Communication, Through The Lens of Netflix’s “Mindhunter”

While the show examines the birth of criminal psychology and criminal profiling, the key to it all, as well as the show, is communication.

The first scene of the first episode of Mindhunter is a hostage negotiation between FBI Agent Holden Ford and a distraught man holed up in a small warehouse. Several other key scenes in the episode involve Holden teaching a hostage negotiation class at the FBI Academy in Quantico, talking to experts in criminal psychology and behavioral science, and lectures at rural, small-town police precincts. The subject being discussed in all those scenes is the psychology of a killer, but they are really about is communication.

Mindhunter is based on the real-life story of the early days of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, criminal psychology, and criminal profiling. This birth was the product of a series of interviews conducted with individuals who have a unique level of insight into the mind of a killer: incarcerated serial killers. The show is entirely made up of people talking to one another. Because of this, it might seem dumb to say that the key to the show is communication, but “talking” is not the same thing as “communicating.”