Streaming Pick – Mindhunter Season 2
August 21, 2019Your weekly streaming pick has arrived! Mindhunter Season 2 is the follow up to one of Netflix’s best original series. The first season debuted in 2017.
Mindhunter is the dramatized versions of real world events surrounding the beginnings of criminal profiling. Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) are FBI agents. Their small pet project on profiling and interviewing serial killers (a term they coined) along with Dr. Wendy Carr (Anna Torv) gets some traction and real funding in the second season. Their new director gives them all the room they need to operate efficiently until a child murder spree in Atlanta draws their attention away from forging new ground.
Picking up right where season one left off took a bit of catching up. Two years between seasons of a TV show is a long time, especially in today’s world of more amazing entertainment than anyone could hope to watch. Netflix provides a nice recap, but the first season is absolutely worth rewatching.
The second season of the show has a different feel to it. All the hallmarks and quality are present and accounted for as the writer’s take the show, and characters, in a new direction. While season one focused almost entirely on the interviews and processes on how the scariest minds available operate the second season gets deep into an investigation. Our characters are put in the field to see how their profiling works.
Season 2 is a Netflix Original Series
Putting the ideas into practice provides varying challenges for the characters. It demonstrates both strengths and weaknesses for all. This gives some great opportunity for character growth and development without slowing down the plot or taking the focus off the crimes that make the show so interesting.
Along with developing the characters through their work the writing goes much deeper into their personal lives. Namely Tench and Carr. McCallany has a lot of heavy lifting to do this season running what feels (intentionally) like double duty on the professional and personal fronts. The beginning of the season lets us believe Torv is going to step into an even larger role with the profiling. She gets to step onto the front lines but doing so has her character questioning everything. It’s an interesting arc when the series starts exploring a woman whos job it is to see how the mind works, living a life of fear and hiding some of who she truly is.
All the similarities and dualities in the characters come to light as Groff’s Ford’s own character is shrouded in a rigid inability to cope beyond the clinical scope of his findings. It’s really fascinating character piece, even when they aren’t interviewing some of our countries most infamous killers.
Watching a series like Mindhunter is always a strange feeling. There’s an excitement around more content in a series you love. The quality is all there. The acting is outstanding and the settings are completely believable. But all that excitement, all that quality, all the anticipation is based around serial killers, sex offenders, and heinous acts.