krendler highlights Clarice’s “selfishness” during the events of The Silence of the Lambs and tells her it’s not all about her, in the show that literally bears her name. And all of this just flies in the face of Krendler in the book and the movie. And it’s not that I oppose changes to the source material. The Interview with the Vampire show takes a lot of liberties with the source material, but they still get the core of the characters right. What they’re doing here is different.

And then we get a bust-up between Clarice and Ardelia, where Clarice is just…inept! Inept, unable to read social cues, and too bullheaded to think of others. I don’t know, I just didn’t like this whole scene. And then to have Ardelia get metaphorically pie’d in the face still, after all of that. It’s frustrating and not in an exciting, looking forward to the next episode kind of thing.

Back at the FBI, we find out that Krendler did change the computer logs, all to protect Esquivel. BUT THEN, yet another person tampered with an official document, this time the coroner’s report on the killer’s cause of death, making it look like he died of natural causes and not because he was assassinated. ViCAP is off the hook, but now the team is worried because only someone very powerful could have done all that.

With ViCAP cleared and the relationship with Ardelia sort of repaired after a tearful apology, Clarice heads to Marilyn’s sister to update her on her sister’s whereabouts, because it appears that she booked a flight to Buenos Aires but never got on the plane. But as Clarice starts snooping, she finds out one of the patients Marilyn’s sister is taking care of looks a lot like Marilyn, but before she can do anything about it, Clarice gets stabbed in the neck with a syringe. Gotta admit, that cliffhanger got me!

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