#i am Very sick of men missing entirely why sotl is a phenomenon

[dominicvail]

on a slightly serious note on that episode, and the uh... Fact that frank military has probably watched/read the silence of the lambs recently, i’d like 2 point out the reason people, and women in particular, like the whole hannibal lecter vs clarice starling thing is because it Negates the tropes that episode walked into face first, Lecter is the only man in sotl that Doesn’t demean her because she’s a woman, he’s not the active villain of that story, he’s an antagonist. He doesn’t get creepy towards her in a sexual harassment way. It’s why she doesn’t like... hate him. It’s why they have a cordial relationship despite every reason they shouldn’t. 

If you try and do the whole classic sotl story where a lady cop goes to get information out of the terrible awful man in a glass cage because he’s so awful, you have to also realise that in sotl... They get on pretty well. Lecter is indisputably a right dick, to use a turn of phrase, but she can take him toe to toe and he Never treats her as anything but an actual person, where everybody else treats her like a piece of meat (hence, the irony... the cannibal is the only one Not doing that). 

In which case, sotl is an inversion of tropes in itself, so if you invert it you’re just... Walking smack into bad tropes. Starling is underestimated and gets one over on lecter because of it! Somebody Else deliberately ruins it for her afterwards! She actually legitimately has the upper hand on him, and somebody who is after his own egotistical glory sells her out. Unlike in this episode where they never let Kensi get the upper hand Once. 

They used a story device of Kensi being sold out by the other woman instead, which Isn’t the same because that was a desperate plea Anyway. Kensi never had any power. 

And that is the problem. 

In trying to invert something which in itself was an inversion of tropes, they’ve just managed to glorify some absolute Monster stereotype of a white man evil genius character and basically just victimize Kensi the whole episode through. And to top it off, she never even gets a moment to defend herself or voice her own feelings on the matter, because they gave that riff to Deeks instead. 

Kensi was basically just a walking victim in that episode, every moment of victory she had was stolen from her, she was psychologically tortured, threatened, was never allowed to have a moment to actually even Have feelings on the proceedings because a man got to do That as well. 

In sotl, Lecter escapes as well, but it wasn’t in any way Starling’s fault... She Had Him, not the other way around. The man who was in charge of Lecter sold Starlin out and set about the string of events that allowed Lecter to get out. In This episode, Kensi is forced to roll over to all his demands and it leads to him getting out, she is complicit in it because she was never allowed any agency by the plot.   

Character centric episodes are supposed to be About that character, this episode was basically things being Done to Kensi and other peoples opinions on those things, she was a passive role in her own episode, and that’s Not Good.