David Fincher's serial killer chat 'em up MINDHUNTER

i'm five episodes in now - i think this show is really impressive. it's one of the most script-driven shows i've seen in this new era of tv. it doesn't hit say glengarry glenross levels but a couple of scenes reminded me of that, which is a testament to the quality of the dialogue. feel like the show has some pretty strong thematic dissection of men and male violence as well.

i have seen a critic state that the show is "playing off" Groff's queerness.

I will say Holt McCallany as Fred Ward is A+

― Larry Elleison (rogermexico.)

White Laurence Fishburne imo.

i suddenly realized the main dude sometimes looks like dennis from it's always sunny in philadelphia (glenn howerton) and now i can't stop seeing it

oh thank god i'm not the only one

there was a scene where I had that exact same observation and it haunted me for a while

oh shit

"it's one of the most script-driven shows i've seen in this new era of tv"

And it's also the most riveting show for donkey's years. I really thought it would be horrid because of my aversion to the subject matter + Finch etc but I've steamed through it and up to ep 8 now.

http://www.premiere.fr/sites/default/files/styles/premiere_article/public/thumbnails/image/macron.jpg

forgot how much i love exile's "i wanna kiss you all over"

the music cues are very on the nose, so much so that when Debbie paused their foreplay, left the room to change, and "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" came on, I thought she was going to return with a second person. I don't mind it though, I mean the tunes are good.

i mean they used "psycho killer" so

when "I Don't Like Mondays" came on right after "Psycho Killer" I was like 'wait, have I not been paying attention and all the songs on the soundtrack are about murderers in some way?'

but then I remembered they played "Fly Like An Eagle" over a travelling montage and I realised they were even dumber than that

i really liked that montage though

the songs aren't great and some the acting is questionable but it's still great v compelling

I like pretty much all the acting, the cops and killers have all been cast well. I liked the small town cop from PA, I was kind of worried they'd paint him as being a dumb rube who fucked up and they'd dismiss him narratively in that usual tedious manner they do to make the leads in a show look smarter. But his small role was complicated and interesting, his instincts kinda broke open the case.

Hannah Gross really reminds me of Maggie Siff and reminds me a bit of Ruth Wilson, maybe.

which acting do you think is bad? (ive only seen 4 eps so far)

I have never been so terrified of a can of tuna

yeah me to that was D:

i loved that whole PA sidestory, the actor playing the cop did a great job

i like mccallany a lot - i think the scene where he's saying goodbye to his son was tremendous. jonathan groff and anna torv have had some false moments imo. some of hannah gross + groff's conversations in particular have been pretty meh and in general that relationship feels pretty auxiliary to the entire project.

also ppl don't like the lack of period detail but again this doesn't bother me the core pleasure is talking about serial killer psychology

They get a lot of mileage on the period detail from the cars and from McCallany being able to smoke literally everywhere.

that'll do for me. The Deuce has very expensive wardrobes, hairstyles and sets etc . And it is shit.

I have never been so terrified of a can of tuna

What was the point of that whole cat-feeding set of scenes? I havent seen the last ep yet so does this turn into something? (ie dead cat?)

It turns into a bit of foreboding symbolism

i like mccallany a lot - i think the scene where he's saying goodbye to his son was tremendous. jonathan groff and anna torv have had some false moments imo. some of hannah gross + groff's conversations in particular have been pretty meh and in general that relationship feels pretty auxiliary to the entire project.

― Mordy, Tuesday, October 17, 2017 2:39 PM (forty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

guess i dont disagree with the relationship comment but cant really say til ive finished. i caught Torvs accent a few times but not too bad. mccallany is the best part of the show for me so far.

Ah, I thought it might. xpo

I am not done, but I am expecting this season to end with holden and bill interviewing the can of tuna

and agreed that mccallany is the best, but I'm afraid to check his imdb because I suspect he's been a twilight werewolf or something

https://typeset-beta.imgix.net/uploads/image/2017/10/13/c405ecf7-191f-48f1-9c1d-cd3776cea081-177_mindhunter_107_unit_02157r3.jpeg?w=740&h=444&fit=crop&crop=faces&auto=format&q=70
http://cimg.tvgcdn.net/i/2015/06/30/c8c7e44e-d7ec-4715-b6e1-b898464bc8e2/vegetables.gif

loooool

lol that works too well

I was gonna say, what else has McCallany been in? I instantly recognized him as the “his name is Robert Paulson” guy from Fight Club but he has the familiarity of a character actor you see all the time.

he was also in Three Kings in a good, but small role. He had a key role in the haunted submarine movie Below, if you ever want a decent spookfest and to see his butt.

He was on CSI: Miami in an occasional role for several seasons, and he was super overqualified for that show. He was in Blackhat, the Michael Mann movie. He's been in a ton of stuff. It sounds like he had an interesting upbringing as well, and sounds like a pretty sharp dude IRL.

he was also in Fincher's Alien movie

enjoying the fact that every time they cut to a Quantico establishing shot of some kind, there's automatic gunfire. foreshadowing the future of violence in america vs what occurs in the '70s and '80s? just a neat device?? idk, i like it.

Loved this ^

I was also terrified of the tuna

The bit right at the end where Kemper's big feet flop down on the floor as he gets out of bed. Flop plop. Fuck.

Who's the scary alarm electrician supposed to be?

I came to this from American Horror Story which is a pleasant jump

btk

The music was eh overall but the very last cue was amazing.

Also when can we talk spoilers?

I'm still not finished! but I can avoid the thred...

again I recommend McCallany fans seek out FX's boxing drama Lights Out, though it might be tough to track down these days

Oh shit that’s where I know him from that was great!

otm i dug that too

final scene made me jump like nobodys business GAH

it was a jump and then giggle bit

thought they might interview Jake Blues in Episode 9

lol i started singing She Caught the Katy when they rolled up to Joliet
BUH-NAAAAAAAAA

I accidentally got off the interstate a couple exits early on the way to a destination in the outer Chicago area a couple months ago and ended up driving through that part of Joliet. Looked a little familiar for a minute, and then it dawned on me.

finished this last night. it ended really well and i think they've def got enough material for another season so i'm anticipating that. kinda glad i'm done with the show for a bit tho since watching it was giving me all kinds of anxiety and at least one restless night. some spoiler material below:

the thing i liked most about it was how well they balanced the line between deviant and normal behavior. this isn't a new trope to serial killer fiction -- the subtext of lots of Hannibal was "is Will a serial killer hunter or just a psychopath himself" and they replicate a lot of that with holden. but there's other really interesting stuff they look at too. the principal is probably the principle ambiguity - when is behavior creepy/weird but not psychopathic? even at the end i wasn't sure if holden had done the right thing. his behavior was legitimately concerning and yet his wife was right that he hadn't done anything violent or abusive. it wasn't right that he was ignoring parent's requests but was that wrong enough to ruin his life? maybe. there's a lot of stuff like that throughout the show - esp thinking of stuff like the shoe fetish and transgenderism which the show rightly points out - despite it being associated with particular serial killer cases - are also practiced by ppl who are not murderous. is it right to use these kinds of things as descriptors of sk behavior when they're also non-sk behavior? how do you even parse out what makes something perverse / deviant vs just an unusual fetish or personal identification etc?

the best thing in the show was the conversations with the serial killers and the analyses of the interviews afterwards. i'm guessing holden's /illness/ at the end is just a combination of the sublimated stress from over the season that he hasn't been addressing and the extreme stress over the encounter w/ kemper? his breakup w/ debbie was predictable. i was surprised they never really addressed her sidled up to her research partner during that lab experiment. and holden never tells debbie about why her lingerie/high heels get-up turned him off. presumably that was intentional - if you don't talk about your problems they fester and ruin relationships and ruin your health, etc.

the interrogation in the final episode was amazing. extremely intense and unsettling. the moment when he revealed the rock to the rapist was bone chilling.

I thought the interrogation went well enough, but Holden's cultivation of this hardman FBI agent sucks! He started crossing lines in order to get better interviews with serial killers, now he's just crossing lines because... that's what a badass cop does? The whole "is the tape recorder rolling or not" bit, which he got called out for, is just his reaction to getting busted for saying misogynistic shit on tape. He did a good job of pulling out the details, but the showmanship part was mostly bullshit.

I think the breakdown is the obvious result of all this play-acting. The cracks were showing -- getting unnerved by Debbie's shoes, turning the school principal thing into a FBI matter when he has no real case. Trying to adopt the swagger of a serial killer so he can relate to them when the act is paper thin, it's all really obvious when he goes back to Kemper, because that was his mentor!