The aftermath of the Buffalo Bill fiasco is about to become known.
Clarice, CBS ‘ Silence of the lambs sequel, On Thursday, its premiere took place and a survey was made about the life of FBI agent Clarice Starling one year after the events in the Oscar-winning Jonathan Demme movie. While her life was a hell of a cocktail consisting of one part media circus mixed with one part PTSD, Starling (this time portrayed by The originals’ Rebecca Breeds) corpse to keep herself in check for the most part … but she’s about to drop another gruesome rabbit hole.
“I thought it was done. Buffalo Bill took seven women. He stripped six … six of them. I saved one. The last one. Catherine. ”
We start as flies against the wall of Clarice’s mandate therapy session, where she and a doctor discuss how media attention has affected her life and work. The psychiatrist inquires about her relationship with Catherine Martin and mentions how her last ‘therapist’ was criminally insane and ate his patients (this series is legally bound to speak the H-word). While trying to investigate Clarice’s relationship with Anthony Hopkins’ former crazy man, her defensive function is adjusted. He suggests that she be kept out of rotation until she can cure some of her PTSD, but before they can refute again, their session is interrupted. Ruth Martin, the Attorney General of the United States, is asking for Starling’s presence in an urgent case.
Martin tells Starling that two dead women drifted down a river, each with multiple stab wounds. The AG thinks it’s a serial killer. She wants Starling to be on the case so no family has to suffer like her hair when Catherine was abducted. Clarice’s reputation for monster hunting precedes her, and Martin makes Starling a special agent of the task force. Martin warns that Paul Krendler, the head of the team, could still hold a stick in his key over Starling who will show him in the Bill case. Martin also asks Clarice to return her daughter’s calls; the damaged girl thinks Starling is the only one who can help her.
Clarice arrives on the scene, and Krendler wants nothing to do with her. He calls her Martin’s drop of honey ‘for the press. He wants to close the case clean and fast, and makes it clear that Clarice is expected to say and do exactly what he tells her (and confirm that he is a male chauvinistic jerk). The corpses in question have strange bite marks that Clarice notices are shallow and spread out. “There is no intimacy here, no madness,” she tells the team. She does not believe the killer is a true serial killer. “It’s too controlled, too healthy.” Krendler does not want to hear it. He immediately throws her in front of the press like a lamb to slaughter and presses her to confirm the serial killer.
Clarice and agent Tomas Esquivel interview one of the victim’s men. Angela Byrd’s desperate husband is not very helpful, but they find out that his older son has autism. They hunt down the next of kin of the other victim, an addict who tells that her mother took care of her child, who learned in ‘that place’, the place for freaky children to be fed through a tube. ‘It appears that both victims are connected to children with special needs. When they report their findings to Krendler, he carries Clarice to a desk.
Meanwhile, Clarice sends back a message that appears to be from Catherine. The young woman is upset and tells Clarice that she will never feel safe. She asks Clarice if she can sleep, “… or do moths wake you up?” Catherine asks her how Clarice can be there in the world, to which Clarice responds that they are different people. Catherine points out that they are exactly the same, and warns her cryptically against trusting her mother Ruth.
A new victim is found and Esquivel learns the woman had a daughter with severe facial deformities. The agents then discovered that Angela Boyd was in a clinical trial for migraines, and that many of the women children who participated in it showed up in different ways. Clarice finds a stack of papers that Angela hid with a number for a journalist named Rebecca who wrote a piece about the trial. Angela reached out to the other women, and they were all ready to blow the whistle.
Clarice and Esquivel go to the journalist’s house and find an unmarked vehicle outside, which they immediately put in defense. The killer is already inside the house! Esquivel finds the journalist near death in the bath, her wrists cut off, but he is immediately ambushed from behind by the killer. He tries to stab the attacker with a piece of broken mirror, but the man picks up. Clarice follows the perp, which chokes her and throws her on a table. A struggle ensues with three bullets in the man’s chest.
“You have no idea what it is,” muttered the man, but he would not speak until he had an agreement. While the journalist is being driven in an ambulance, Clarice confirms that the women of the trial all intended to speak. When Clarice tells Krendler that the killer was contracted to kill whistleblowers, he asks if she can prove it. She can not yet … He wants her to tell the press that they caught the serial killer. He says they will investigate the conspiracy angle without her, but tells her to go out there and tell the lies he fed her.
Clarice then tells the press the truth: that the women died because they were trying to tell a story. “They were not randomly a victim of a serial killer,” she confirmed, and “I will be here until we close the book.”
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