Clarice – Silence is Purgatory

By: Kelly Kearney

Down in the basement of the FBI, the ViCAP team is investigating Joe Hudlin and his links to the three dead women in the Anacostia river. Things heat up when they discover the link between Joe, the murder victims and last week’s suicide of a pregnant woman. Elsewhere, Catherine Martin finds herself outside of her comfort zone and the safety of her home when she heads out into the world and tries to rebuild the life Buffalo Bill took from her.

To Map the Clues You Have to Walk the Path

With all the seemingly unlinked players in the case of the dead whistleblowers, Paul Kendler (Michael Cudlitz) assigns Clarice (Rebecca Breeds), Murray (Nick Sandow) and Tomas (Lucca De Oliveira) to their roles in the investigation from their new office in the basement. Underground and away from any moles in the bureau and, likewise, any listening ears that could be feeding information back to Hudlin (Raoul Bhaneja), Paul agrees to keep tabs on Joe by going along with his extortion scheme long enough to flush out the real truth behind the shady lawyer’s involvement in the case. Unfortunately for Paul, that means drinks at the bar with the lawyer which does not jive with his current sobriety. Something his old friend Murray points out when he accuses him of using the case as an excuse to drink.

Meanwhile, Clarice uses her friendly demeanor on Tyson Conway (Douglas Smith), the son of Nils Hagen, owner of Alastor Pharmaceuticals and maker of the prenatal drug Reprisol which has been both linked the whistleblower murders as well as Karolina, the Yugoslavian who took a nosedive off of a bridge last week. Murray and Tomas’s job will be to map out the case and try to find any missing pieces they have not yet considered.

Speaking of the pregnant Karolina, the team determined that the use of the drug Reprisol resulted in fetal deformities which eventually led to her suicide. It’s the same drug the river victims were threatening to go public about. When Clarice tells Tyson about the problems with Karolina’s baby, he seems shocked but cannot offer the agent any information about his father or his company because the two are not close. He did not know Nils until he was fourteen years old, when Tyson went to live with him after his mother’s death. When pushed to open up about his father, Tyson backs down. And since Clarice is well versed in “daddy issues,” she lets her own emotional turmoil make the choice and lets Hagen’s son off the hook.

It is not long before the team starts finding more links to the drug’s negative outcomes. Murray contacts Naomi (Nayo Sasaki-Picou), Alastor’s Pharmaceutical Rep, who admits she pushes Reprisol as a miracle drug that every doctor should prescribe while also leaving out the fact that the drug is still in its experimental trial phase. The woman was only willing to talk because her and her boyfriend’s immigration status was under the threat of deportation and she figured a little quid pro quo with the feds could not hurt. At the same time, Clarice and Tomas find someone who knows Reprisol is dangerous, the company’s accountant Julia Lawson (Jen Richards). Lawson’s girlfriend, Erin (Emily Coutts), is suffering from cancer and Julia’s silence on the drug’s dangers comes from the fear of losing her job and subsequently losing the insurance that is keeping her partner alive. Erin goes out of her way to prevent Julia from cooperating with Clarice, specifically, and the famous Buffalo Bill catching agent is not entirely sure why. Julia losing her job is one thing, but why was Clarice singled out? More on that later, but for now Paul wants Starling to lean on Julia, but Clarice disagrees and hopes the woman’s conscience will get the better of her and prompt her to tell the truth. Clarice is not the only one hoping for a little human decency in the face of career sacrifice, her roommate Ardelia (Devyn A. Tyler) has just filed a class-action lawsuit against the bureau’s discriminatory practices within the workplace and Clarice was named in it. It seems fame is a double-edged sword and Ardelia is about to use its pointy end to stab at the heart of systemic racism within the ranks of the FBI.

Righting Wrongs: A Long Time in the Making

Following Paul’s orders, Clarice tracks down Julia Lawson and when she leans on her for more information she gets an ear full of facts she never realized. The reason Julia refused to work with her is because she played a part in normalizing fear and hate aimed at the trans community after Buffalo Bill was caught. Julia is a transexual and the media storm surrounding the famous killer did nothing but sensationalize trans predator propaganda, which had a negative effect on Julia’s community – not to mention pushing human rights back decades. Clarice played a key role in that attack, and her ignorance in the matter Julia does not see as a convincing excuse. As an oppressed minority group, much like the issues her roommate is going through at work, silence is complicity, and Julia did not want to give the woman who made the trans skin suit guy, famous. After all, Starling was on the news daily with that case and never once mentioned the harm it could cause labeling trans people monsters. It is a wake-up call for Clarice, who had no intention of harming anyone when she popped in on Bill’s DIY suit factory. The deed is done now and Clarice realizes Julia’s reasoning for not working with her is valid, but that does not help with this current case and ViCAP needs a break. It gets worse when Murray finds the pharmaceutical rep, he had been working with dead from a possible overdose of Reprisol! He was looking into her immigration status for a little on the record intel about Hagen’s company when he finds her dead in her car. Was it suicide like Karolina or was it murder? The team is leaning towards murder to keep her quiet and it is a good thing Julia declined to help or else she and possibly her partner would have been next!

Turning Negatives Into Positives

With their confidant dead and Lawson and Conway refusing to help, the team is coming up empty in the evidence part of this case. When they find out Hudlin is on to them, which is alarming considering how many dead bodies have been popping up around him, Paul sends the team home hoping to regroup tomorrow with some fresh ideas. When Clarice makes it home she finds Ardelia waiting to tell her the news about her class action suit. She tells Clarice that not only did she file the case, but that her lawyer sought to use Clarice’s fame to bring attention to it by naming her in it. Ardelia warns her that this could complicate their work and at-home relationship, but after the dressing down she got from Julia and the realization she has hurt more people than she ever realized Clarice is willing to put herself on the line so that at the very least her friend could get the justice she so richly deserves. Clarice cannot fix the bigotry and hate of this world, but she can offer up her Buffalo Bill fame in hopes it grants her best friend the justice and recognition she deserves.

Speaking of righting wrongs, while Clarice is busy learning about the harm she inadvertently caused her friend as well as the entire trans community, she gets a call from Catherine Martin (Marnee Carpenter), who has ventured out into the world to see her ex-boyfriend and seems to be taking control over her life. The normalcy in her tone is a cover for her emotional turmoil, as Catherine attempts to bury her past in forced positivity. Predictably, her outing falls apart when she realizes her ex only agreed to meet with her to assuage his own guilt for bailing after she was pulled from the pit. He was not interested in sticking around to help Catherine get through her trauma, he has moved on, but not Catherine. His blasé attitude towards her triggers a panic attack and sends her running back into her mother, Ruth’s (Jayne Atkinson), worried arms and deeper into her Bill obsession. Now she is determined more than ever to find Bill’s mother and make sense of the man who wanted to slip into her skin, a place Catherine Martin seems to be utterly uncomfortable in.