While dark and gruesome usually aren’t in the lexicon of older-skewing dramas on CBS, recent additions like Evil (CBS) and Jordan Peele’s The Twilight Zone (CBS All Access) have opened up some previously uncharted waters.
Clarice, the Silent of the Lambs reboot, seems to fit the trend.
But instead of a psychological thriller, Clarice seems more like a study of the 1990s police drama. And that is something we can say “Enough already” to.
The show (airing Thursdays at 10pm on CBS) takes place one year after The Silence of the Lambs. Clarice (Rebecca Reeds, Pretty Little Liars) is still going through therapy, and hasn’t been cleared to do the job and head back into the field. Her psychiatrist believes she suffers from PTSD and emotional turmoil, both from solving and being too close to the Buffalo Bill case, which will interfere with her career moving forward. He points out that she still talks to the families of the victims, but not to the woman she saved.
Before we can judge if she really is capable of getting back out there, she is called to action by the Attorney General of the United States, Ruth Martin (Jayne Atkinson), who decides she needs a media-friendly, high profile behavioral scientist on a case involving a potential serial killer. It was Martin’s daughter Catherine (Marnee Carpenter) who Clarice saved the previous year in the Buffalo Bill case. Eventually, Catherine reaches out to Clarice. Catherine can’t sleep, is terrified to venture out in public, and warns Clarice that Clarice is “just like her.” She also warns Clarice not to trust her mother.
Yeah, yeah. Trust no one. We get it. The problem is if we are talking about 1990s FBI procedurals, The X-Files did it better.
In this case, though, multiple women have been found dead with bite marks and stab wounds. Yes, it’s gruesome. You really don’t want to stare at the TV screen as they show the bodies, but that kind of comes with the territory for a Silence of the Lambs show.
Once there, Clarice battles hesitant, misogynistic fellow agents who neither believe in her skills nor her ability to profile. Her boss Paul Krendler (Michael Cudlitz), who leads the special team Clarice is temporarily a part of, goes out of his way to make her feel unwelcome. Yet, at the crime scene, Clarice notices the wounds are “perfectly random,” almost as if the killer wanted to look compulsive but was not.
Of course, no one believes her.
Or most of them don’t believe her, except for the one agent assigned to “help” her (which seems coded as “supervise her”). Agent Tomas Esquivel (Lucca de Oliveira) appreciates her knack for detail and she begins to form a bit of a partnership with him.
With his help, they discover there is a pattern to the killings. Without giving anything away, the pattern helps them logically find the killer just in time before he kills again.
Except it’s not logical. From victims having special needs children to the concept that it was whistleblowers about to expose the truth of a study–it’s bizarrely complex but not in a meaningful, well-written way.
And that’s sad. When it comes down to it, Clarice seems like an episode of the CBS procedural drama Criminal Minds, except maybe a bit darker and more graphic. And the writing is much worse.
The acting itself is unremarkable so far (with only one episode aired) with the exception of Reeds. She is focused and empathetic and able to properly convey the layered character of Clarice. Yes, it’s an oxymoron to be vulnerably strong, but if given enough time, it seems Reeds could nail that main aspect of Clarice’s psyche.
The show is executive produced by Alexander Kurtzman (Star Trek, Transformers) and Jenny Lumet (Rachel Getting Married) and seems caught between trying to appease fans of the original and trying to simplify the narrative for one-hour dramatic television.
No one expected this to be as good as The Silence of the Lambs, but you don’t realize until watching it how much Silence relied on the interactions between Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lector and Clarice. How do you capture that narrative oomph?
They try to partially emulate it here when Clarice talks to Buffalo Bill’s surviving victim (who, like Clarice, is haunted by the past) but it’s an awkward connection that seems forced. It would be much better if Clarice simply found another killer to channel throughout the season. Make it a season-long conspiracy (like 24 or Millennium or any of the great early 2000s Fox shows).
Unlike the brilliantly creative Evil that is set to return later this season, Clarice seems to dwell in that mediocrity. While many shows have started with weak pilots, this show better get really interesting and do it quickly. At one point in the pilot, Clarice is told things are getting bad and she replies, “it always gets worse.” Let’s hope that is incorrect, for the show’s sake.
Clarice airs Thursdays at 10pm Eastern / 9 Central on CBS and can be seen on CBS All Access: https://www.cbs.com/shows/clarice/
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