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Tonight on CBS Clarice returns with an all-new Thursday, May 13, 2021 episode and we have your Clarice recap below. In tonight's Clarice season 1 episode 9
Thirty years ago,
The Silence of the Lambs was released, creating a sensation for several reasons. The following year, it swept the five major categories at the 1992 Academy Awards while queer activists protested in droves outside the venue over its depiction of its serial killer Buffalo Bill/Jame Gumb. Now the CBS series
Clarice has introduced a storyline featuring trans actress Jen Richards (also a consultant on the show) to counter and reframe the dangerous narrative that painted Buffalo Bill as “transsexual,” although “not a real transsexual,” Anthony Hopkins’s Hannibal Lecter tells Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling in the film.
There’s a lot of narrative balls in the air in “Silence Is Purgatory,” the ninth episode of
Clarice, but there’s one that stands out above the others, largely because it’s the first time the subject has been broached. Julia Lawson (Jen Richards), a senior accountant at Lockyear, comes to Clarice with some files that can potentially help the case (NDAs prevent her from saying anything aloud), and while there, she confronts Clarice Starling about the fallout from the Buffalo Bill case specifically, how his being labeled as “transsexual” did immeasurable harm to members of the trans community like herself, and how Clarice never publicly spoke out against the conflation of serial killing and gender identity. This isn’t the first time the series has attempted to address real-world issues with mixed results. “You Can’t Rule Me,” the fourth episode, attempted to dive into the institutional racism and sexism at the FBI (an issue that pops up again here, with Ardelia
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Claricepromised it would add a trans character to address the “complicated” history of
Silence of the Lambs and it’s finally delivered. Predictably, it’s just as preachy and annoying as it gets.
The May 13 episode “Silence is Purgatory” has our lead Clarice Starling (Rebecca Breeds) trying to decipher a conspiracy that has since led to the deaths of three women. During her investigation, she crosses paths with a pharmaceutical worker named Julia Lawson (Jen Richards) who may have the information she needs. However, Julia doesn’t trust Clarice and fears losing her job.
More importantly, though, Julia needs to let Clarice know how the FBI agent “made [her] life harder” by not openly advocating for transsexuals (the show takes place in 1993). Seriously, she appears to blame Clarice just as much, if not more, than the journalists who hyped Buffalo Bill as “transsexual.”