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Not to give too much credit to a serial rapist and murderer with a mountain of shoes in his garage, but Jerry Brudos (Happy Anderson) hits on something very telling early on in Mindhunter Episode 7. “It’s tricky when you’re married,” he says. “You either have to deny yourself or keep a private space.”
Now, Brudos is referring to the space he set aside for his cross-dressing habit (acceptable) and eventually several murders (*very* not acceptable). But it’s also another addition to a long list of interview snippets from serial killers and psychopaths that also just happen to underscore the personal lives of Holden Ford and Bill Tetch. It’s interesting that Mindhunter is a Netflix series at all, designed and marketed to be consumed quickly, because the entire point of the show is how intense exposure to life’s more gruesome topics can quite literally drive you insane. Episode 7 is primarily interested in this, the ways in which Bill and Holden’s commitment to this study—their marriage to it, if you will—is, to borrow a scientific term, severely fucking their shit up.
Bill opts for the “keeping a private space” route. His wife Nancy is unaware of the horrors he brings with him into his private office, the pictures of gruesome crime scenes and mutilated bodies he pours over just feet from his own bedroom. This illusion is shattered when Bill’s son Brian—who is biting other students at school, among other things—breaks the seal of his father’s private space and comes across a photo of a corpse. Mindhunter, if you haven’t noticed, has had some disturbing scenes, but none quite so quietly heartbreaking as Bill and Nancy’s babysitter handing the photo back over and tearfully quitting. Hearing about beheadings and torture in the confines of a prison room almost numbs the experience after a while; here, we get to see what happens someone completely outside that sphere, an innocent teenage girl, is exposed to that world. The results are worth ten soft-spoken Ed Kemper stories in terms of making your stomach drop.
Holt McCallany has been great over seven episodes playing a mixture of military intensity and understandable exasperation toward his partner. But this is something much more personal; he’s throwing crime scene photos onto his desk in front of his wife and we’re watching his resolve crumble like a long-standing statue finally showing rust. He should have told her sooner, maybe. But telling her now is both a personal breaking point and the first step to healing the marriage as a whole.
And then there’s Holden, the literal textbook definition of the “denying yourself” route. Where Bill is an emotional statue, I’m relatively sure Holden is an actual statue granted movement by a witch’s curse. Graphic descriptions of torture and rape wash over him like rainwater. He enthusiastically transcribes interviews with serial killers like a star pupil going over class notes. Noted murderer Jerry Brudos describes to Holden a childhood in which his mother burned a pile of stilettos to punish him, then promptly masturbates into a shoe ten feet away. “That was amazing!,” Holden exclaims afterward because he is the human equivalent of that cartoon dog sitting in a burning house saying, “this is fine.”
Or, as Bill puts it: “He’s fucking immune.”
But episode 7 isn’t as concerned with the shields we put up so much as the ways they finally fall down. For Holden, all that bottling up doesn’t quite explode, it more leaks out (I’m sorry) during a quiet, sex-charged moment. Debbie dons lingerie and heels for Holden on a romantic, celebratory night; heels that, of course, look incredibly similar to the pair Holden watched Brudos go to town on just a few days earlier. Again, this is the depraved side of humanity bleeding into everyday reality. “This? It’s just not you,” Holden tells Debbie, stopping her, once again trying to immediately analyze down any emotion that might be uncomfortable.
Dr. Wendy Carr is stuck somewhere in the middle. Hiding her sexuality is the exact kind of self-denial her ex-girlfriend in Boston warned of, but relocating hundreds of miles from her home also removed the notion of a personal space to call her own. This episode doesn’t give much time to Wendy, but Anna Torv does beautiful work when it does. Wendy starts to grow attached to a cat whose meowing she hears but we never do see. Which is perfect, in its way; watching a person find comfort in a little warmth might be this show’s first real illustration of the unexplainable “thing” that separates us from the Kempers and Brudos of the world.
Vinnie Mancuso writes about TV for a living, somehow, for Decider, The A.V. Club, Collider, and the Observer. You can also find his pop culture opinions on Twitter (@VinnieMancuso1) or being shouted out a Jersey City window between 4 and 6 a.m.
