YMMV / Clarice

• Audience-Alienating Premise: Right from the outset Clarice was fighting an uphill battle to gain an audience. It's a show based upon the Hannibal Lecter franchise...that can't even mention Hannibal (or any characters and events outside of The Silence of the Lambs) due to the complicated adaptation rights. Despite being a popular character, some had doubts about whether Clarice Starling could carry a show alone. Others were more optimistic, at least until they learned the show was structured like a generic police procedural that was only loosely connected to the Hannibal franchise (with there already being dozens of other such shows, especially on CBS). Some fans of NBC's Hannibal had low interest in the show because it was clearly different in terms of tone and plot presentation to Hannibal (e.g. Hannibal leans more into Gothic Horror and surrealism, while Clarice aims to be a more grounded crime drama), plus it takes place in a different continuity, meaning the characters familiar to these fans wouldn't be appearing. Consequently, the show suffered low viewership (the first episode premiered with 4 million viewers, which continued to drop with each episode) and was cancelled altogether one season in after it failed to be picked up for streaming (even though it was faring better digitally).
• Cliché Storm: A common criticism is that the series doesn't do much to distinguish itself from every other police procedural show - especially given the source material leans closer to psychological horror - with stereotypical characters and overdone plotlines (especially the 'Cowboy Cop with a dysfunctional personal life who butts heads with her boss' angle). Some reviews have stated that the only things that differentiate Clarice from other shows like Criminal Minds is that it just happens to star a character named Clarice Starling and makes loads of references to The Silence of the Lambs (with the exception of Hannibal Lecter).
• Continuity Lockout: While the show does mostly stand on its own, the frequent references and call backs to The Silence of the Lambs requires the viewer to have seen that movie to understand their significance; Clarice's backstory and current mental state also make more sense, with the show generally assuming the audience will be familiar with the film.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Hannibal, as one might expect. Fannibals resent the series for not involving their favorite cannibal and for daring to suggest that his relationship with Clarice was strictly transactional. Clarice fans, meanwhile, are getting increasingly exasperated at Fannibals butting in on conversations about the show.
• Les Yay: Clarice and Ardelia live together, spend much of their free time together, came up through Quantico together, and, in "Ugly Truth", almost end up sharing a bed, with Clarice sharing a Meaningful Look with Ardelia just before their pagers go off and interrupt the moment. Their relationship comes off as that of a lesbian couple in an extremely Transparent Closet. A later instance where they have a very intimate conversation while in only their underwear lying alongside each other on the bed just fuels this further.
• Narm:
  • It's sometimes painfully obvious when the show tries to reference Hannibal Lecter without mentioning him by name due to legal issues. Clarice's therapist long-windedly describes the character in every way except by name to the point it's funny: he was a psychologist incarcerated at Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane who ate his patients and had a complex relationship with Clarice...but he's totally not Hannibal.
  • Clarice's jerkass co-workers pranking her by putting lotion into her desk drawer. It's supposed to add to the drama what with her co-workers mocking her trauma over the Buffalo Bill case, but lots of viewers instead found it bizarrely hilarious; besides coming off as a very on-the-nose reference to the "it puts the lotion on its skin" scene, it doesn't make much sense in-universe as to why Clarice would be bothered by this or why her co-workers would even be aware of it, seeing as it was Catherine to whom this happened when she was alone with Bill, leading viewers to joke about the characters having seen the movie.
• Nightmare Fuel: "Get Right with God" sees Clarice kidnapped and injected with drugs that leave her increasingly immobile. As if that weren't bad enough, she also suffers some vivid hallucinations, including being attacked by swarms of flies and being stuck at the bottom of Buffalo Bill's hole, except with the floor lined with discarded needles.
• Salvaged Story: The show attempts to address the criticism that Buffalo Bill can come off as highly insensitive to trans women by including a sympathetic trans woman named Julia and having her chastise Clarice for not making it clearer to the public that Bill wasn't representative of trans women. This also reflects the criticism that The Silence of the Lambs movie didn't make it clearer that Bill wasn't actually transgender outside of a throwaway line (the book makes this point more explicitly, albeit using some outdated information).
• So Okay, It's Average: The more positive reviews state that the show isn't awful, but it's just not very ambitious or distinguishable from many other police procedurals out there, it's overshadowed by The Silence of the Lambs (and in some circles the Hannibal series), and wastes the potential of its lead protagonist and source material.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Some viewers are critical of how Clarice is presented in the show, feeling she comes off as much frailer and more angsty compared to her film counterpart. While viewers weren't expecting her to be completely tickety-boo, they found it questionable that a year later she has such severe PTSD from the Buffalo Bill case she can barely function and has to be strong-armed into joining VICAP, especially as The Silence of the Lambs was all about Clarice facing and overcoming her past trauma. Besides coming off as out-of-character, for some it seems as though the writers couldn't come up with anything besides more trauma to define Clarice (particularly when considering that the character's resilience and intelligence was what drew most fans to her in the first place).
  • Some fans weren't impressed by the revelation that Clarice's much-adored police sheriff father - whose death in the line of duty was a major source of her trauma and who partly inspired her to become an FBI agent - was actually a Dirty Cop, thus shattering her view of him. These fans weren't keen on this plot twist because it's a massive departure from both the film and the books and because it's considered a huge cliché in cop shows.
  • As a corollary to the above plotline, viewers familiar with the source material found it questionable that the show turns Paul Krendler into a stern yet well-meaning father-figure to Clarice, given that in the books he's a vindictive misogynist who despises Clarice and tries to sabotage her (it's speculated that this version of Krendler was made a Composite Character with Jack Crawford, who was a benevolent mentor to Clarice in the books but couldn't legally be used in Clarice, though some viewers found this an odd choice given how wildly different they are).
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Shaan Tripathi is a completely generic cop show character, who even disappears for several episodes with no one noticing. Just about everyone is baffled at why an actor as skilled as Kal Penn was hired for such a nothing role.

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