The first episode of Clarice was not very subtle about where the series was headed, that being a psychological FBI procedural show we’ve seen many times before. In “Ghosts of Highway 20,” that much is confirmed. While the episode was simply average, my concern for Clarice becoming an unoriginal clone of things from the past remains.
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Clarice (Rebecca Breeds), after breaking procedure at the end of the last episode, is in hot water. Sure enough, after being called to a new crime scene in Tennessee, her boss Krendler (Michael Cudlitz) tells Clarice he’s requested she be transferred off the team. First, though, to the matter at hand, that being a fringe military group at a standoff with law enforcement after a member shot an ATF agent. No serial killers here, but a Waco-like situation with a charismatic leader in Lucas Novak (Tim Guinee) and the possibility of things getting quickly out of control.
As we saw in episode one, Clarice is now a celebrity cop of sorts, and this has attracted the attention of Novak. She, of course, becomes front and center to get to the bottom of this situation and to be fair, the boarded-up house she enters to talk to Novak (at his request) is bloody creepy. The atmosphere is bleak and full of fear and tension, so full marks for that. The problem is, we’ve seen this all before, which is the sad mantra of the show, even after only two episodes.
The flashbacks Clarice experiences are a mixed bag. We get her going back to her childhood and time with her family, and back to the traumatizing events she endured with Buffalo Bill. She’s traumatized and honestly, probably shouldn’t be in the field. However, Clarice is very good at what she does so she’s there, driven and needed, not unlike Hugh Dancy’s portrayal of Will Graham on Hannibal. We understand the trauma but the show needs to build beyond that so it doesn’t just get simply swallowed up like background noise.
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Rebecca Breeds is solid as Clarice, and the acting on a whole was a bit better this week. Unfortunately, the contrived feeling, the familiarity of it all, hangs over the series already like a wet blanket, which will be hard to escape. They can’t go too deep into Clarice’s trauma without talking about Hannibal, however legally they can’t mention him. It may be a challenge to make her trauma more than a plot device to get dragged out time and time again.
Besides the show showing off its focus on FBI procedural tropes, “Ghosts of Highway 20” was a vehicle to build trust within the ranks of the VICAP squad. Clarice is always going to be a wild card of sorts, which will drive Krendler nuts, but she needs friends and took steps this week in that area. They understand her gifts, to a point, now they need to understand her, which will also be crucial in terms of not tripping over every cliche in the book.
Sadly, after two episodes, there is not much here that leads me to think the show is not just treading water in a sea of been there/done that instead of trying to break new ground. Perhaps it will surprise us as Clarice moves along but as of now, the bloated and contrived structure of the show makes it really hard to embrace.
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