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 Mapp’s lawsuit against the Bureau going forward), but stumbled under the weight of trying to tie it singularly to Ardelia’s situation. Similarly, this installment raises the issue of trans discrimination, but essentially does so in a void. It’s striking, and meaningful… and then the episode uses the theme of silence in the face of injustice to tell Esquivel he should be honest with his girlfriend. It’s not the smoothest application of life lessons, exactly.