David Fincher's serial killer chat 'em up MINDHUNTER

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!

I didn't really get the point of the school principal thing - like it was sort of interesting but it felt vague as a subplot. It felt ambiguous in the sense of the writers not knowing what the point of it was either.

It kind of echoed the beginning of the series where Holden's enthusiastic to help local cops but he has no idea how to deploy his skills and ends up offending them. He's got a whole new set of skills, and now he's doing actual damage with his petty meddling.

how long until he brings in the murder weapon and his little "I'm like you" shtick and ends up soliciting a false confession

Is it wrong that I was disappointed in the scene where Anna Torv goes back to Boston, and the writers couldn't just let the clear dialogue and acting convey the fact that she's a lesbian, they had to put a kiss in as well? It felt like the show having its cake and eating it as well -- heaven knows television needs more healthy LGBT relationships and normalized displays of affection, but it also seemed sort of "gotta get that girl/girl kiss on screen."

i assumed they were building towards her character hooking up with holden, regardless of the lesbian scene.

I thought it was pleasantly unclear what the dynamic was going to be

now she's definitely work mom

yeah it's veered away from that i suppose.

the whole can of tuna thing was p weird. and the final scene too.

I thought it was incredibly relatable?

Trying to stealth your way down to the laundry room without pants to put a load in the washer, only to immediately walk back there, forgetting your lack of pants, after hearing a cat. Returning for a few nights, taking your glass of wine to sip on and hopefully spot this mystery cat. Then, forebodingly, the tuna remains uneaten one night. Probably the cat just left the neighborhood, but you study serial killers all day, so....

yeah i get you, i suppose it was just unusually subtle for a tv serial. nothing wrong with that but maybe a slight imbalance to have suggestive tension from an absent cat alongside all these tense interviews with violent rapists.

it's more of the innocuous details of everyday life taking on a new dimension because the work is really getting into their heads!

Bill eventually breaking down to his wife was probably the most heart-wrenching aspect of it

funniest version of it was Holden looking at Debbie's feet and being unable to not think of a guy fucking a shoe

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.

The point of this subplot was abundantly clear but it's funny because also, in 2017, "I'm gonna tickle your children's feet and you can't stop me" is 100% a fireable offense and good riddance!

what do you think the point was? to me it's establishing that weird does not mean serial killer. but yeah, a hand on a kids's shoulder could prob = fired today.

yeah the point = ambiguity, changing mores.

i think holden was totally right to talk like a serial killer while interviewing / interrogating the serial killers. it's kinda hard to believe that the FBI would want an agent to refrain from speaking vulgarly/misogynistically for the sake of propriety. surely the more important thing is getting the information / getting justice for the victims?

it still felt kind of weird to me - like i didn't know how i was supposed to feel. i dunno if ambiguity is a good point, just my opinion tho.

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Changing more particularly in the sense that the advent of public consciousness about these kinds of criminals certainly changed what we think of as normal or acceptable behavior. Who hitch hikes anymore? Adult men choosing to be around children are often automatically suspect, etc. Which is why this topic is actually a lot broader than just wallowing in serial killer lore, it's about cultural changes that are pretty broad and long lasting.

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it's kinda hard to believe that the FBI would want an agent to refrain from speaking vulgarly/misogynistically for the sake of propriety. surely the more important thing is getting the information / getting justice for the victims?

Wouldn't surprise me if this hasn't changed as well!

also the principal was about holden trying to take the material they're developing it and applying it to real life. a lot of the back half of the season is about the consequences of the work - see also torv being upset about them trying the one guy w/ the death penalty. they talk a lot about how the end point of this research may be stopping these crimes before they happen next time (not just catching the suspect after the crime) but that kind of approach would necessitate what holden did with the principal - trying to read innocent ppl's behavior to see how it's likely to develop. the question of whether that's an appropriate job for the FBI is an important one. even if the principal should have been fired (he probably should have) maybe holden shouldn't have gotten involved.

it just felt a bit incomplete to me for whatever reason. just nitpicking really tho, i thought this show was excellent.

It's really a pretty fascinating instance of something that had presumably been going on all the while (I always thought this was where folk tales about witches eating children, or vampires, came from) then being named, identified, and studied and in that way leading to massive cultural changes in how people relate to each other--and of course the attendant risk that this new "object" (the serial killer) can now be mistakenly seen even where it is isn't. There's something Foucaultian about the topic (if not the show, really).

The shift in Holden felt v believable to me but I was already a fam of Douglas. The lore is that his ego created a schism with his partners & they differed over methodology

Reading off the questionaire might get you the baseline answers but Holden knows that the subjects are probably just going to tell them what they want to hear & that to him defeats the point of talking to them. To him this is an opportunity...but it’s also a stage. They’re performing the role of subjugated criminal, and he KNOWS it’s a performance. So why not meet their performance with one of his own devising to disarm them & get them to a point where they are no longer in control of their mask

He wants to get into their heads & see who these men were when they were killing, ie who they truly are because that never really goes away - (this is a key element in sexually violent homicides, idk if they address it in the show but it’s similar to pedophilia in that once you act on the fantasy the only thing that will sate the need is to keep doing it).

Holden wants to see who they were to their victims, without the mask of performance. But it is driven from curiosity at first - he does not know that what’s there isn’t something you can see without being changed by it.
The questionaire is the safety glass.
He does not realize that until he’s done away with it completely.
His position of authority in the interview feeds his ego & he wants to be the one to remove the mask. But in doing so he’s changing the nature of the interview AND changing himself.

I think I relate hard to Holden's curiosity, and w/ his impatience w/ ppl who are reticent and find some of that curiosity prurient. I asked Michelle McNamara (RIP) in a Reddit AMA once if she thought that there was a prurient or titillation aspect to interest in True Crime and she gave an answer I really liked:

I absolutely think about this and struggle with this. But I think it's wrong to conflate interest in crime with the creepiness of the criminal. Crime stories shed light on so many aspects of our culture --- what victims get priority, how our criminal justice system works, what certain crimes say about us as a society. They're important questions, and just because lurid shows like Wives with Knives exist doesn't mean people talking and discussing real-life crime stories in a thoughtful, meaningful way can be lumped in with the prurient rubber-neckers. I also always go back to what one detective told me when I asked him about working on GSK: "I love puzzles." He had no shame or regret when he said that. It's been helpful for me to think about it that way.

I’ve talked abt this in the true crime thread but there is also an element of naming your fear, esp given the prevalence of women interested in true crime

we (women) account for a large portion of the victims of these crimes. true crime for me is being afraid of the monster under the bed but leaning down with a flashlight & looking underneath anyway.
because i would rather know what i should be afraid of

for me a little bit is fear but i think it's mostly a part of a general interest in extreme human behavior. looking at stuff like this (as well as other extreme crimes, affiliation with radical groups/ideologies, other sorts of extreme psychological afflictions) brings up important questions for me about what normal people are capable of (and what is required to be capable of things beyond reasonable ken), how radical fringes of society reflect inner pathologies of that society, etc. i really like this show bc i think it's also v interested in these questions.

the Tickled documentary pairs well with this show

my wife fears true crime stuff to a degree, i think she finds home invasion stuff nightmarish, for example she doesn't even want to hear about BTK. She grew up in the San Fernando Valley during the time of the Night Stalker murders and it was a pretty formative experience. she had a ground floor bedroom window that she always kept shut, and it was a bit further out from the site of his killings but he was still stalking around, and she would have sleepless nights and get awakened by every little rustle outside her window.

i guess i didn't even mention when talking about formative crimes in my upbringing about how an acquaintance of my mom's was convicted and sentenced to die for the double murder of his parents. he claimed it was a motorcycle gang. and, well, he wasn't lying! they overturned his conviction years later. this gang stormed in and killed his parents and framed him. he was stoned on the couch and didn't remember a thing.

that's crazy

this is the case

i maybe misremembered the detail about him being there but i thought that was part of it.

do you mean that he didn't remember any details? because he remembered that a motorcycle gang murdered his parents.

Realizing it's a gay actor playing a straight FBI agent puts an interesting lens on the whole thing when you view the show as a whole. I don't think the character necessarily is masking something about his sexuality, but the two plot threads, where we're judging what signs could be indicative of someone having tendencies toward being a serial killer, while perpetually explaining what is within the bounds of normal sexual and social behavior (homosexuality, fetishes, crossdressing, transgender people) really sets up the groundwork for that sea change in social attitudes that backfired in a handful of ways.

The tickling principal plot thread goes overboard in the interest of adhering to shifting social norms -- he should have quit what he was doing because it was inappropriate, but I don't think it was worth him losing his job and being shamed by the community. There's a hint of the overzealousness that led to the satanic abuse panic of the 80s.

Meanwhile, Holden is perpetually teased about how he has a background of moving around, he doesn't have a very deep relationship history ("I've dated some women but none of the relationships lasted very long") and no one legitimately thinks he's a serial killer but he has these seeds of self-doubt. The most jarring moments, where he sees the shoes on his girlfriend and is completely wrenched from the moment, and the end when Kemper hugs him... just great moments poking holes in the self-confidence he's acting out.

And yeah, I think building a rapport with suspects is useful, but he's just crossing the line wherever he feels it's useful without any basic plan. We also have that juxtaposition with the agents he's training in hostage negotiation who genuinely wonder why they're supposed to learn these deescalation tactics when it'd be safer to just shoot people!

McHenry County State's Atty. Gary Pack, whose office convicted Gary Gauger in 1993, could not be reached for comment. Even after the federal indictment and Schneider's confession, Pack said he was keeping Gauger's case open and contemplating a retrial. During the trial, Pack claimed Gauger confessed to the crimes after 21 hours of questioning.

also holy shit at nomar's story

do you mean that he didn't remember any details? because he remembered that a motorcycle gang murdered his parents.

― you are juror number 144 and we will excuse you (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, October 20, 2017 9:52 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i can't find specifics right now, i thought for some reason he had claimed it at the time but maybe he just later claimed someone else did it and didn't know who. it was a really odd story -- ultimately a couple he was friends with helped defend him, and then the wife left her husband for him.

I went to school with and grew up with the Republic of Ireland's most prolific serial killer, and knew him from the age of 6 as "Nashy". He fled to Ireland in the 90's because he had pissed off the wrong people. He is also a suspect in an unsolved UK murder, as well as killing 4 people in Ireland. I didn't think of him once when I was watching this!

In fact, Google reveals Kieran Patrick Kelly was much worse than him. This Nashy being "Republic of Ireland's most prolific serial killer" is just a local misconception, probably.

you should give your name as "Mindhunter" at Starbucks, regardless

first couple of episodes down and this feels weirdly like masters of sex

both are ongoing narratives about people coming up with new fields of research with case studies, so that kind of follows!

I thought the tuna bit was clever - illustrated a woman's consciousness of being vulnerable (stealth pantless), whilst keeping Torv hard, cool and collected. Kinda like the bit at the end of Alien. The cat meowing was a great choice - cats are mimicking human babies when they do that, also was it someone mimicking a cat to get her attention, small window to dark outside, etc, etc.

the best thing in the show was the conversations with the serial killers and the analyses of the interviews afterwards.

Especially Speck, I thought, because a) it illustrated the unplanned killing type and b) sort of threw a number on the idea of the serial killer as almost a cool super-villain, running rings around everyone (Kemper). Like Speck is just as they say 'a walking middle finger' who seems to live in a haze of anger and violence and so ends up being barely aware of just how far he's gone.

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.

Loved this bit too

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.

Yeah when the long-haired guy starts breaking down

This show his half really good Zodiac stuff and half kinda lame Law & Order SVU stuff and I’m conflicted.

i dont understand where the conflict is :D

Only part I wasnt into, as someone else said, was the whole Holden/Debbie relationship subplot. It felt a little gratuitous, though I suppose there was meant to be the conflict of "what is deviancy, really?" thread of things.

yeah i agree

Also I'm p damn sure they did not have self-stay-up stockings in the 70s.

All these anachronistic music cues and other things weren't really bothering me, but a serial killer in the 70s saying "yada, yada, yada" is a step too far.

finished this yesterday, really enjoyed it - they did a fantastic job of finding great but mostly unfamilar actors for the supporting roles. the guy playing ed kemper was fantastic, such a potent combination of naiveté, manipulation and menace

great to see anna torv again after losing track of her after fringe - she's kind of a unique screen presence. shame she's probably not going to get a chance to use her astonishing leonard nimoy impersonation this time around tho :(

i've obviously been listening to too much last podcast on the left because i ended up saying to my wife 'oh hey i think that's btk' as soon as he showed up and then annoying her with facts about ed kemper as i remembered them during episodes

luv2kempersplain i guess