by Nathaniel R
an FBI hostage negotiation class in "Mindhunter"'s first episode
One of the underdiscussed perks of this era of way too much to watch with thousands of cable channels, dozens of streaming services bankrolling their own content, and hundreds of movies a year is that it's easy to forget what your favorite directors are working on! Gone are the days, essentially, when you had to pine away waiting for so-and-so to return. Take the case of David Fincher. I've literally been a fan since he won "Best Direction" at the MTV Video Music Awards for Madonna's "Express Yourself" and I went to Alien³ on opening weekend so I was there at ground zero. Despite my love of all most things Fincher, it was easy to forget that he'd vanished since his excellent intensely rewatchable Gone Girl (2014) which we really should have had on our top ten list that year -- oops.
The director is back trying his hand at streaming series direction with the new serial killer drama "Mindhunter." At first I groaned when I heard the news because Fincher has made more than his share of serial killer dramas. But then I heard dreamy Jonathan Gr♥︎ff and Fincher-regular Holt McCallany were the leads and remembered that Fincher does serial killer dramas better than anyone (see Se7en and Zodiac) and I succumbed...
So let's talk about the first three episodes.
Holden (Jonathan Groff) is really into "Dog Day Afternoon"
1.1 FBI agent Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) is disillusioned with his career as a hostage negotiation instructor. Things begin to look up with a new girlfriend (Hannah Gross) and a new ally in veteran agent Bill Trench (Holt McCallany) who travels around the country teaching local police forces about a more unusual kind of criminal.
Stuffy. Uptight. Dull. That's how one might describe Agent Holden Ford, the lead of Mindhunter, at first glance. It's not an accurate read but an understandable one. He's always in a tight suit. He's so stralght-laced in appearance and demeanor that he's pegged as a Mormon (he's not). He seems slightly incongruous in a bar he hits to unwind after a frustrating series of events at work that finds him demoted (as he sees it) to dull teaching work as opposed to being out in the field. He's so tense it feels like a kind of miracle when he ends up taking a 'hippie' named Debbie home (Hannah Gross) who seems to find his stuffiness amusing.
The first episode of Mindhunter is much the same. The series is an unmistakable slow burn but that's only if you get past the first impression which is that it's just slow -- uncomfortable even. One early wide shot of Holden alone in his apartment is so still and somber it suggests menace or anti-social behavior or loneliness (none of which truly apply to Holden, making the shot feel auteurial for its own sake. The series feels tense before it even finds its lack of urgency. But that's around the corner.
MVP: Jonathan Groff, who manages to be really funny without being FUNNY, merely by playing Holden's earnest ambitions and all-work focus so straight. His "good, good" when a student faux shoots himself in a mock hostage negotiation role-play just killed me.
FBI Boss: [Indicating Holden] Can you make him shut up?
Agent Trench: I have not been able to do that sir.
1.2 Against Trench's wishes, Holden interviews the Coed killer Ed Kemper (Cameron Britton) and become convinces that researching the minds of "sequence killers" is the way forward for the FBI. His boss doesn't think so and Holden and Trench are given strict reins (and basement offices) as punishment.
In episode 2 things pick up considerably. Once Holden and Trench are out in the open air away from their offices the series is able to breathe. The chemistry between the leading actors is immediately palpable. They're a standard buddy movie odd couple in some ways but they also like each other immediately, cutting out the forced arcs that often come with that territory. The internal drama is not "will they learn to work together?" but how will working together subtly change them? Now that's something to build an ongoing series around.
Though the show plays slow (the scenes are blissfully lengthy, never rushed) the dynamics between characters and the plot actually does move quickly.
Trench resists Holden's obsessive belief that meeting violent sociopaths will help them understand the most dangerous and abnormal criminal minds but within the space of this one episode he's changed his mind.
MVP: Cameron Britton as Ed Kemper. He's appallingly banal in his evil and even subversively gentle (note the patting of Holden's arm after an anatomy discussion about slicing someone's throat). He's always trying to make Holden comfortable but leaves us, the audience, wholly discomfitted.
1.3 Holden & Trench's new theories about the criminal mind result in their first arrest of a budding killer after his first two attacks. They meet Dr Wendy Carr (Anna Torv) who encourages them to take their research further.
Each episode is better than the last! The chemistry between McCallany and Groff really pays off in this episode, especially in the way you begin to see Trench's aggravation and protectiveness in the face of Groff's perpetual difficulty in connecting with layman police officers while discussing crimes. He's always making it too academic and abstract leaving local officials perplexed or angry and leaving Trench to put things in layman's terms for them. One lengthy scene, with a budding killer who they arrest quickly using things they learned from Ed Kemper, plays like too easy a win in the context of the show's careful mood building and methodical precision. You suspect further crimes won't be solved so easily.
Bonus points for a subtly funny scene wherein Holden has a secretar remove sex words like "cunninglingus" and "cocksucker" from the FBI's Deviant Terminology list. It's especially amusing when juxtaposed with the series ongoing curious interest in Holden's rather sweaty sex life with Debbie... who Hannah Gross keeps appealingly opaque despite how clearly she telegraphs Debbie's specific fondness for Holden.
MVP: Jonathan Groff & Holt McCallany's chemistry
If you're watching the show, what did you think of the first three episodes? (no spoilers for the rest of the series please)