Understanding Serial Killers: A Review of Netflix’s Captivating Show “Mindhunter”
After finishing the debut season of Mindhunter in three days, I desperately Googled next season’s premier date and was heartbroken to know I’d have to wait a year. In the Netflix show, set in the late 1970s, FBI Agents Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) dive headfirst into the relatively new field of criminal psychology and conduct a series of interviews with serial killers who are notorious for their atrocious crimes. But their psychologically taxing work begins to take a toll on their relationships with everyone around them, and with themselves, as the serial killers start to seem less and less like monsters, and more and more like human beings.
In the show, each and every individual character was riveting and mysterious, especially as their storylines intertwined in unexpected ways. Jonathan Groff breaks away from his usual, Tony-nominated theatrical acting to play the naive FBI agent, Holden Ford, who spearheads the investigative project. Opposite Groff, Holt McCallany plays Bill Tench, Holden’s experienced, cynical partner who struggles to balance his broken family and his work. Hannah Gross portrays Holden’s girlfriend, Debbie, a bold postgraduate student at UVA. Anna Torv’s character, Wendy Carr, is a brilliant and cold psychologist who directs the serial killer research project while also trying to grapple with her gay identity. But most jarring are the performances by Cameron Britton and Happy Anderson, who play infamous serial killers Ed Kemper and Jerry Brudos, respectively. Both Britton and Anderson perfectly portray the serial killer’s eerily charming personalities while also clearly displaying their insanity and mental instability. The cast makes you forget that you’re watching a show that’s based on actual events, instead convincing you that you’re watching the real Holden Ford’s life unravel. Altogether, the cast exudes an alluring, spine-chilling chemistry, as the characters dance around each other through layers of secrets and schemes.
Using its character ensemble, Mindhunter smoothly weaves together multiple storylines. In the beginning of every episode, an unidentified man is shown doing suspicious things completely separate (or maybe not?) from the rest of the show. Additionally, Agents Ford and Tench solve a new crime in each episode. To make the crime-solving aspect of the show more emotionally poignant, Mindhunter draws parallels between the stories of the serial killers with that of the rest of the characters’ ongoing lives. The character development of Agent Tench (McCallany) and Dr. Carr (Torv) is also one of the show’s strengths; their difficult lives outside of their FBI work are slowly revealed throughout the season, adding layers to their seemingly cold facade.
Moreover, the show tackles issues of growing up in abusive homes and how everyone’s relationship with their parents enormously affects the kind of person they come to be. In addition, Dr. Carr (Torv) and Debbie (Gross) provide two strong female characters who are neither docile nor complacent, but rather daring, intelligent, and who are never content to live in the shadow of the men of the show.
On the other hand, Mindhunter falls short in its racial inclusivity. Every single character in the show is white. The show seems to demonstrates self-awareness regarding this issue when a character mentions that they should hire the black applicant in the pool of prospective new employees solely so their team wouldn’t be completely white, but they end up hiring a new white guy anyway. Additionally, Holden’s character development felt forced and inconsistent. In the last two episodes of the season, Holden seems to become a completely different person; he is arrogant and unkind which, maybe because of Groff’s naturally soft spoken persona, felt sudden and uncomfortable.
In sum, Mindhunter captivates you with its dynamic characters, all of which, even the serial killers, are surprisingly relatable, and its unanticipated emphasis on understanding the humanity in crime.
