Mindhunter

One of the more fascinating interviews in this series is with Son of Sam, David Berkowitz. The effectiveness is heightened by the similarity between Berkowitz and the actor who plays him in Mindhunter, Oliver Cooper:


David Berkowitz


Oliver Cooper

Regarding the Atlanta murders, this series does not seem to be politically correct. They show very plainly how a black mayor, a black police commissioner, and other black officials wanted to ignore the murder of children (mostly black…if not all black) in their own city. It wouldn’t be good for business to raise the alarm on this, especially in regards to acknowledging that they may have a serial killer on their hands.

Finally, when they do call in the FBI, it is only for show. Finally finally, when they do get “serious” about it and create a task force and call the FBI in again, they want the murders pinned on the KKK and want nothing to do with Agent Ford’s profile that the killer is a black male between the ages of 20 and 30.

One of the better scenes is when the mayor is at a black church having a community meeting. The long and the short of it is that he’s booed out of the place. The general perception is that these black men running their city are bought and paid for by white businessmen….which certainly could have been the case. What seems clear is that they didn’t have the health and safety of their own constituents at heart, as one in the audience so obviously pointed out. Not much has changed in this regard today, so I find this very believable — except there are few black people like this courageous lady shown in this incident willing to, if you will, call a spade a spade.

Also, although, of course, homosexuality is going to be front-and-center in just about any series you watch these days, the Lesbo affair between Dr. Carr and her bar-girl is not shown in an overly idyllic manner. They face real problems between themselves. And we learn that the bar-girl Lesbo girl has left a son and husband behind. She wanted to be “authentic” and yet Dr. Carr calls her out on how phony she is on many things.

And, of course, the bar-girl is very pretty, as is Dr. Carr, so the reality is that a Lesbo subplot like this is totally okay. I’m just talking the reality of it, not what should be. These are two pretty women.

Not pretty is Charles Manson. The FBI team finally gets to interview him. It goes as you might expect but it’s still fairly interesting. They also interview one of his prime family members, Tex Watson. Tex seems infinitely more forthcoming on what really happened and why he did what he did. It’s a compelling interview by the agents. The one with Manson is more of a circus act….but then that’s sort of what you’d expect. Manson is either full-crazy or half-crazy. It’s all a full-act or partial act. But clearly he’s not all there.

One of the things they note about Manson’s family is that they are mostly white middle class kids from good homes. How could this happen? What immediately occurred to me is that they should ask which, if any, university these kids may have attended. That could tell you partly how that happened. The programming likely started early and Manson was just their finishing school.

Manson, with the help of sex and drugs, was able to program these people to kill for him. There are similarities to an interesting book I’m reading right now called Hellcats. It’s about a submarine mission to the Sea of Japan, and Pacific submarines in general.

The connection is: At one point one of the subs picks up two downed Japanese pilots whose plane had just been shot down by an American PBY. The downed pilots are no problem to bring on board because the pilots think the sub is one of theirs. But later, one of the Japanese pilots pesters one of the fellows there who can write Japanese. He’s constantly asking him to shoot him so he won’t have to live with the shame of returning home alive. He wants to die in battle.

Well, I guess sometimes the baloney you see on TV might be tied to real life. When the Marines are escorting the two Jap pilots off the sub when they arrive at Pearl, one of the Japs gets away (How? Oy, vey), jumps into the water, and drowns himself. I know they make drowning seem simple and painless in all the movies. A fellow (or gal) walks into the surf with the radiant glow of the sunset in the background. And they just quietly disappear.

The reality of drowning, from what I’ve read, is pretty horrible. So to be able to do so like that Jap did is extraordinary. But just like the death-cult of the Manson family, that programming can take hold and be powerful….whether sex-and-drugs are used as an inducement or not. The survival instinct is said to be our greatest instinct. And yet look at how it can be overridden.

And look at the environmental-wacko cults of today’s yutes. And how readily so many of them are willing to kill the unborn. And just how programmed they’ve become by the modern Manson Family: The American university and media.

Oh, boy. There's realism for you. So she's not a token chick (good....she really was a woman). But she's a token lesbian. Figures. As lesbians go, though, she's quite compelling. I mean, it's like "Who wouldn't be attracted to her?" The lesbianism is understandable (to a guy, at least) from a certain point of view. Whether this is a twisted point of view is up to others to determine. But unlike the dishonest changing of her sexual orientation, my views are straightforward.

I like the character. But if she wasn't a lesbian in real life (is there still such a thing?) then it was a desecration of the work this woman did. I say, let Ann Burgess be Ann Burgess.

I recall watching the first season without much enthusiasm, however, this season seems to have caught fire. The characters are interesting, even the lesbian. Tench is defiantly the strongest character. Perhaps, the writers like him better. 

Overall I agreee with Brad that this is one of the better programs to come out of Netflix recently. My complaint, albeit a small one, is that they are covering ground that Criminal Minds has explored. If there is a season 3 I hope it maintains the generally high standards we have seen so far. 

I just checked wikipedia.  Tench is based on Ressler and Ford on Douglas.  I also noted that one recurring murderer is Jerry Brudos, the subject of Ann Rule's Lust Killer.  One of his victims was kidnapped at noon from a crowded department-store parking lot, and not one of the cars came forward to testify.  In another case, he cut off one of a woman's breasts and made a mold of it for a paperweight.  His wife never had any idea about his extracurricular activities.  He was to some extent the base for "Buffalo Bob" in Silence of the Lambs (which I hadn't known).  Fortunately, he finally died in jail.

The criminals in this are very sick. It’s a logical question to ask whether the appeal of this series is salacious (as is so obviously the case with most series on TV) or something more. I would say “something more.” A lot of what they describe is sometimes hard to deal with. But it is informative. People need to understand that there are people out there like this.

I’m always a bit surprised when a serial killer is known to be on the loose but it seems so few people are cautious. One of the FBI agents did mention in the interview with Son of Sam that many women were cutting their hair short as a preventative because all the girls who had been killed had long hair. But otherwise, especially women, they seem oblivious.

In the case of the Florida murders, the guy was preying on street kids who necessarily (from their point of view) had to take risks in order to make a living: selling themselves or even just pictures of themselves. We learn from one boy that a polaroid went for $5.00. An agent found some kid in a hotel lobby who looked like a street kid and gave him ten dollars to spend in the arcade, just to keep him off the street. But the kid misunderstood the intention.

In no uncertain terms we learn (as we know without doubt) that the black politicians don’t care thing-one about their supposed brothers and sisters of the same race. Maybe the white politicians don’t care either. But it’s clear that they are on their own. And it shows given the lord-of-the-flies nature of so many black neighborhoods. Depend on the promises of politicians instead of taking matters into your own hands and you are lost.

This is therefore a good series from an overall perspective of a no-holds-barred view of what is out there and what law enforcement has to deal with, as well as how thoroughly corrupt, incompetent, and/or bureaucracy-bound so much of government can be.

The COs in prisons and jails deal with this on a daily basis. Some states have recognized the daily assault on their morality and ethics and the resulting PTSD and are making an attempt to keep exposure to a limit and rotate them in and out of direct contact with prisoners. It is not a bad idea, and constant exposure to the worst humanity can produce does have an effect.

I can not imagine spending an entire lifetime of work in a combat situation. Even police in major cities are not in physical jeopardy as much as COs and they are better trained, and better educated than the average CO. I would rather spend time in combat than a week as as a corrections officer. 

Purgatory in Dante's world is merely the doorway to hell. Prisons are, at best, levels of hell. We must keep the sociopaths out of society, but the costs are immense for the convicted and their guards. 

Yep, and thats just the surface 

I had a friend once in the mental health profession. It was common practice to limit the time and number of “difficult” patients. I forget what they called the category. It was something like “borderline personality” types or something like that. These were people, not unlike the serial killers and other hardcore criminals, who are messed up, deceitful, and extremely manipulative.

I have met people who were absolutely draining, and only for a short while. I’m pretty sure I was running into one of these psycho personality types. And it’s not always overt. The passive-aggressive types can be very smooth at what they do.

It must be hell for corrections officers. Hopefully this will be a good application of robots in the near future.



Truly so. One of the tragic (I say evil) things we have done is to devalue true suffering. When someone is “triggered” by the word “parakeet” (or whatever), those who truly have it hard are ignored.

If I were in charge of prisons, they would not look anything like they are now. No gangs would be allowed. No drugs. Every prisoner in order to eat would have to work. If they had to be segregated into individuals 8 x 8 cells, then so be it. But either they are there to do something productive with their time or else we are adding to the rot by letting degradation ferment.

Granted, some cases are so hardcore, there’s not much you can do. But these cases should be segregated out. Every damn privilege in prison should be something you earn. If not, you find yourself in an 8 x 8 cell. No dark solitary confinement. But the guiding principle is that you have to allow for clear and consistent rewards for those who do want to better themselves, no matter how small. If they are constantly being pulled down by the worst elements, then they don’t stand a chance.