How Crazy Thinks.
This is a spoiler-free review for all 10 new episodes of Netflix's Mindhunter - which premiered Friday, October 13th.
The concept of the cop or investigator who gets too absorbed in his/her work, too close to the darkness, is a well-worn story device at this point. TV shows and movies have presented us with many a hero, or anti-hero, who've succumbed to the sheer weight and enormity of the atrocities they're forced to absorb for decades now. Likewise, the entertainment industry's fascination with serial killers, a genre of crime fiction that got an enormous boost from 1991's The Silence of the Lambs (which then spawned and influenced dozens more movies) can easily feel like a tired infatuation here in 2017.
All this makes it even more important to circle back to ground zero: the birth of modern FBI serial killer profiling. These agents weren't the first cops who ever crumbled under pressure or trauma, surely, but they were the first to stare point blank into the abyss, into the faces and minds of, what was then (the 1970s), an escalating phenomenon of seemingly random murders committed on women and children by strangers, and crack the code - coining the term "serial killer" and drawing together patterns of behavior that would be apparent in both the perpetrator's past and present.
Based on FBI Agent John Douglas' seminal autobiographical account, Mindhunter, which chronicled his experience interviewing more than 30 incarcerated "sequence/serial" killers in order to study their similarities and categorize their techniques and motives, Netflix's Mindhunter is here to take us into some dangerously sinister and cerebral territory. Those familiar with Thomas Harris' world of fiction (Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, Red Dragon, et al) know that the characters of Jack Crawford and Will Graham were modeled after Douglas to an extent. Crawford represented the astute veteran aspect of the man while Graham showed us the gift/curse empathy that allowed Douglas to assume a killer's point of view, or rationale, sometimes at great cost to his own mental well-being.
Other fictional investigators have been modeled after Douglas over the years, but it's Harris' versions that are the most notable, perhaps, because Douglas himself was a consultant on Harris' books. In Mindhunter, we're still getting, more or less, a fictionalized version of Douglas. It's not the true-to-tape tale, but it's the closest we're going to get as Jonathan Groff (Glee, Frozen) plays young FBI hostage negotiator "Holden Ford" - an atypically curious agent among a nest of old fashioned J. Edgar stiffs and bureaucrats. Holden's not exactly a free-thinker, but he also doesn't come with the ingrained pride and ego of his close-minded compatriots who believe that criminals are just "born bad."
The first episode of the series, which comes to us from David Fincher (who directs the first two, and last two, episodes of the season) and Charlize Theron's Denver and Delilah Productions, shows us Holden, as square as he is, expanding his horizons a bit, both professionally and personally - hooking up with Debbie (Hannah Gross), a challenging sociology student, and Agent Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) of the FBI's fledgling Behavioral Science Unit. With Debbie, Holden finds himself attracted to a gregarious disruptor and critiquer, while with Bill, Holden stumbles into a vacuum within the Bureau that needs to be filled - an area in dire and desperate need of expertise.
Some of Mindhunter's initial bumpiness comes from the slight strain of turning Douglas' stranger-than-fiction story into an ongoing series. This is deeply conversational show that involves a lot of shop talk about sociology and criminology and if that's not something that interests some viewers, it can come off a touch arduous. But if this is your jam and jelly, it's fascinating stuff. Mindhunter breaks down how the language we now know as serial murderer profiling came to be. The painstaking process involved with having to transform crime scenes and chaos into accurate, digestible, teachable terms and language. In its own way, because this is all rooted in the real world, Mindhunter, with its quiet storm internalized approach and pacing, is the most terrifying show out there this Halloween season.
Agents Holden Ford and Bill Tench, and psychologist Dr. Wendy Carr (Fringe's Anna Torv), may all be facsimiles of real people, with mix-and-match backgrounds and side stories added for TV drama, but the killers presented here are not. At least not the ones Ford and Tench interview behind bars. Stitcher's Cameron Britton is absolutely mesmerizing here as the notorious behemoth butcher Ed Kemper, the first of Ford's interviews. Beginning in Episode 2, after Ford realizes that he and Tench are humbly ill-equipped to help local law with cases involving seemingly random savagery, the young agent decides to start tapping into the vein of locked-up lunatics. Why not probe the mind of psychopaths, behind bars in non-death penalty states, and make use of their madness? It's a radical, controversial idea that has serious ramifications for everyone involved and sets the series off and running.
Ford's arc is a fascinating one, and it's not until late in the season that Groff's true strengths in this performance start to shine. What begins as a rookie who's smart enough to know that he can't help where help is needed slowly morphs into an arrogant, isolated pot-stirrer who's over-eager to use new techniques to solve crimes. "That way madness lies" indeed, as the parallels between the thrill Ford gets in manipulating and holding power over suspects and the thrill a killer might feel in having power over his prey becomes more crystalline. There's a dirty and dour element to this work that Ford is a bit too comfortable living in while, to contrast, Tench, the family man, needs certain (and understandable) psychological shieldings.
Some elements within these formal psychological study years (this first season seems to stretch from '77 to '79) easily lend themselves a TV show. The killers introduced to us - from the aforementioned Kemper, to Jerry Brudos (Happy Anderson), to Richard Speck (Jack Erdie) - each present different challenges and story catalysts as our protagonists meet an assortment of crazy that assumes different demeanors and candor. Outside of these interviews though, separate crimes and cases have been added to spice up the proceedings, as Ford and Tench often find themselves, in their travels, helping towns track down devils and deviants - with some cases actual extending into multi-episode arcs. Acting as the background noise for the whole season too, and a fairly big indicator as to the years this show hopes to span story-wise, is "BTK Killer" Dennis Rader (Sonny Valicenti). If you know your killers, then you'll be able to spot him and his over-arching significance. If you're in the dark, then his brief moments throughout the season will still clearly indicate much larger storms on the horizon.
The Verdict
Mindhunter is both disturbing in its content and its analytical nature towards said content. In order to truly understand the mentality of madness, this team of investigators and academics had to go deep into the trenches of some horrifically specific savagery in a way that no one ever considered before - and it makes for a fascinating, spellbinding ride.
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