Mindhunter Season 1 (2017)

TV Series Info :

In the late 1970s two FBI agents expand criminal science by delving into the psychology of murder and getting uneasily close to all-too-real monsters.

Critics Rating and Audience Score :

Tomatometer

96%

Flixter Score

96%

IMDB

8.9

My Review :

This is a series that is worthy of David Fincher's name. The series is thrilling, suspenseful, intense, humorous, and really, really entertaining. This series reflects everything I love about David Fincher. A good-looking, unappreciated and talented male who gets absorbed by an idea that entirely changes his life. Yes, I think this series feels really like Social Network. Jonathan Groff even really looks like Jesse Eisenberg with that urgent little-animal stare and the steep angle of his chin. I really love this type of rotagonist, so I binge-watched all ten episodes. It turned out to be worthy of my time.
I hate it when artists hand-feed me what to feel and what to think. I cannot stand the media-makers that think of their viewers condescendingly. It reflects very clearly in their works and it makes me uncomfortable. This series especially shoulders the risk of such unpleasantness because it is a frequently abused genre, FBI and serial killers, so used that people don't expect good stuff out of it anymore. But the series explore it from a intimate, academic point of view.Instead of regarding the criminals as a piñata to tackle, this series is audacious enough to allow the audience to generate empathy for them.It made me sick to the stomach at the first place, but this sickness offset my weariness of all the routines of this genre that the series is forced to use, and kept me intrigued.

The series is a masterpiece in that it doesn't throw out one of its most brilliant baits of the first season until the 7th episode, where Holden became to look enchanted, morally corrupted by the serial killers that he was so obsessed with, which eventually threatened to be a part of him. So the audience began worried that Holden might be synchronized into a sociopath. But by watching the series, I realize that as soon as the audience's fear is confirmed by not-so-subtle cues, they start to lose interest and the bait would't work anymore. So our fear and greasy, oily sick feeling was not justified until he was hugged by Ed Kemper in the last five minutes of the season.

I am not sure how to respond to their hiring Gregg instead of the more qualified black applicant. That was blatant racism, and Professor Carr's logic to justify it made it even more uncomfortable. The fact that Gregg actually started to fit in upsets me even more. The kinky girlfriend was stiff but fun at first, but then she started to feel overbearing and inconsiderate, which is also a mechanism often used to justify the anti-feministic side. It would reinforce the idea that it is impossible to balance feminism with social roles in reality. The criminology professor, who looked like a mid-eastern Islamic person, flinched from FBI, is even less savory. But at least they casted Jonathan Groff, who came out of closet bravely, as the protagonist.That one is a bonus.

I understand that this series is try to be documentary, but takes advantage of the historical blurriness of its subject to be also sensationalistic. Not many people would feel that the team who coined the term "serial killer" must be a good story even if they study it for school. The more I savor this whole season, the more I feel the preciousness of talents that are demonstrated in this series, and feel lucky to be born in this era. Probably because I really enjoy the lonely genius routine. Can't wait to watch the next season.