‘Mindhunter’ on Netflix Season 2 Premiere Recap: The Baby-Sitters Club

The killer is already inside the house. The woman doesn’t know it yet. She puts down her groceries and calls out, but only the sinister sound of Roxy Music’s nightmarish song “In Every Dream Home a Heartache” can be heard in response.

That, and the sound of a door shaking under the strain of a rope tied to the knob.

She makes her way down the hall, calling out “Honey?” She sees the door shake. She opens it, and a man collapses forward—rope around his throat, a cheap kewpie-doll mask on his face, a woman’s slip on his body.

She runs away, gasping, in slow motion. He calls after her, saying he was just playing around. He’s not her killer, then. He’s her husband.

This is how Mindhunter returns after nearly two years—though only a week has passed in the world of the show. Right away we see the series, created by Joe Penhall and directed here by David Fincher, is leaning into its strengths.

Season One was an aggressively mixed bag, its deeply compelling serial-killer scenes interspersed with interpersonal drama that you’d need a Behavior Science Unit to try and make sense of. So opening things up with a visit to the BTK Killer, who for the first time is brought to the attention of the pioneering agents of the BSU later in the episode, makes sense.

What’s exciting is how the interpersonal stuff seems to have played catch-up during the time off. For the first time, Holt McAllany’s Agent Bill Tench, Jonathan Groff’s Agent Holden Ford, and Anna Torv’s Dr. Wendy Carr all feel like thoughtfully drawn characters whose problems, and responses to those problems, are those of real people, not just styrofoam packing peanuts shoved into the story at random to pad out the time between visits to psychopaths.

The trio’s main concerns this episode are twofold. First, Holden is recovering from the severe panic attack he had during an ill-advised solo visit to the towering “Co-Ed Killer,” Ed Kemper. Bill helps him cover up the incident, so long as he follows orders from now on; after all, Holden’s wild methods landed the entire unit in trouble when they got caught altering transcripts to cover for his aggression and manipulation during interrogations. (This sideplot seems wrapped up when BSU member Agent Greg Smith admits he ratted them out, allowing Holden to move forward and cementing Bill’s apology to Wendy for wrongfully accusing her.)

And Wendy agrees to serve as a sort of in-house therapist to Holden, too, provided he monitor his physical and mental symptoms for any warning signs. It’s unclear if this wannabe Dudley Do-Right has the humility required to meet his obligations to his coworkers, and that’s a rich psychological vein for the story to tap.

But Bill and Wendy are motivated by more than just professional courtesy or personal concern. Their new boss, Assistant Director Ted Gunn, has huge plans for the BSU—like, physically huge, he gives them a whole new gigantic room for the basement headquarters—and he sees each member of the trio as a vital component. Holden’s brash instincts usually pay off, making him perhaps the most essential member of the team. So, in separate conversations, Gunn tasks both Tench and Carr with keeping Ford under control.

Played by the versatile stage and screen actor Michael Ceveris, Gunn is already a fascinating figure. Everything he says to Bill, Wendy, and Holden about his plans for their unit and their work is good news on the level of winning the damn lottery. If you just read the transcript instead of watching and hearing it in action, you’d think they had it made in the shade.

But there’s something slippery, almost sinister, about the way Gunn talks to them. It’s not just that he asks both Wendy and Bill to serve as Holden’s babysitter, keeping him focused on the task at hand while still allowing him to operate on instinct. It’s that he looks and sounds serpentine, a sinuous voice emerging from a streamlined head that always seems to be leaning too close or staring too directly. He’s a creature of the Bureau’s Washington culture, we learn early on, and therefore he must know the ways of both greasing palms and stabbing backs; later, we learn that his predecessor, AD Robert Shepard (Cotter Smith), has been forced out on account of Holden’s shenanigans, clearing the way for this new true believer to take power. It leaves us wondering which aspect of his personality the BSU will ultimately be faced with.

As for the BSU’s holy trinity, this is the most I’ve liked them, just liked them, since the show started. And social get-togethers—retirement parties, backyard barbecues, drinks with coworkers at the local watering hole—are an effective device the premiere uses time and time again to differentiate its main characters from their fellow human beings, and from each other.

For example, Bill warns Wendy to beware of agents getting a little too frisky at Shepard’s going-away soirée—”If you start to see guys loosening their ties, get out while you can”—but she herself is not above openly ogling a pretty bartender when she’s supposed to be listening to Holden at the bar earlier in the episode.

As for Bill, he chafes at being asked to socialize at a cookout with his neighbors, but takes to doing so like a fish to water when the other men in the neighborhood gather around to hear his tales of Richard Speck, the Co-Ed Killer, and other supervillains. We learn that he’s rather adept at this kind of insider-outsider stance when we see him pull it off again at the retirement party. He skillfully sticks to the sidelines to avoid awkward conversation with Washington-based Bureau bigwigs, but instantly switches to a hail-fellow-well-met type when the time comes to give a speech and present his retiring boss with fancy new fishing equipment.

And Holden? He’s so caught up in himself that his self-regard can cut either way. He’s wise to turn to Dr. Carr for advice on his panic disorder, and he knows the best bar in the area to hang out in as well, but he doesn’t see her tuning out. At the retirement party, he’s much more integrated into the central ebb and flow, even sitting with Smith to show he has no hard feelings about getting ratted out. But he’s oblivious to how much the departing Shepard hates him and his big special project, and is caught flat-footed to the point of having another panic attack when the outgoing honcho leaves in the middle of the speech, then lambasts him outside the building.

All of this may seem rather minor, but it’s a huge leap forward for the show. Mindhunter‘s first season excelled the more it acted like a police procedural, and the more time it spent in the company of its killers. Left to their own devices, the “normal” characters talked about their careers and relationships as if their dialogue was provided by a semi-sophisticated AI program, not human writers. (Remember Holden’s poor collegiate girlfriend Debbie? Yeesh.) If it’s now gonna be able to draw out real, honest-to-god people from characters who were previously merely people-shaped, it’s going to become a new and better show. Like AD Gunn, I have high hopes.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Stream Mindhunter Season 2 Episode 1 on Netflix