Trail of Evil -- by Mike N.

             I want to start with thanking Garbo for thinking of me when this spot -- at least initially for pieces on movies and tv, contemporary or vintage -- opened up late last week. 

            Beginnings have an unfortunate amount of pressure on them. I’m going to skip a lengthy self-introduction as I expect all the important elements to come out over time -- and I’ve possibly already dropped more than I should have in the contributor’s bio. Never having seriously aspired to be a professional writer I nonetheless enjoy making these attempts.

           I'll promise to keep in mind that matters of taste are just that, and will endeavor to keep it honest and substantiated. Should I find myself writing a piece that is going to be completely or even mostly negative, I will try to demonstrate the restraint to either drop it completely, or scrap most of it and relegate it to a quick mention on the way to something good. While the catharsis of savaging something that disappointed can be appealing, I've found, all the more with the mounting years, that I feel worse in the aftermath. Chances are someone enjoyed whatever it is, and we tend to take denunciatory criticism of such things as something personal. That's not an environment I want to be in, much less foster.
          There are too many things I do enjoy for me to be wasting time stomping at length on something I don't. Besides, some things I dismissed and even derided early on ended up becoming huge and lasting favorites. Leave room for growth, or at least change.
          It's a generally fantastic time for fans of movies and television, particularly for those of us who have Internet access. The range of entertainments, and the indulgence of niche tastes, is unprecedented. Similarly, the on-demand access to older movies and tv series allows those with the free time to reach decades into the past, to revisit old favorites, give lesser lights a second chance, and see things for the first time.
          Today's pick is a fairly random grab. but as it was a topic within the past month and I didn't want to blow my first deadline, it's what I went with. I am in no way claiming that this is the superlative choice that I had to debut with.
          While my late wife was a fan of true crime shows, I’ve seldom been drawn to them. It’s generally that the lure of the lurid doesn’t tend to increase for me when I’m told it’s based on true events. Horrible things happening to people only works well for me within the comfort of fiction. (This is likely part of the reason I eschew most tv news shows.) True Life horrible happenings generally blocks my taking it in as entertainment. It gets too close to sadistic voyeurism for me to be comfortable with.
            So it is that when there’s an exception to this personal rule, it stands out.
            August 16th saw the second season of Mindhunter drop on Netflix. (My apologies to those who don't have Netflix -- I'll try to spread my attention around in future pieces.)

             While the first season had appeared back in October of 2017, it was some months later when I gave into the odd whim and tried it out. It drew me in pretty quickly, despite being what many have described as a “slow burn” pace, and I went through it within a few days. The second season fell even more quickly – aided in small part by being only nine episodes compared with season one’s ten.
              Based on the book Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit by retired FBI Agent John E. Douglas, the show is an adaptation of the genesis of the FBI’s psychological profiling unit for studying serial predators and killers. A landmark set of decisions from an odd intersection of specialists who challenged what in hindsight was an inflexible, simplistic and parochial mindset at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in law enforcement in general, and western society. This is the group that developed terms and classifications such as “serial killer,” which have become so familiar.

               It’s important to keep in mind that this is an adaptation, not some historical recreation, so license has been taken with the personalities and events. As mentioned up top, I'm not a “true crime” aficionado, I haven’t delved much into the winnowing out of fact from fiction in the story. I must admit that after having spent two seasons stepping through it I’m closer than I’ve ever been to considering reading a little more about the actual people and events.
                The trio of leads for the series are Jonathan Groff as Holden Ford, Hoff McCallany as Bill Tench, and Anna Torv as Doctor Wendy Carr. Torv, who played Olivia Dunham in Fringe, was the only one familiar to me from previous work. Ford is the Mulderish, young Bureau maverick whose insights and perspectives haven’t always been welcomed by colleagues and superiors. Tench is an older agent, who is sturdier and more mainstream, but who appreciates Ford’s talents and intent and sees in it a vital development for the Bureau. Carr comes in from a purely academic background, seeing an opportunity to do more significant work than academia seemed to allow a woman to do. Among the other characters are several serial predators/killers, which the team interviews as they try to refine their tools and gather what they need to build useful models of the predatory mind. The easy stand-out among those interviewed is serial killer Ed Kemper, the "Co-Ed Killer", played with wonderfully modulated menace by Cameron Britton.

         The first season covers 1977-’80, while season two deals with events from ’80-’81, the latter season largely – but far from exclusively - focused on the Atlanta Child Murders.
        Throughout, the audience almost without exception follows the events with the main characters, so we’re never actual witness to the atrocities. We don’t follow the predators as they’re engaged in the act, instead dealing with the aftermath as the investigators are.
            As of this writing Netflix has yet to announce whether or not it is greenlighting a third season. We know – to the extent that such things can be known, as Netflix tends to keep their metrics close – that it has a following, and scored well with critics and the more vocal fans. We also know that the showrunners came into this project with a 5-season Bible, so we’re only two fifths through the planned outline. That’s not a contract, to be sure, but it demonstrates an actual plan, and that may be more important to Netflix than ever given that between November of this year and April of 2020 we’ll be seeing at least three potentially major additions to the selection of competing streaming services, as Apple TV+, Disney +, and NBC’s Peacock service all launch.
           Developing and holding onto unique content is a big part (along with price point) of drawing and holding subscribers, so Netflix may be even more likely to continue successful series as they lose other content to Hulu in particular.
           Getting back on topic of a possible season three: One plus and possible minus connection is that Mindhunter’s executive producer, David Fincher, is directing a long-delayed feature film for them, based on Citizen Kane director Herman Mankiewicz. It's being shot from a screenplay written by Fincher’s late father, Jack. So, on the plus side Fincher’s perhaps even more tightly connected to Netflix than ever, but on the other hand this film will be tying up much of his time in the near future, and it’s not clear how well and freely Mindhunter will roll into a third season if he can’t give it the same attention he did the first two seasons.
          I hope that if you enjoyed this enough to come back for future installments, you'll gradually get a feel for how our tastes and standards mesh and differ. That you can find them of some use, even if at the extreme of opposing tastes it just ends up with you knowing to do the opposite of what I recommend. I'm playing with the idea of - at least part of the time - presenting multiple, briefer recommendations instead of a detailed, single one. I'm not locked into a format.
                                                                                    Mike N.

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