David Fincher's serial killer chat 'em up MINDHUNTER

I think Carl Franklin in particular brings a slightly different vibe in the last three eps...kind of a southern noir or cary fukunaga TD season one thing. That push in on Williams!

Also that really cool slow pan up to the cloudy silhouetted now conspiratorial APD in the last ep.

I was thinking Numbers was Murder by Numbers. Not the case.

watching numb3rs is murder by numb3rs

bcz it's bad

not good

hug3 if tru3

mindhunter is better than numb3rs obviously

i would have put money on the opposite of this being a classic mark s "i will be taking no further questions at this time" challop deeply considered and thought provoking opinion.

off his gam3

i will be taking no further cheekiness at this time

(I’ve actually noticed watching this that I dislike when things happen. There really is this odd Fincher effect where everything sweeps neatly along a certain process and it feels annoyingly disruptive when something new intrudes on that.

I really like this thought...and it explains that effect in Zodiac where the murders are felt as almost cosmically disruptive to the movie that is supposedly about them! (And aside from the extremely no thanks daylight lake berryessa murder none of them are particularly gruesome.)

one minute of jonathan being whipped for holt speaking french pic.twitter.com/lrxCYNOzVQ

— ً (@mindcunter) August 28, 2019

omg

I liked this: I guess I should watch Zodiac? It's just the cast - it's like they deliberately hired actors I can't stand.

echoing all the zodiac praise earlier itt

and yeah it's tough not to like Ruffalo, RDJ etc by contrast. of course I find McCallany immensely likeable so YMMV

Ruffallo is fine. RDJ, Gyllenhaal and Sevigny are usually passes from me. But I can’t sleep so gotta watch something...

ZODIAC RULES YOU BETTER WATCH IT

anyway I just finished s2

i like that this season showed the push & pull of the actual work of profiling, the tiring drain of it all & the hollow victories of “catching” the “killer”

the Tench kid storyline was a bit on the nose but I didn’t hate it. I love how the actor who plays Bill really wore his emotional exhaustion in every aspect of his scenes, down to his silhouette walking away from camera

next season could get interesting - in John Douglas lore, his experience on the Atlanta case made him much more aware of the victims families & changed his approach to profiling: pulling away from the pure science of the pursuit made him better at his job.

all of the actors playing the murderer’s row really turned it out. The guy playing Wayne Williams was eerily on the money; Berkowitz was perfectly pathetic; and my boy Damon Herriman knocked it out of the park as Manson - though the prosthetic makeup was a bit too noticeable, only a minor quibble. His act of sitting on top of the chair after walking in is one of the memorable details from the real interview.

loved Tench-as-audience-surrogate in that scene

what the show is trying to tell the audience is that murder, especially serial, sexually motivated homicide, is chaos. The pursuit of the “why” never evens the scales in any satisfactory way, even when the right person is caught. The hollowness of the s2 ending is important

also the air of dissatisfaction that comes from their interviews, of hearing these men say over and over how they either didnt commit the acts at all or that they didnt feel anything etc - being immersed in their chaos & trying to bring logical order to that, it really erodes a part of your soul over time - a profiler bears the weight of just how much base violence lies within a person & how many there are just out in the world.
there’s an ironic kind of helplessness in a job like that; a success means there has already been wasted lives, and often just serves to highlight how much more work is needed to apprehend similar offenders.

the whole thing is bummertown usa. that’s why the show is great, because it makes you feel that.

wait that sucks though, the whole usa is bummertown usa, art is supposed to uplift us

have you seen a David Fincher project before

it was kind of uplifting when whatsername tattooed that guy on the stomach

Okay, Zodiac was good! Part of the reason I've been putting it (and Manhunter) off is that I don't like torture/sexual violence in stuff at the best of times when I'm running 'up' I get positively squeamish. But these were fine for me because they were character studies/contrasts in philosophies rather than 'watch this really terrible thing happen and later on we'll make you feel better by killing the baddie'.

I'm the only person I know who didn't care for Zodiac and I don't really know why I didn't

I just finished S1 of this, and read the thread, and can't wait for S2, and there have been lots of great posts itt!

I loved both the tickling principal and thought the Debbie "subplot" were vital to the architecture of the first season. Tickling principal needed to exist to show Holden's own intrusive behaviour, and the danger of when his work goes into "pre-cog"-- and yet, it's clear he's right? Debbie needed to be a part of the story because (aside from her being a human foil for the alien Holden) it showed a real-life consequence of his presumptions; just as Holden created an ideal scenario for Devier to confess, and Devier confessed, and this could be construed as "coercion", Holden created an ideal scenario for Debbie to break-up with him, and Debbie didn't stop him from doing so-- Holden played himself, this situation could've gone much differently.

otm

I had to look up the tickling thing for season 1. I totally forgot about that.

After seeing ten hours of Holden being smart and over-thinking and physically uptight and sanctimonious and patronizing, I texted my ex-bf "am I Holden" and he texted me back "oh definitely"

lol
sad trombone

I don't think I'd let tickling dude near my kids.

no fucking way

oh fuck no

OK dumb question, perhaps, but:

a. Why was Shepard let go?
b. Why was he so mad at Holden about it?

I mean, I guess it's because (under Shepard's watch) there was lying about the "cunts", but I otherwise don't understand why Shepard would be forced out to be replaced by a more sympathetic individual, nor do I understand why Shepard would exclusively blame Holden. (It seems more likely that the higher-ups wanted Shepard gone because they have far greater faith in the unit's work than Shepard himself did? idk. I don't quite get it.)

It’s a bureaucracy

I watched that scene again and again and I still don't get it. "Someone had to take the fall" for what? Who required it? I just don't get it, and I don't understand the basis for most of Shepard's accusations.

Oh wait, I just remembered the last scene with the OPR. Maybe that was the direct cause? Not "cunts" or the principal or anything else but Holden's unrestrained contempt for the inquiry process?

Anyway that scene (where Shepard dresses Holden down) was really intense I watched it several times

That wasn't really clear to me either. Closest I can get is that Holden's behaviour was bad and demanded some response but the bureau didn't want to lose or stifle their boy genius so they punished his boss instead? Which would also mean that Gunn didn't actually make the OPR go away.

I refuse to write multiple paragraphs explaining bureaucracy

can you point us to the guy who wont

credit flows up, blame flows down, rivals for hierarchical fealty plunder and poach one another's institutional resources (esp. the productive or promising achievements of subordinates) in order to define the appearances of success in the face of uncertainly fluctuating external conditions

When Holden is trying to figure out who the snitch is he explicitly rules out Shephard as "having the most to lose" should the tape be discovered. Shephard also, against his better judgment, went along with everything. So the tape being discovered seals his fate. Holden is saved because Dunn is well connected and wants to ride this gravy train.

I see. So basically, somebody in Congress (i.e.) was upset that the unit (including Shepard) did this cover-up, somebody needed to be fired to placate that person, even though Holden tried to take all the blame himself (even to a point where his reckless disregard toward the OPR people seemed as if it would surely result in his dismissal), some people higher-up (Dunn) recognize that Holden is "on to something" and so they decide to blame and fire Shepard, instead, to placate the person in Congress who is mad.

So Shepard is equally angry that a. it was Holden who said "cunts", and then had it redacted, and then subtly persuaded Gregg to lie about it, as he is angry that b. Holden is considered by the FBI to be more valuable an asset than Shepard himself. Have I got it right? (Sorry, I've never worked in a hostile office environment before! I literally did not understand this plot point.)

lol as soon as Shepard left the party I said "oh he was forced to 'retire'."

"I refuse to write multiple paragraphs explaining {insert any ilx discussion}."

Only just learned Anna Torv is Australian, mind blown.

shes v cate tbf, idk what Australians "look like"

Somewhere between “exquisitely delicate beauty” and “yesterday’s chips left out in the sun”

xxp wait until you find out her aunt used to be married to Rupert Murdoch!

I think the lie about profiling the show hints at strongly but tends to dance around is that the psychological monographs on the incarcerated that they're coming up with are no more than window dressing and a way to reframe things to local police in a way that makes them push past biases. There's an undercurrent to every conversation with local cops who think offenders were "born bad" that implies poverty, racism, etc. and season two reverses that dynamic with the mothers who are sure the killer has to be a white KKK member.

It's pushing past the systemic and social biases that actually brings results. Politically, it can't be a younger black man killing the kids in season two because society can't handle the repercussions. That's where they're failing on BTK -- it can't be a man in good social standing because that's not who a serial killer is. All of the reasoning works backward -- coming up with a justification on why someone incarcerated committed the crime, not who committed an unsolved crime -- until they find an existing solved case that fits the current situation to apply as a template.

I re-watched s1 and binged s2. Great posts itt.

The two seasons feel very different in tone and mood. Upthread someone said s1 was an official adaptation of the book of the real-life Tench and Ford? Is s2 similarly biographical or is it a composite/ was the Brian stuff real? Was there an actual Wendy Carr?

The way Tench and Nancy are around Brian is so odd - I mean he's a weird kid and doesn't exactly invite hair ruffling and mad giggles but it all seems to be 'brian go and play' 'brian come and eat your peas'. Which may be just a normal TV trope; kids are often just there for narrative purpose I guess, but this show should be different.

I didn't know anything about BTK or the Atlanta stuff irl, could not believe it went up to like 29 murders or whatever it was. I felt like so much of the 'normal' procedural police expositiony stuff that you might expect wasn't there (in a good way) so it was kind of hard to get a handle on it.

Need to re-watch Zodiac.