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MINDHUNTER |OT| Netflix Original Series - Oct 13

Squire

Banned
Penhall is almost certainly gone, but everyone has good things to say about him. The real reason behind the departure might be logistical as much as creative though.

https://writerlyblogblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/joe-penhall-the-interview-part-2/

Ah, this makes sense, thanks.

The Empire interview makes it clear Fincher is the sgoerunner for now and definitely very hands on, so I imagine his immediate plan is solid. Doesn't sound like he's rushing WWZ2 at all either, so that's good.
 
Is it just me, or Music (even though it's of the era) feels too forced and out of place on this show... They usually tend to throw it at end of Ep, right before the credits (cut to blacK)

But, upbeat rock songs of the 70's somehow don't really compliment the tone and theme of the show.... I donno, it's not working for me.

I'd imagine more subdues, slow, mysterious music would be nice: Even if it's contemporary and electronic, I am more thinking Social Network type music, Atticus Ross, Reznor type o' ship!
 

J_Viper

Member
Wtf did Fincher forget how to direct actors or something?

This main FBI guy is terrible. Like, Stephen Amell terrible
 

duckroll

Member
I get how the Principal story line was meant to show Holden crossing another line and becoming more entitled/arrogant/Mark Zuckerberg-esque I just didn't like the way the show handled it.
If it would have ended with the transcriber asking Holden if this was really an FBI issue or Holden getting the call from the school board it would be fine. The two scenes that followed ( Principals wife somehow finding Holden's apartment and Holden seeing the Principal drinking at the super market) were just really heavy handed. It felt like the writers/show runners were just giving us text at those point.

I don't feel that's what it was specifically trying to show.
It was more about Holden on the whole. How he carries himself, how he sees his work, and what he decides to act on. The follow-up scenes don't make me feel sorry for the principal. They make me reflect on how Holden invites this unnecessary drama and tension into his life. His lack of professionalism in pursuit of what he sees as the greater good blurs the line between his work and personal life.

The wife found him and made his personal life awkward. She invaded his home space. But that didn't need to happen because he didn't need to be involved in this. His decision to be involved led him to this. When he sees the guy at the supermarket, does he feel guilt? Is he reconsidering if he did the right thing? Maybe, maybe not, but there's a pause there where he has to be confronted with this being a direct consequence of his actions. What does this mean for Holden? Again this means that if he didn't get involved, seeing this would not have any impact on him. That he even stops to think about this is because he decided to get involved with something he didn't need to..

All of this is ties into his decision to eventually visit Kemper at the end leads to his realization of how fucked up his priorities are and causes his breakdown. Holden cannot separate his work from his personal life, his work is his personal life, and his perception of his work is obsessive and warped.

Did the tuna-cat thing mean anything?

She starts feeding the cat out of pity/goodwill, and she thinks she is asserting control. It becomes a routine she is comfortable with even though there is no sign that the cat ever recognizes her as part of the contribution. One day the cat is no longer there and she realizes that the cat exists outside of her control and while it ate what she initially offered, it's not always going to be there just because she's feeding it. I saw it as a metaphor for her work environment. She thought she was in control after taking the job. She was comfortable and getting more confident. Then she realizes one day that Holden just didn't give a fuck. Lol.
 

Angry Fork

Member
I love Fincher, I love well developed TV shows, but found the first episode to be so boring with no reason to continue. I don't care at all about any of the characters, nobody is likable or interesting. The acting and dialogue is very weird/awkward too. Does it get better? Does any actual serial killing detective work happen?
 

Arkeband

Banned
I love Fincher, I love well developed TV shows, but found the first episode to be so boring with no reason to continue. I don't care at all about any of the characters, nobody is likable or interesting. The acting and dialogue is very weird/awkward too. Does it get better? Does any actual serial killing detective work happen?

The whole series kind of has a veneer of that stage play, Gilmore-girlsy line delivery where most lines are delivered fairly steadily without a lot of downtime in between, which would be more “realistic”. But ultimately it’s about the writing rather than the acting.

That being said, the first episode is the most extreme case of that, and there are a lot of super tense scenes and performances you should not miss that occur from episode 2 onward.

I’m only about halfway through the series, but my initial impressions were that this series is about sociopaths, and the acting may be deliberately “uncanny” to unsettle the viewer or suggest that the best sociopath hunters may themselves be sociopaths.
 

- J - D -

Member
I'm on ep 4 now and I gotta say I'm real happy to see Anna Torv in something high profile (or high-ish profile for Netflix standards I guess) again after Fringe.

I really like Bill, and Holden is growing on me.
 
Wtf did Fincher forget how to direct actors or something?

This main FBI guy is terrible. Like, Stephen Amell terrible

Nah because ed kemper and also the guys partner are great. But yeah the lead and his girlfriend are terrible

I've gotten used to Holden now. He's basically a naive dork. But his girlfriend absolutely sucks. Recast her or drop the character next season.
 

UrbanRats

Member
Nah because ed kemper and also the guys partner are great. But yeah the lead and his girlfriend are terrible

I've gotten used to Holden now. He's basically a naive dork. But his girlfriend absolutely sucks. Recast her or drop the character next season.

I'm still on ep 6, but i assume Holden is supposed to be a low key sociopath? That would explain how fucking creepy he comes off.
 
I'm still on ep 6, but i assume Holden is supposed to be a low key sociopath? That would explain how fucking creepy he comes off.

I assume he puts on a mask of being a sociopath for the job but sometimes becomes a bit too comfortable in that skin that he forgets to take it off.
 

Squire

Banned
I'm still on ep 6, but i assume Holden is supposed to be a low key sociopath? That would explain how fucking creepy he comes off.

I assume he puts on a mask of being a sociopath for the job but sometimes becomes a bit too comfortable in that skin that he forgets to take it off.

Sociopathy doesn't necessitate psychopathy. Pretty sure Wendy points that out at one point.

It's a given Holden won't ever kill anyone since Douglas didn't, but his "knack" for the job is probably going to really impact how he connects with people (or doesn't).
 
I'm still on ep 6, but i assume Holden is supposed to be a low key sociopath? That would explain how fucking creepy he comes off.

he reminds me of Dennis from Always Sunny whenever he used to go off on his psychotic tangents lmao

I'm about as far as you in the show right now. I'm assuming he's either gonna turn to murder at some point (but I don't want this show to turn into that) or perhaps all this research will worsen his social skills even moreso than they are now. you can already see the toll it takes on the both of them as they have to go decompress and get some beers after interviewing Ed
 

Harmen

Member
I don't know, as someone who has experienced plenty of the academic world and has many friends in it, I don't find the conversations in this series that weird? Some people really dive into the deep in regards to psychology/philosophy because for them that might be normal. Even when you don't know them very well and have an attempt at "small talk". Obviously Holden is a weird dude, but I know plenty of weird dudes in real life.

What is up with
Bill's son
though? Creeped me out.
The babysitter
was smart to get the hell outta Dodge.

I assume it is a (significant) form of autism in combination with the lack of
Bill's presence/parenting

(I base this on how
the kid was stacking the blocks and his total lack of social communication
)
 

jett

D-Member
I love Fincher, I love well developed TV shows, but found the first episode to be so boring with no reason to continue. I don't care at all about any of the characters, nobody is likable or interesting. The acting and dialogue is very weird/awkward too. Does it get better? Does any actual serial killing detective work happen?

It gets a lot better as it goes along.
 
What is up with
Bill's son
though? Creeped me out.
The babysitter
was smart to get the hell outta Dodge.

That's an interesting thread - there's a clear worry there from
Bill
about what happened to him before
he was adopted by Bill and Nancy
and the question for the audience is perhaps whether
Bill
is seeing
real parallels with his interviews with "sequence killers" and seeing how they were damaged early in life
or whether
the boy is perhaps autistic or suffering from another developmental issue and Bill needs to come to grips with his own relationship with his father and open up to his son and do more than he has been so far (his "effort" with his son has been fairly minimal, but there's a suggestion with his opening up to Nancy after the babysitter quits and the way he's pulling back from interviews that he will be doing more in the future).

he reminds me of Dennis from Always Sunny whenever he used to go off on his psychotic tangents lmao

I'm about as far as you in the show right now. I'm assuming he's either gonna turn to murder himself at some point (but I don't want this show to turn into that) or perhaps all this research will worsen his social skills even moreso than they are now. you can already see the toll it takes on the both of them as they have to go decompress and get some beers after interviewing Ed

I don't think that's where we're going - "killer/could-be-killer hunting killers" is a little too cliché for this kind of series (Thomas Harris/Harris adaptations have been ploughing that furrow for a good long while now) and I suspect the
end of series breakdown
has the potential to reshape Holden - not quite a Damascene conversion, but perhaps a realisation of quite how out of his depth he was, and how close to the people he wants to hunt he was becoming. I think that
hug from Kemper
is hugely significant - when he moved in front of the door and pointed out quite how dangerous a situation Holden was in (the physicality and performance of Cameron Britton when he moves is astonishing) the Holden (and the audiences) clearly believe that he could kill him, and the mention of his
spirit wives
makes it clear Holden doesn't have the complete understanding he blithely tries to demonstrate a few minutes before. Following that up with
that hug
just shatters Holden - it's a realisation that he doesn't have the control he thinks, that he is being manipulated instead of manipulating, but perhaps most horrifying: someone like Kemper may actually consider him a friend with some justification.

There will still be consequences for Holden's actions in S2 and onwards, and I've no doubt the team will still struggle with dealing with people like Kemper, Speck et al, but I don't think we'll have a Hannibal-style throughline going forward.
 

Stare-Bear

Banned
It's starting to grow on me, but it's very clear that Jonathan Groff is a horrible actor. He's the same as his character from Looking...in which he played a neurotic, insecure gay guy...
 
To add to the above - I think it's clear Holden's encounter with
Kemper at the end of the series
is heavily influenced by/referring to Robert Ressler's own real-life encounter with him:

On one occasion, when Douglas' colleague Robert Ressler was in a cell alone with Kemper, Kemper—who at the time weighed 300 pounds (136 kg)—noticed the apprehension in Ressler after he had pressed a hidden button repeatedly to call a guard to open the cell yet not received a response and told him "Relax. They're changing the shift," but remarked: "If I went apeshit in here, you'd be in a lot of trouble, wouldn't you? I could screw your head off and place it on the table to greet the guard." Ressler verbally sparred with Kemper until the guard arrived, ultimately leaving unharmed with Kemper displaying no physical aggression. Kemper also stated afterwards that he was joking, but Ressler never entered a cell alone again with Kemper and it became FBI policy to interview serial killers in pairs
 

Zakalwe

Banned
Surprised to see the negative opinions of Groff's performance, his awkwardness and delivery came across as fully intended to me. He obviously shares character traits with those he's studying.
 
I’ve said this before in this thread, but since people are talking about Holden I’m going to say it again.

I thought Groff’s performance felt very off in the beginning as well. I couldn’t tell if it was bad acting or what. But the longer I watched the more I realized that, even if the acting isn’t great, it was deliberate and purposeful. And once I realized that I’m not really supposed to like Holden, that he’s not the hero of the story, the earlier acting and character decisions made a lot more sense.

I think his girlfriend was fine though. She’s a weirdo, but she’s supposed to be.
 

Montresor

Member
I absolutely loved this show. Netflix has this wonderful knack for finding so many diamonds in the rough (like this, GLOW, and Ozark for new shows recently).

My favourite moments of season one:

1)
The ending of the episode when the three-man team (Tench, Ford, and Dr. Carr) find out that they are getting $385,000 in funding to continue their research. The shock in their faces as their boss is explaining the situation was pretty amusing. And then right in the episode's finale, when they are all standing in the elevator, I love seeing all three of their reactions. Dr. Carr slowly (ever so slowly) starts to crack a smile lol, and then the credits roll

2)
When the research team's boss reveals that someone has leaked the Richard Speck tape to the Office of Professional Responsibility. What I adored about this scene is this very brief three/four-second moment when Dr. Carr is sizing up each of her companions to get a feel for the source of the leak. She briefly looks at the newbie (I forget his name - he's the person that actually leaked the tape), and the newbie immediately looks down and away from Dr. Carr. Then she looks at Holden Ford - they maintain eye contact. She looks at Bill Tench - they maintain eye contact. The people that did nothing wrong hold their ground and maintain eye contact but the newbie is the only one that couldn't maintain eye contact with Dr. Carr. It's a very short moment in the show but that brief moment said a lot about all four characters
.

3)
The interviews - loved them. I would rate the interviews as follows: a) Best, most compelling, and gripping interview was Devier's interrogation (the person that raped and murdered the 12-year-old majorette), b) All interviews with Ed Kemper, and c) All interviews with Brudos (the murderer/kidnapper that had the shoe fetish).
 

JB1981

Member
Really don't get all the complaints about the first episode. I thought the subject matter was pretty fascinating and it pulled me into the show. Also what's with people judging a 10 episode series based on 50 min? It's just weird
 

IronRinn

Member
Really don't get all the complaints about the first episode. I thought the subject matter was pretty fascinating and it pulled me into the show. Also what's with people judging a 10 episode series based on 50 min? It's just weird
I'm on episode 8 and I felt the same about the first episode. Had read so many reviews saying it was slow and I was hooked right from the get-go. Seemed like it flew by. I'm gonna be bummed out when these last three episodes are done. Show is fantastic.
 

Futurematic

Member
I automatically thought why the cast was so white at the beginning but Torv's character actually explained why pretty well in e8.

Hoover didn’t hire black people because he was racist and didn’t even want to touch them (FBI director has to shake everybody’s hand upon graduation).
 

sinkfla87

Member
Fiancee and I finished the series (this season) finally. I thought there were more episodes so I was bummed about it being over already :(.
In regards to Holden's actor, I was cringing at his delivery of lines in the first episode but I feel like he got a lot better as the show went on. Hell, I actually don't think he's a bad actor at all by the seasons end. The guy playing Kemper did a great job as well, even if his impersonation of the actual Kemper could be open to criticism (The real Edmund has a slightly quicker cadence to his delivery). So uh... How soon can we expect season 2? LOL. :(
 

shira

Member
She starts feeding the cat out of pity/goodwill, and she thinks she is asserting control. It becomes a routine she is comfortable with even though there is no sign that the cat ever recognizes her as part of the contribution. One day the cat is no longer there and she realizes that the cat exists outside of her control and while it ate what she initially offered, it's not always going to be there just because she's feeding it. I saw it as a metaphor for her work environment. She thought she was in control after taking the job. She was comfortable and getting more confident. Then she realizes one day that Holden just didn't give a fuck. Lol.

What is up with
Bill's son
though? Creeped me out.
The babysitter
was smart to get the hell outta Dodge.

Imma have to rewatch this
 

paskowitz

Member
Great series... up until the last 3 episodes. Last episode was a garbage conclusion IMO. Absolutely no sense of culmination or closure. Middle of the series was terrific though. Interviews scenes obviously being the highlight. The actors that played the criminals really deserve high praise. I was squirming from time to time. Not many shows can do that without scare tactics.
 
The rational side of me assumed this, while the irrational side is all like
OMGSERIALKILLER!!

...which is all part of the tension for Tench, I think. It's a really neat little detail that ties up with Tench's own stated relationship with his father to make for a complex family situation.
 

bob_arctor

Tough_Smooth
...which is all part of the tension for Tench, I think. It's a really neat little detail that ties up with Tench's own stated relationship with his father to make for a complex family situation.

Yup. Plus
the pic the son has stashed under his bed shows a male victim.
 
Surprised to see the negative opinions of Groff's performance, his awkwardness and delivery came across as fully intended to me. He obviously shares character traits with those he's studying.

That’s my feeling too. You’re supposed to know there’s something off about him - yet he’s the only one who is able to connect with the killers so effortlessly compared to the others. As you progress, you start to see the same traits in him that the killers exhibit: the narcissism, the lack of empathy (even though he is able to fake it in public).

Just finished the season. Fantastic show.
 
Yup. Plus
the pic the son has stashed under his bed shows a male victim.

Ah! Missed that little detail...

The more I think about it, the more Tench is the character in this for me. Every time I thought he was about to fall into a more clichéd "blunt cop" paired with the more sensitive, apparently more intelligent Holden, the writers turned his character slightly, revealing another facet or making it clear he was intellectually entirely capable of keeping up with Carr or Holden, even if he didn't always agree with them. It would have been so easy to have a simple tension between Holden and Tench, with Tench playing the hidebound, traditional FBI agent objecting to progress, but the writers aimed higher with a more complicated character who clearly embraces the potential of their work.

Same goes for his home life - it would have been easy to keep Nancy floating in the background as a shrewish presence, or for their marital difficulties to be more exaggerated and simple, but she was painted as an entirely sympathetic character who had just as much justification as Bill for her behaviour and attitudes, and the slow drip of whispered phone calls building to sniping at the dinner table before their confrontation over the babysitter and the tentative reconciliation really worked for me.

Also made for a fascinating contrast to the Holden/Debbie relationship, which initially felt healthier with their open discussion of Holden's work and Debbie's involvement in that, but slowly soured over the series.
 

Timeaisis

Member
I loved Holden's arc.
Going from eager self-starter and soft-hearted sensitive boyfriend to total narcissistic dick (at work and at home) and then fucking himself and collapsing into a heap at the end. It's a good contrast to how other characters may have appeared to be antagonistic to his methods, but by the end you see that they were just even-keeled and responsible compared to Holden.

I think
he was always a narcissist, and his brush with success in career and love really let that aspect of his personality out.
Really interesting.

That's my feeling too. You're supposed to know there's something off about him - yet he's the only one who is able to connect with the killers so effortlessly compared to the others. As you progress, you start to see the same traits in him that the killers exhibit: the narcissism, the lack of empathy (even though he is able to fake it in public).

Just finished the season. Fantastic show.


As for Groff's performance of Holden, the more I think about it the more I think he nailed it. He seems detached from reality, because he is detached from reality. He lives in his own idealistic world where he is right always, logic reigns over all, and emotion is a weakness. You can see that stuff come out near the end of the season, until it
hits him square in the face at the end of the season.
I said it in an earlier post, but he plays his character like Spock. You can even notice it in the delivery.
 

Jarmel

Banned
Oh, and Holden just always made me think of Dennis from Always Sunny, some scenes were comical because of it.

Oh god, I can't unthink that now.
She starts feeding the cat out of pity/goodwill, and she thinks she is asserting control. It becomes a routine she is comfortable with even though there is no sign that the cat ever recognizes her as part of the contribution. One day the cat is no longer there and she realizes that the cat exists outside of her control and while it ate what she initially offered, it's not always going to be there just because she's feeding it. I saw it as a metaphor for her work environment. She thought she was in control after taking the job. She was comfortable and getting more confident. Then she realizes one day that Holden just didn't give a fuck. Lol.
I simply felt that she was all along and the cat offered her a semblance of companionship. She just moved to a place where she has no friends.
 
This was fantastic.

The last scene really impacted me.
I realized that I had slowly been sucked into Kemper's strange charisma -- partly because he's so fascinating to listen to, partly because you never actually see the monstrous things he did to those women, and partly because he appears so friendly with Holden. When you see him lying on that hospital bed, he almost looks vulnerable.

But when he jumped to his feet with a loud "thud" and began talking about his spirit wives while slowly cornering Holden, I realized in a single instant how disarmed I'd let myself become, and how dangerous and horrifying this man truly was -- in other words, exactly how Holden felt. I can't remember the last time I felt so aligned with a character in their fear. Kemper hugging Holden and Holden breaking free and running and collapsing was a perfect culmination of events and of Holden's character arc. I loved it.
 

JOKERACN7

Member

awcarew

Member
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