An Hour of Peak TV: ‘Mindhunter’s Episode 7 Showed that Sometimes Evil is Just as Revolting as We Imagine
Is there a more frightening thought than knowing that some people are just born evil?
‘An Hour of Peak TV’ is a column in which I celebrate and dissect some of the most iconic and beloved episodes of acclaimed shows that aired on television from 1990 onwards.
Echoing through the corridors of Oregon State Penitentiary, Jerry Brudos’ (Happy Anderson) manic and wicked cackle sounds like it was borrowed from a cartoon villain. It’s almost too deranged, frenzied, even caricaturistic in a way, to be realistic. Yet when we glance at the giant man it belongs to, it becomes spine-chillingly real. As a guard escorts the infamous Lust Killer — a necrophile who kidnapped, raped, and killed four young women between 1968-69 — to meet our mind-hunting duo, he’s talking about the boxing match in which Ken Norton broke Muhammad Ali’s jaw. He explains, “It is not an easy thing to break a human being’s jaw. Let me assure you… that takes practice.” And we instantly believe him as his overbearing body gets chained to a metal table. That’s The Entrance of a serial killer designed to make our blood run cold in a matter of seconds.
As much as it’s catered to our true crime-laden mind of how we tend to imagine a serial killer’s physique and demeanor, it’s the first time in Mindhunter when that actually rings true. Brudos is a monster from the moment we hear his voice. By the time we meet him in the flesh, we’ve already encountered Ed Kemper (Cameron Britton) and Monte Rissell (Sam Strike) — the former perhaps more unsettling in the long run — but none of those two struck us immediately as threatening and intimidating as Brudos.
With his portrayal, Episode 7 sets a crucial reminder: these men were remorseless, impulsive, manipulative, and perilous people first and only interview subjects second. Though this is a somewhat inherent quality in a series about real-life murderers, Brudos stands out as a memento to take us out of the trance the show pulled us in previously to say, “Hey, remember, this was real.”
The moment Brudos learns he’s faced with the FBI (two clean-shaven agents in grey suits clearly wanting something from him), he starts demanding shit. He wants a drink and cigarettes and pizza — anything that would take an effort and isn’t from the prison. Anderson may play the character slightly heightened and exaggerated for dramatic effect, then again, we know infamous killers loved to act crazy and bizarre as long as they had eyes on them. But right before it'd become too much, he pulls it back, and Brudos agrees to "cooperate."
However, as soon as Holden (Jonathan Groff) states he killed a girl named Laura Sullivan, the mental tango begins. The convict objects, saying he didn’t kill her, they never found the body, and he was coerced to confess to it by the Portland PD, anyway. Never mind that he pleaded guilty to three counts of murder for which he’s spending three consecutive life sentences as they speak. It’s never the murderer’s fault that they found him guilty.
The scene oozes with suspense and dread, featuring top-tier acting, but what’s more fascinating is that it brings to mind an interview from the true crime documentary John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise. Throughout that Peacock series, Gacy refuses to admit to a specific murder despite all the evidence pointing to him. He lies with such confidence that you wonder whether he can actually believe and convince himself of his false innocence. As if proving he didn't kill that victim would exonerate him from all the other (multiple) murders he committed and was unequivocally convicted of.
In Mindhunter, Brudos doesn’t go that far. Once Holden and Tench (Holt McCallany) visit him a second time, he deems it pointless to deliver another looney act — instead, he puts on a different kind of show. In the follow-up interview, after some back-and-forth verbal jabbing, the agents manage to get under his skin and trigger honest answers. Due to a “bait” and some convincing, Brudos opens up and delves into his fetish with women’s shoes and how they played a pivotal part in his killings. But what the mind-hunting duo begins to finally acknowledge (first to themselves, and later to each other) is that these interviews serve as a catalyst that gradually brings out all of their bottled-up emotions and repressed frustrations.
The job — talking to insane and twisted sociopaths — eventually gets to them, even if they try their best to ignore the psychological repercussions. That crucial aspect gets addressed in this episode, and it’s where Mindhunter excels more than almost any other movie or TV show concerned with serial killers. Digging in a sick and violent mind, you can’t come away unscathed. Whatever you find in there will start to eat away at your soul sooner or later — Brudos masturbating on the shoes that Holden gifted him is just the icing on the cake.
In today’s criminal profiling, sexual fantasies and deviations are practically standard for men who commit murder. But in the late 70s and early 80s, that was far from the case. The Behavioural Science Unit has just begun to study these motives behind pre-meditated and ritualistic murders, and we see that Holden and Tench’s approach is raw and experimental. They mine their own personal (and often uncomfortable) sexual experiences to get into Brudos’ mind. As Dr. Wendy Carr (Anna Torv) sees it, after listening to the recordings with Brudos, the two men were “persecuting him about something that challenged their masculinity.” She’s not entirely wrong, but we sense a bias because of her identity as a gay woman. Regardless, Brudos’ openness in his recounting of how he developed a desire at an early age for heels that later drove him to violence captures an uncanny deviance. He says the impulse was always there, suggesting he didn’t develop this craving (or yearning) because of some event or influence but was born with it. There may have been outside factors that escalated his behavior over the years, but the seed was planted at birth.
Is there a more frightening thought than knowing that some people are just born evil? Brudos is our collective monster in the closet. The one we are fascinated but also repulsed by — he can be our neighbor, friend, husband, and even father. He had a wife and kids. He disguised himself as normal for years. Thus he represents one of the darkest human beings we can imagine, an abomination of crazy and savage, and we can’t snap out of that notion or shrug it off because he was real. He existed — and so did the dismembered female body parts (usually breasts and feet) he kept in his garage as trophies.
Mindhunter has never been sensational or white-knuckle for pure shock value but an accurate (if admittedly stylized and scripted) dramatization of the most brutal, highly intelligent, and organized murderers in our history. The Evil we knew and the Evil we imagined — which, in the case of a serial killer like Jerry Brudos, collided. In the show’s world, even a seemingly innocent storyline, like feeding a stray cat, as Wendy does in this episode, has a bleak and sinister connotation. According to a TV line interview with the actress, Torv recounted the time when Fincher explained to her the purpose of her character repeatedly leaving food out for a stray cat in the laundry room. As per Fincher, those scenes were supposed to be a hint that there's a "kid in the building who’s going around killing cats. It’s a birth of a new sociopath that we don’t quite know about. Because that’s how it starts — with [inflicting harm on] animals.”
Episode 7’s script by Joe Penhall and Jennifer Haley is provocative and haunting, infused with layers of intriguing psychology (which is due to John Douglas and Mark Olshaker’s pioneering source material), delivered with flawless cadence and charisma by fantastic character actors. But I'd argue that one of the less detectable components to its success is Andrew Douglas’s seamless, eerily calm, and focused direction. Following the stylish, formidable, and moody tone that Fincher established early on, Douglas’s restrained approach is the bedrock that allows the writing and performances to shine through. His camera isn’t as active as Fincher’s, preferring steady shots and close-ups, but those actually highlight each tracking shot to make them feel more significant and loaded with underlying tension and anxiety. It’s more of a docu-style filmmaking, if you will, combined with slick and evocative cinematography that utilizes a cold and rigid color palette.
Ultimately, it's every ingredient in a pitch-perfect symbiosis that birthed one of the most captivating television series that Netflix has ever produced. One that delivered real nightmares into our homes with an episode like this, showing that sometimes Evil is just as repulsive, abhorrent, and terrifying as we envision it in our minds. Knowing that it was real is the scary part.
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I think this was my favorite show that ever came out of NETFLIX. Great write up.