First Take: Netflix's Mindhunter

Mindhunter doesn't seem to be getting a lot of press.  Correspondingly, I haven't seen a lot of it--only an episode and a half--so I can't say for sure, but I kind of think it might be pretty great, in a disturbing, creepy, can't-turn-away-from-it kind of way.  The Netflix series chronicles the beginnings of psychological profiling in the FBI in the late 1970s, and it's as dark and gritty under the skin as a you would expect of a serial killer-laden show set in the glory days of oil shortages and polyester.  But despite its disconcerting and scratchy milieu, Mindhunter is laced with the same expectation and excitement characteristic of most humans on the verge of an intellectual breakthrough.  

America's fascination with serial killers and heinous crimes is somewhat unbecoming but maybe more reasonable than we would like to admit.  America loves heroes, and the stories of crimes solved come complete with ready-made heroes.  America loves rebels, and though we may despise the acts and attitude of the criminal, his role outside of not only polite society but the entire legal system has a certain romantic fascination.  And, of course, the very foundation of a democracy is the support and participation of its residents.  The notorious criminal thumbs his nose at this responsibility when he flouts a democracy's laws.  

The criminals in Mindhunter are fully, entirely, undoubtedly repulsive.  We haven't seen too many of them in the first 1.5 episodes, but the ones we have seen grotesque, even in the face of character exposition that humanizes them.  The heroes of the story, an up-and-coming FBI agent and his cynical mentor, have the idea balance of earnestness, world-weariness, and pragmatism to make them appealing enough to counterbalance their prey.  There's still plenty of time in this first season for Mindhunter to go entirely off the rails.  If it stays on this track, though, I look forward to letting these guys lead their audience through a disturbing minefield of the insane, violent, and deranged, knowing that these are exactly the kind of characters who will get a hero's welcome from Hollywood.