Could this be the next Breaking Bad? Only if you like sociopathic serial killers as much as rogue chemistry teachers with cancer. I guess I must. Cream of the Prestige Crop. On the face of it, this is maybe the first show I've seen that consistently reminds me of the kind of cinematic, dramatic and narrative high standards once held by the king of television, Breaking Bad. (Besides Better Call Saul of course, which doesn't count because it's a spinoff with the same production team... And Battlestar Galactica because it's fracking awesome!) ...Alright, fine, I'm not saying there are not other great shows out there. There's a whole category of so-called "prestige television" with varying artistic and thematic successes to their name. Game of Thrones might be your thing, or Orange is the New Black, or The Wire, or whatever. But Breaking Bad has always been and continues to be number one in my book, head and shoulders over a myriad of close seconds. And then came along Mindhunter, the closest second of them all. The premise: Based on a true story. Or a series of stories, I guess. Well, anyway, it's based on a book in the genre of true crime that depicts the rise of criminal behavioral profiling in the 70's. The book is written by John E Douglas about himself because he was not only at the center of that rise in profiling, he led the charge. He is not only the direct basis for the main character here, Holden Ford, but also characters depicted in the films Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon, Hannibal, and the TV show Criminal Minds. Why? Because he's almost as weird as the sociopaths he hunts. Makes for a great character. He teams up with Bill Tench (also a pseudonym for a real life FBI agent) and even though they are just a couple peripheral FBI instructors teaching at Quantico they start to notice connections and patterns intertangled between the nascent fields of psychology, behaviorism and sociopathic serial killers. No one else really gets it. In fact they get pushback from just about everyone. Their idea is that by digging deeper into the minds of the most evil criminals ever convicted and not only asking the most obscene questions but listening to the most obscene answers, they will develop the behavioral profiles and nomenclature that would fuel thousands of hours of entertaining crime movies and television in the 90's and onward. I mean...revolutionize criminal investigations in real life and stop serial killers. Actually, both, lucky for us. It became the Behavioral Science Unit located in the basement of the FBI. Even the very word "serial killer" came out of their work. Before them, as you can see in the first couple episodes, these kind of criminals were merely classified as deranged and evil, and no one was trying to understand them. No one thought there was anything a sane person could understand. No one realized how many killers like this could be out there, or that they could in fact be outsmarted and caught. David Fincher directs the first and last two episodes as well as produces the series and thank god for that. This is his kinda stuff, right up there with Zodiac, Seven, and even a little bit of The Social Network. His clean, almost sterile camera style is perfect for capturing the procedural formalities of the many FBI interrogations, or the extreme pretenses of these narcissistic killers. But it also brings out all the unhinged insanity lurking beneath the surface. Or in the case of the FBI agents, their frailties and blindspots. You'd be forgiven for thinking Aaron Sorkin wrote it, with such intelligent and technical dialogue, frequently discussing the minutia of academic theory and FBI procedure as a veiled cover for deeper emotional complexity and instability beneath the surface. At a glance the writing might seem flat or tedious--like an episode of The Next Generation where Geordi La Forge has to explain a problem with the warp engines again--but pay close attention, it's just a misdirect for subtle acting and sneaky character development. Brilliant work. The story is simple: Holden Ford's curiosity puts him in conflict with the traditionalism of the FBI's standard procedures. His boss antagonistically accommodates him by connecting him with Bill Tench in Behavioral Psychology. By day they take road trips to various police precincts around the country where they attempt to convey the earliest forms of criminal profiling to local law enforcers. By night--or rather, it's still daytime just on the weekends--they start to interview psychotic killers in prison in an attempt to understand how they think, interviews horrifically taken from real-life transcripts such as Ed Kemper. Along with the academic assistance of Dr. Wendy Carr (a pseudonym for another real life professor), they secure funding and turn this side-project into a brand new unit to develop the first profiles of serial killers in an attempt to catch them sooner. They also get roped into various unsolved crimes that have the local cops stymied, some of which turn out to have the makings of their hypothetical "sequence killers" (they don't concoct the phrase serial killer until near the end). But all this mucking around in the psychological mud takes its toll. The team comes together midseason only to immediately start unraveling. Tench has trouble at home with his wife and adopted son. Wendy Carr lives alone and has a bizarre subplot with a cat in her laundry room. Everybody struggles to have deep and meaningful relationships and you can feel them pulling toward each other and away at the same time. Another example of the detachment theme of the show. And then there's Holden Ford... Ford who started this whole thing begins more and more to resemble the sociopathic sensibilities of the subjects he obsesses over. He's no longer curious about them, he's enamored. He can't decide if it's appropriate to ask for an autograph from Richard Speck, for example. He begins to use their language to get past their guard and it works. He gets incredible insight into how and why they did the things they did, and in a couple cases by the end, even tricks confessions out of a few up-and-coming killers before they can become "serial." It starts to go to his head. He thinks he's gifted. He thinks he's brilliant. He thinks (and he's at least partly right) that this was all his idea, he saw it all coming, and he made it all succeed on his own shoulders. His hubris begins to tear apart his relationship with his girlfriend, his working relationships with Tench and Carr, and almost costs him his career in the FBI when he begins to see potentially "disturbing behavior" in as yet innocent people. By the last episode, it almost costs him his life, as he finds himself blindly lured back into the arms of his first interviewee, Ed Kemper, who attempted suicide after seeing his name in the paper, taking credit. Kemper was the first interview and he likes to imagine he's helping catch the other killers with his insights. He's been trying to get in touch with Ford who's been ignoring him. He has more "insights" to share. It's not clear how he feels about Ford taking so much credit, presuming to understand killers like himself. The nurses leave. Kemper explains to Ford how lax security is in the hospital. He steps closer and closer and like so many casual moments before, he lays hands on him in a perfect moment of sinister suspense and makes clear Ford will never fully comprehend the darkness inside these people. Ford collapses in a panic attack. The end. Let's talk about that ending. After the panic attack in which Ford's ego is left completely shattered, we see a man alone in the night, burning his drawings (see GIF above). Whether you've seen it or plan to, I don't think spoilers are relevant here. The show is an experience, and the way it is written and directed so smartly and with such technical sophistication, it's not about whether you see it coming or not, it's about getting inside the cold, detached minds of these socially dysfunctional people (killers, cops and FBI alike). So much of the tone and atmosphere of the series is about aesthetic empathy not plot twists. By that I mean, relating to the characters and their emotions through the aesthetics of the cold, dank prisons in which they conduct their interviews. Everything is clinical. There are no chases. No shootouts. No guns. It feels eerily theoretical even though lives are at stake. Not just in the show, these were real life killers with real life victims at stake. And some never got caught. That's what this ending is about.
Throughout the entire series we're given a few seconds each episode of this man who is probably meant to be the BTK killer of Kansas (at one point I honestly thought he was Tench's developmentally delayed son all grown up, or Ford himself having taken a dark turn in the future... not so). We see snapshots of his life completely unrelated to the show's normal plot. And then just as Ed Kemper puts Holden Ford in his place, the last scene of the series cuts to this BTK killer once more and shows him burning sketches of either his victims or his prospective victims. He's either about to begin his spree or continue on free and clear. It's abrupt and random and if you thought the series was building up to him as a final confrontation, you'll be disappointed to see his subplot remains completely irrelevant and detached to the end. Narratively, that is, but not thematically. If you look online, you'll find a number of people who don't get it, or just don't like it. And at a glance, it does seem like a possible loose end. Sure, he might just be an obnoxious advertisement for hard-core true-crime aficionados anticipating Season 2 (much the way Marvel will post end-of-credit scenes to tease future films). But if that's all he is, then it's just as sloppy and annoying as people are complaining it is. I think it's more than that though. If the show were to never have a subsequent season, then I think those brief teases at the front of each episode and that strange final scene burning the drawings (to say nothing of all the other deliberate loose ends, of which there were several) represent Ford's fatal flaw. The one that got away. Ford thinks he has gotten into the minds of killers and his brilliance is saving lives. Meanwhile this BTK killer represents his ignorance and lack of control. A ticking clock counting down that Ford doesn't even know about. These killers are budding up right in the middle of everyday society and no one can see them coming. Not really. This seemingly incongruous ending represents the cognitive dissonance of anyone arrogant enough to say they can understand and find these people easily. Juxtaposed as it is with Ford's panic attack, it specifically speaks to Ford's arrogance and blindness and failure to solve crimes before they occur as he'd hoped. But perhaps it also speaks to the larger blindness of our entire society which has never really been able to face the haunting realities that we both create and yet cannot properly identify most of these killers who come from among our most middle-class ranks. Until it's too late. Conclusion: Mindhunter is a smart, cerebral examination of sociopathic thinking and the consequences that befall arrogant behavior. A slow-burning, thoughtful and artistically precise piece of cinematic storytelling with complex writing. The acting from these familiar-but-not-quite-famous actors is subversive and sometimes scary, but brilliantly nuanced. The directing is chilling and perfect. It pushes the limits of binge-watching with state-of-the art narrative techniques built for the Netflix format that I don't think will be fully appreciated for years to come. On a visceral level, it will leave you haunted and a little convicted and if you're truly keeping up with it, you'll feel as suspicious of your own face in the mirror as you are of every one of your neighbors and PTA acquaintances. This show isn't for everyone, it's adult in every sense, but if the premise hasn't already scared you off, then I can't recommend it more highly. If you don't watch it now, I guarantee after Season 2 or 3 when it blows up into the mainstream as Breaking Bad eventually did, you'll be playing catch up in order to have any hope of staying in the loop at the water cooler.
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