Well, that was bound to happen.
The extremely tightly wound Clarice finally blew up on Clarice Season 1 Episode 12.
Not that she wasn’t provoked. But lashing out apparently isn’t allowed at the Bureau.
Her timing was bad because Krendler and ViCAP needed her profiling expertise in the worst way as they made a final push on the River Murders and Alastor.
Clarice’s fragments of memories about a special night with her beloved father were pushing her frustration to a fever pitch.
Clarice is all about making connections, but she couldn’t even do that when looking back on her own childhood.
She seemed to expect Dr. Li to do that for her. But that isn’t how therapy works. Instead, the therapist can guide the patient who needs to come up with a revelation of her own.
But Clarice didn’t have the time to do the work. Not with the Alastor raid looming.
Unfortunately, Clarice is all about being an FBI agent, even though Ruth, Krendler, her first therapist, Dr. Li, and even her best friend Ardelia are skeptical about her state of mind.
The trouble is that Clarice can compartmentalize, only pestered by her visions when she’s sleeping. She’s entirely functional when she’s working.
Except for her bad habit of injecting herself into dangerous situations. Maybe, as her flashback revealed when she was out jogging, that came from that moment when she was “Daddy’s little deputy,” delivering a payment to criminals for him.
Clarice had been worried all along that she was building her career on a false narrative of following in her father’s heroic footsteps, and now that appears to be the case.
Normally, this would be an opportunity for self-reflection. But, even though she had officially resigned, Clarice’s being at the heart of the Alastor case won’t give her that time.
Only the pressure she was under finally caused her to snap. She could handle the obnoxious agent Eddie putting down female agents. That was nothing she hadn’t heard before.
But she came instead to Esquivel’s defense because apparently, anyone who wasn’t a white male offended Eddie.
It was a tender moment afterward when Esquivel and Clarice traded thoughts about containing the anger within them.
Unfortunately, since Clarice was at the heart of Ardelia’s discrimination suit, she had to be punished, needing to get Dr. Li’s approval to continue work.
The good doctor could tell Clarice had reached a tipping point and left it up to Clarice to decide whether she wanted to continue at a job that traumatized her.
She made the right choice turning in her badge and gun until she did the work to get her head straight.
But Clarice’s big heart and big brains seemed to have deposited her in trouble once again.
For, while she was doing the right thing for her peace of mind, ViCAP made a major discovery. Tyson wasn’t the meek and mild philanthropist that he appeared to be, a person that had been intellectually attractive to Clarice.
So Ty showed up at her door, seemingly to make peace and confess. That can’t be good.
The River Murders investigation veered all over the place this episode.
Thanks to informant Julia, ViCAP had the evidence necessary to charge Alastor with fraud. But with four murders linked to Reprisol, they weren’t done yet.
However, they were racing against the clock since Ruth was getting pressure from all around to drop any further investigation.
That included Hagen threatening to make Catherine’s arrest public. Fortunately, Catherine had developed a backbone while institutionalized and told her mother to do what she had to do.
It was refreshing to see that Catherine had appeared to have turned a corner. Maybe house arrest wasn’t the best way for her to heal from her Buffalo Bill trauma.
The raid on Alastor didn’t immediately yield the smoking gun that ViCAP and Ruth sought.
So that fugly painting so valued by Hagen ended up front and center. It’s a good thing that Tripathi returned on Clarice Season 1 Episode 11 to offer his art expertise. Can you imagine Clarke attempting to make sense of it?
It was sad that the artist of the painting felt so little connection to it. It was just a vanity project for Hagen.
But the biologicals on the painting told a story about a warped Hagen attempting to impregnate desperate women that Tyson had brought into the country for him.
So sadly, the son was willing to do evil things to please the father that he had met later in life.
It was shocking that Hudlin, who had appeared to be the mastermind for most of the investigation, ended up being Hagen’s fall guy.
It wasn’t until he stopped Hagen’s security detail from abducting Julia that Hudlin appeared to be more than a greedy, standard-issue lawyer. He seemed genuinely surprised at what was happening around him.
Then he was shocked by Hagen’s praise and lack of concern about the charges against him. It wasn’t until it was too late that he realized Hagen was setting him up with his earlier press conference.
Of course, he called Krendler. After all, Hudlin thought they had bonded through Krendler’s divorce case.
Only now he was another pawn in Hagen’s game.
To revisit Clarice’s breakthrough, watch Clarice online.
Will Clarice end up a captive again?
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Dale McGarrigle is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.