Clarice turns the Silence Of The Lambs heroine into just another CBS procedural flunkie
TV Reviews CBS
Even now, thirty years later, there’s a thrilling chill that seeps into the bones when watching Jonathan Demme’s The Silence Of The Lambs. The eerie unpredictability of the killer, the perfectly calibrated relationship between Jodie Foster’s young FBI cadet and Anthony Hopkins’ urbane monster, the highbrow execution of decidedly lowbrow material—it all works in tandem to create an unforgettable portrait of one of pop culture’s most indelible villains and the woman who beat the odds and successfully got to him. What a shame, then, to see the second episode of CBS’ Clarice toss all that rich source material out the window, with a story that could’ve easily replaced the names of its characters and thereby become indistinguishable from a dozen other CBS crime shows. Clarice seems to be signaling it has even less interest than the pilot in trying to maintain some fidelity to what makes these people interesting, or telling stories connected to that history. One can almost hear the studio executives explaining the situation to the creative team: It puts the CBS procedural framework on its skin or else it gets the hose again.
“Clarice Gets Lectured, And It Makes No Difference” would have made an accurate subtitle for this second installment of the show. Four separate dressings down regarding her decision to disobey orders at the end of the pilot (remember when she told the truth to the press about the killer?), from four different people (ranging from close friend Ardelia to I-don’t-like-you boss Krendler), and none of them appear to make the slightest dent in Clarice or her behavior. When her team is called out to investigate the shooting of an ATF agent from someone inside a Waco-like compound—complete with a Koresh substitute played by Tim Guinee—it’s not long before Clarice again shrugs off the chain of command and goes rogue, this time to get sufficient evidence to justify arrests. The difference this time is, it works, and everyone goes along with it, despite having literally no new reason to trust her more than they did two hours earlier. By the end of the episode, even Krendler is doing the begrudging-respect thing, going so far as to withdraw his request to have her transferred. That was quick.
There are ways this could’ve been more compelling. Part of what made Starling an interesting character is that she’s a fairly ordinary person who just happened to find herself in extraordinary circumstances. Now, not only is she suffering from pretty severe PTSD (as well she should be), but the show is trying to turn her into some one-of-a-kind FBI whiz, the kind of person everyone else admires for being so head and shoulders above them in terms of intelligence. Not only was this unnecessary, there’s very little evidence thus far to suggest she’s earned this level of awe. Clarice keeps having other characters tell us how brilliant its title character is, for reasons that are far from evident. When she does some seriously base-level Psychology 101 to get cult leader Novak to incriminate himself, he looks at her with respect and says, “That’s smart.” Was it? She just yelled “You’re under arrest!” while inside a cult compound with no readily available support, surrounded by men with guns. Seems more forehead-slappingly stupid from this vantage point.
Similarly, the show seems to be doubling down on her flashbacks, maybe because that’s literally the only element of the story that has even a tenuous connection with anything outside of this episode’s case of the week. But in practice, what that means is that Clarice goes into deer-in-headlights mode any time someone so much as mentions the name of Buffalo Bill, as Novak does almost immediately after meeting her. (Does this really happen every time anyone mentions a name from her past? If so, it’s yet more evidence she should be in serious therapy, not in the field.) It makes for clunky, drawn-out storytelling during moments that should be tense. Clarice entering the compound should be compelling; instead, we get slow-motion shots of green beans being washed. It may be suggesting connections with a mysterious, pain-ridden childhood, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t silly.
At least we spend a few more minutes with Clarice’s team members, even if it is in the context of the aforementioned dressings-down of her behavior last episode. These conversations don’t really land, though, because we’ve barely met these people. It doesn’t help that each one starts by defensively mentioning their stock character type, before explaining to Clarice why they might know a thing or two. Agent Murray Clarke gives the “I’m just the token old guy who does grunt work, but…” spiel; Tomas does his third or fourth variation on the “I may only be a sniper with average intelligence, but…” bit, this series’ equivalent of “I may only be an unfrozen caveman lawyer…”; and so on, all versions of the same “we’re a team” message. Yet poor, ignored Kal Penn doesn’t even get one of these monologues. Are we sure he’s really on the team?
The case of the week ends up being a lesson in moderating expectations for Clarice. After finding the video evidence that Novak and the sheriff are in cahoots, trafficking in the prostitution and abuse of women (what a fun, casually tossed-off subplot of violent misogyny that doesn’t feel exploitive at all), Clarice gets upset when she learns AG Atkinson cut a deal with the sheriff to collar a bunch of the men involved. It’s a chance to give our hero some practical, real-world lessons in the art of crime-fighting—not to mention the realities of how politics and crime forever overlap—but it also serves to cement the idea Clarice is going to be Atkinson’s point person on the team, no matter how friendly she seems to be with Krendler. Actual character dynamics are welcome, given how infrequent they appeared in the rest of the episode.
Seriously, this was the kind of second episode that requires you to know nothing of the people involved or the larger story being told. In other words, it’s a purely procedural installment, a tarted-up Criminal Minds. Is this how it’s going to be? Even The X-Files usually gave us some small flickers of connective tissue during monster-of-the-week outings. If this is all the ambition the show holds, there’s nothing wrong with that, per se; but if that’s the case, why bother with licensing the intellectual property that wants to be something more?
Stray observations
- I really was startled by just how little narrative throughline this episode cared to insert from its overarching plot. Hell, it even ended with a mournful pop tune a la House. Guess someone’s gunning for syndication.
- Bright spot: I did like that it turned out to be the kid who shot the ATF agent, solely as a way to get someone in authority to come help him escape.
- We’re already getting flashbacks to what Clarice’s therapist told her…one episode ago. This show really doesn’t credit its audience with an abundance of brains.
- Wager of the week: Ten bucks says we’re going to be getting an awful lot of cases where a suspect/villain says they’ll only talk to Starling. It’s a convenient shorthand to keep her in the center of everything the team does.
- “Follow orders, or you’ll get someone killed today.” Starling didn’t follow orders, and technically, she got someone (Novak) killed. But hey, it worked out okay, so ignore Krendler!
65 Comments
I actually kinda like that they’re not busting out of the gate with elaborate serial killers, but ordinary scumbags. I’m sure they’ll save that shit for later.And stop trying to soften Krendler, show.
I can’t comment directly on the show because I’m not going to pay for yet another streaming platform, but this review isn’t convincing. First, how many “crime thrillers” featuring a traumatized male lead have we seen? I can’t even count them. Usually it’s the male cop/investigator who lost his devoted and saintly wife to an illness or crime. Immediately female viewers are ready to line up with casseroles. But this seems to be a strike against Starling. Isn’t she “manning up” enough?“…the show is trying to turn her into some one-of-a-kind FBI whiz,…” You did watch the film, right? Starling is exceptional. The very first scene shows her running an obstacle course: a woman doing a ‘mans’ job and she’s succeeding. This is a metaphor for the rest of the film. And she is certainly not “ordinary.” If that is wasted on this series that’s a shame because Clarice Starling (and Jodie Foster) won a permanent place in women’s hearts with SOTL.
It’s on CBS proper.
In two weeks CBS won’t even be in the name of its streaming service.
Really? Because I ‘m not with U-Verse or Sprint or any of the Big Media outlets. But I’ll try. Thanks friend.
OK, I was able to watch the first episode with Amazon. I don’t know where TF this review is coming from. It doesn’t appear that the reviewer even watched the program. Clarice “goes rogue” and that’s a bad idea?There’s more than plenty here to work with; in particular the steaming pile of sexism that Clarice has to deal with, proving that the ultimate source of her trauma isn’t her encounter with buffalo Bill. It’s the (truly) fiendishly masculine system she’s pitted against.It’s like absolutely no one watched Promising Young Woman. Maybe this all looks formulaic to you because you still think you’re looking at the formula.
“Clarice “goes rogue” and that’s a bad idea?”Well, yeah. It’s like the Ur-trope for these kinds of shows. It’s okay to say you’re going to pass on its ten thousandth iteration.
What a shame that the trope of the grieving (yet sexy) male detective has worn such a groove in the modern consciousness and that people are finally tired of it. Except that they aren’t. You can keep sounding savvy when the next dozen or so of them are trotted out next season.
CBS proper can be watched over-the-air too. No Internet needed.
I don’t get how, when presented with so much stellar programming out there that can serve as a proof of what is possible in the medium, that CBS continues to resist any and all innovation and instead make the most mediocre shit they possible can.
You say that as though there isn’t still a big audience for mediocre shit.
“[M]ake the most mediocre shit they possible can” … that gets monster ratings. This is the garbage that America watches. Voters, audiences, and fans dictate what they will put up; politicians, TV and film makers, and sports teams deliver accordingly.Mindhunter lasts two seasons, but this nonsense will probably run for 15 …
Not 15. The ratings right now are pretty mid, about the same as NCIS: NO, which just got cancelled. CBS will give it a big leash due to sinking so much money into it, but I peg it lasting about 5-7 seasons, max. Once there’s enough to syndicate, it’ll likely get canned.
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Lotta Jerrys out there, bud…
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You’d be shocked how bonkers some of the more recent CBS procedurals have gotten.But it’s largely due to syndication. Take a look at how many TV channels air crime procedurals. Now exclude any Law & Order/Chicago PD airings. They’re more or less entirely CBS series.
I still bear some goodwill to CBS for letting Elementary get 7 seasons, and I’ll crib to popping on NCIS when I don’t have a show lined up in my queue while I do other stuff around the house.
While I do still watch NCIS, I prefer Hawaii Five-O, if only for McDanno.
Beautiful people and/or people with soothing radio voices behaving predictably—CBS procedurals are anti-anxiety medication, consumed mostly by senior citizens. And it works. None of these shows win awards, no one talks about them at the proverbial water cooler, but more often than not they hold a reliable viewer base that can be sustained for a decade, until an irreplaceable actor becomes too expensive (or embroiled in scandal). You compare with NBC, which is on the more adventurous end of the scale, and occasionally they hit on something memorably fantastic, but the vast majority of their shows flop badly and get cancelled, and even the good ones draw cult followings rather than big numbers.CBS is remarkably consistent with imposing its formula onto the shows it broadcasts. The only productions that deliver a spark of fun and ingenuity are the ones in their twilight, with dwindling viewership and facing a near certainty of cancellation no matter what they do. Person of Interest got really good at the end. Elementary got better in basically perfect correlation with its viewership decline.
You’d be shocked how many people under 30 watch CBS shows. Especially once they went all-in on having every show dripping with Ho Yay.
I said mostly senior citizens, the proportion of the audience is really heavily titled to the elderly, but young people have anxiety, too. I occasionally go out of my way to rewatch Columbo, FFS.
Even then, I definitely wouldn’t say mostly, unless you’re counting everyone over 40. NCIS back in the day attracted a lot of teen girls due to Abby, and the very strong bromances between the leads of NCIS: LA and Hawaii Five-O brought in a lot of women in their late 20’s/early 30’s. Never mind that most elderly aren’t big fans of harsh violence on television yet CBS’ procedurals are all pretty fucking violent. And most of the people who watched the original MacGyver and Magnum P.I. when they were new despise the reboots.
Probably the only show which does indeed have a majority fanbase of 60 or over is Blue Bloods, especially in the past few years when they’ve gone full on pro-cop. NCIS DOES have a large elderly fanbase due to Mark Harmon, yes, but the show has consistently gotten around a 1.0 rating in the 18-49 demographic even today, and it wouldn’t be absolutely destroying its direct competition if it relied entirely on elderly folks.
Total viewers for recent episodes of NCIS are in the range of 10 million, with a score in the 18-49 demo of less than 1.0. A 1.0 is equivalent to 1% of the 18-49 population or about 1.2 million. So we’re talking here about maybe 15% of total viewers are under the age of 50.I can find stats going back to 2014, when it was scoring a 3.0 with 20 million total viewers. Better, but still overwhelmingly 50+.
I’ve been re-watching Person of Interest and it’s crazy how bad it is at the beginning. “It’s procedural but we don’t know if the guest star is the bad guy!” was a stupid idea.
It’s interesting how people talk about how CBS shows are like soothing, inoffensive comfort food because they always stress me RIGHT the fuck out. I cannot deal with Criminal Minds, for instance.
Yea, Criminal Minds gets dark and gross a lot. NCIS: LA and Hawaii Five-O use brutal violence, including torture, every other episode. Regular NCIS often shows full on organs and once had a crackhead sniff cocaine literally from a dead guy’s stomach. FBI and FBI: Most Wanted are Dick Wolf shows, which is enough said.
People seem to think modern CBS shows are all like Matlock and Diagnosis Murder, when that is far, far from the truth nowadays.
CBS procedurals deliver an emotional rollercoaster that includes some “scary” elements—a beautiful protagonist is held hostage by a comically sinister villain (usually disfigured and ugly, and shrouded in darkness) at least once per season—but the rollercoaster follows an extremely predictable trajectory and always resolves happily with our heroes on top. It’s not comfort food because it’s ineffective at eliciting emotion, it’s comfort food because it follows a consistent and reliable pattern of emotional manipulation that ends with happiness/satisfaction.
That may be true, but I have trouble shaking off the more grotesque elements. Like with Criminal Minds, we have screaming young women getting their eyes melted by acid traps in one scene and then the BAU crew just. Vibing. It’s not terribly pleasant to me.(Also, neither here nor there, but I love how Criminal Minds always had people go through unimaginable physical and mental trauma but no one ever once says “fuck”)
Deleted
Simple.Alex Kurtzman
Hasn’t CBS always been known as the “old people” channel?
Isn’t Evil on CBS? Goodness that show is bonkers
TIL: https://www.tasteofsouthern.com/leather-britches-recipe/One of the more unusual methods involves drying string beans in the pod to create leather britches, also known as shuck or shucky beans. The dried beans may look as shriveled as an old shoe, but once cooked with water and a little pork, their flavor is astonishing. […]After she picked them, she would break the tip off each end, and take the strings off. Then she would take a large sewing needle with a big eye, and a strong thread—I can remember the big spool—and she would take it through the center of each bean pod. She would push each bean down until it was close but not touching the next bean, because they dried better if they weren’t touching. Each string was maybe two or three feet long, just where she could hold either end with her arms outstretched—and she was only five feet tall, so her arm span was not that long.She had nails driven into the wall behind her wood stove, and she would hang the strings from the nails.
https://www.edibleasheville.com/leather-britches/I had to replay that scene with CC on to make sure I heard “Leather Britches” right.
What the hell is that abomination
kinda awesome
Bless you. The green beans were the only interesting thing here.
The curse of Alex Kurtzman strikes again. He ruins Spider-Man, the Dark Universe, Star Trek, and now Silence of the Lambs. Someone get rid of this prodigious fountain of failure and suck, please.
Part of what made Starling an interesting character is that she’s a fairly ordinary person who just happened to find herself in extraordinary circumstances. Clarice Starling isn’t all that ordinary — she was good enough to have gotten an A-minus from Jack Crawford after pulling him up short during his Behavioral Science class in the movie. She’s also an orphan from West Virginia (which satiric thriller writer Ross Thomas once memorably called “A Slum With Mountains”) who managed to get at least a B.S. in Criminology and work for two years in some crime-related field before applying to the FBI (https://www.fbijobs.gov/career-paths/special-agents/eligibility ) — she was somebody Crawford had his eye on even before he needed her to play footsie with Hannibal Lecter.
You carry on like she’s some glorified Meter Maid, not somebody working for an elite Government Investigation and Security Service. Admittedly, her teamwork skills have room for improvement(!) — but that really smells like a network note more than something organic to the character.
Agree. SOTL did posit Starling as one of the best in her class. She had no experience though and the first half of the film she was over her head dealing with Hannibal.
Oh, she absolutely was in over her head to start — and for his own reasons, Lecter mentored her…as only Hannibal Lecter could.
Summing up this show in a single gif …here’s Ryan Reynolds.
Because the Hannibal Lector shows have been played out. And even though they cannot mention Lector by name you know there is an outline of of a Hannibal Lector arc on hard drive somewhere.
In the wake of last summer’s protests and the vile reaction from the authorities why is this progressive website still bothering with avowedly pro- “cop” content?
“Guess someone’s gunning for syndication.”Of course they are. Every CBS drama makes TONS of money in syndication. You’ll be seeing FBI and FBI: Most Wanted on a dozen TV channels in a few years.
“We’re already getting flashbacks to what Clarice’s therapist told her…one episode ago. This show really doesn’t credit its audience with an abundance of brains”I feel like this may well be a CBS-mandated staple. It was one of the things that made Blindspot feel like an endurance test. They’d regularly spend a quarter of the episode recapping stuff that anyone who’d watched the last few eps knew already. Or describe something that happened previously and then show a quick flashback to it.
To be fair, Blindspot was a NBC show, which just shows CBS isn’t the only one with their hands in this kind of show
I could have sworn it was on CBS. Weird.
Because, for broadcast TV, it was 100% typical to not watch every episode of a show. That’s why they used to say you have to do the pilot 6 times.
Yeah but it’s 2021 and the internet is a thing
Did anyone seriously think this was going to be a good show?
Koresh really needed to make some sort of joke about fava beans.
I ate his liver, with some dried green beans and a nice jar of moonshine.
People seem to take a lot of words to describe CBS productions. It is simple, take anything and turn it into Matlock.I have dreaded the very existence of this thing from the moment I heard o f it.
Even the ads are pretty honest that this is just Criminal Minds in a Buffalo Bill skinsuit
Casting an actress who looks like she’s 12…what’s that all about?
The last straw for me was that Clarice has multiple siblings and a mother in this version. I don’t remember how it is in the novel, but in the film she’s definitely a sole orphan.
“Even The X-Files usually gave us some small flickers of connective tissue during monster-of-the-week outings.”I’m being too pedantic, but that was only in season 1, wasn’t it?
I vaguely recall a lot of MOTW episodes in S1 including a brief scene of Deep Throat giving Mulder a tip on a MOTW, or discussing the MOTW at the end, and saying something like, “It’s all connected, Mulder! This goes STRAIGHT TO THE TOP!” or some such… and then the monster never turned out to be connected to anything or have any relevance at all to the “mythology”. They wisely dropped all this in S2, and just let the monsters and mutant serial killers be monsters and mutant serial killers.
I have one better:
Clarice Gets Lectered, And It Makes No Difference
It is interesting in that Hannibal has a back story that can stand on its own, but Clarice is so inexorably tied to him that she might not be able to go it alone without even mentioning him.
Hell, it even ended with a mournful pop tune a la House.
Of all the annoying things this episode did, this bothered me more than anything else! Don’t be that kind of show!
but if that’s the case, why bother with licensing the intellectual property Would you be covering it if it was CSI: Arlington?
How much do they offer Mads Mikkelsen to show up in the mid season finale to save this show? Lol. Oh right, they can’t legally use Lecter. Though I do remember Hannibal offered a tradeoff “You can use Lecter if we get Starling” and they said no!
The problem with basing a show around Starling is that she just is not as interesting as Hannibal. Jodie Foster was great in the film, but it really was Anthony Hopkins that launched that film into the stratosphere. I do disagree with the reviewer as she was tops in her class, I believe, but agree her whole story was basically she was in extraordinary circumstances in the movie.How you move on from that and do not revisit Hannibal or Buffalo Bill and there is really no reason why this show exists other than it being another FBI show or turning her into a Mary Sue
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