TV Binge: Mindhunter (Season 1, 2017)

What do you know? Back to back TV Binges this week! To be honest, I have so many TV series that I finished but never have posted from way back in January so I’m making my way sporadically through it as I see the inspiration to write it up. So here we are with the next one as I finish up a book and get a recipe post together!

Netflix series have been rather fun for the most part and since I love Criminal Minds and the behavior analysis thing, we had our eye on Mindhunter for a while so we finally got through it fairly quickly!

Mindhunter (Season 1)

Creator: Joe Penhall

Cast: Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany, Hannah Gross, Anna Torv, Cameron Britton, Joseph Cross

In the late 1970s two FBI agents expand criminal science by delving into the psychology of murder and getting uneasily close to all-too-real monsters. – IMDB

Before Criminal Minds hit us with their engaging Behavior Analysis Unit cases, there were these guys here that established the team that opened the path of learning about behavior analysis of the criminal mind. With that said, Mindhunter is one of the most exhilarating, entertaining and impressive shows to be on the Netflix Originals circuit and I’ve been definitely impressed with quite a bit of them. The cast stands out and the way the show is done also works really well. It is very smart to not bombard the show with a myriad of characters and keeping a few main ones so that we can truly see their character development and notice how their relationship, regardless of work or love, does change and grow. While there are cases to solve for this team and it shows up here and there, it never feels like that is the absolute highlight rather than just the way the two FBI agents are approaching each situation that they encounter.

The core characters are the leading FBI agents, Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany). Part of the show’s dynamic is in this duo. Being least experienced, Holden tends to be more rash and make less thought out decisions while Bill tends to anticipate how to play more with the FBI guidelines and has his own bag of experience to make it work. It is in these clashes of approaches and the desire to achieve the same end goal that fleshes out their characters so well. Especially when other elements are taken here like Holden’s girlfriend Debbie (Hannah Gross) who doesn’t always have the biggest role but challenges him on some of his thoughts and calls out his crap because she doesn’t stand for particularly the change in personality as the show progresses. And of course, another key link is when they bring in Wendy Carr (Anna Torv) who brings another strong character.

The best part of the show however do go to the duo’s time chatting up with serial killers as they try to get them to talk about their kills and find a connection in why they do it or a pattern of character traits. Its pretty amazing because as they talk to them, you can see a change in personality also particularly with Holden. The credit does go to Jonathan Groff for delivering on the subtle complexities of this character and his development along with a fantastic script for the show. It can’t be denied that the highlight of the show was the conversations with Ed Kemper (Cameron Britton). The depth and unspoken uneasy vibe with this portrayal was so amazing. An absolute showstopper performance.

There’s a lot to love about Mindhunter. Its well-written for starters. Its thought-provoking and deep with its material it tackles. And they get together a great cast that delivers on these complex characters and gives them a lot of meaning development and arcs. We are definitely waiting for Season 2.

What’s Up Thursday #6: A Little Update!

Its been almost 3 months since the last What’s Up segment! To be honest, its been really busy trying to stay on top with the blog and Game Warp and the Youtube channel. However, we’ve had a sudden surge of one sort of posts lately, and I figured I’d at least do a little post of What’s Up and segway into that. If you don’t really care for what I’m watching and just want to get surprised as the reviews happen over here, That Moment In or Game Warp, then scroll down to the last section of the post.

Let’s not ramble and jump right in!

WATCHING

To be honest, I’m actually not watching anything right now. We started an episode of Mindhunter right before Stranger Things 2 aired so then it was onto a TV binge of Stranger Things 2 and then I got caught up with The Big Family Cooking Showdown which I just finished yesterday.

Oh right, and then there’s Riverdale which is released weekly so thats also there. My guess is we’ll get back to watching Mindhunter soon. It seems like there’s a lot of cool upcoming TV for Netflix so it should be fun although I have a million shows I want to catch up on.

As a side thing, I’m trying to get through some Netflix films since my list is getting ridiculously out of hand and I keep losing films that I’ve waited to long to see. In the next set of double features, you’ll start seeing that I’m choosing films in a fun little way and not alphabetically. Hopefully, it works out as I’d like.

READING

Still reading IT, my friends. Its haunting me in my dreams. I mean the literal task of finishing this book. I keep saying that the end is near and I promise you I’m progressing. I should have like 400 pages left or something which just needs like one or two sittings of not getting sidetracked. On that note, reading IT has put my entire Goodreads challenge behind. Anyways, its my motivation to finish it up quickly.

PLAYING

SNES Classic Edition coming into our existence has given me some opportunities to go play little doses of it here and there. Yoshi’s Island was the one I started. I remember playing the port to Nintendo DS which was a lot of fun but pretty difficult. Its hard to imagine that the controls here are actually even a little harder so I had some struggles. On the Youtube channel, you can see mostly what I’m playing since I record most of the shorter games as full playthroughs. I’ll probably start streaming the longer ones such as Evil Genome and some 2017 titles that I need to wrap up. As from that, its the final episode of Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series Episode 5 that just got released on November 7th. I have a few games in progress but I’m stuck on a few of them as if I’ve plateaued and just can’t seem to get past that point so I put it aside like Crash Bandicoot (which I’m thinking of starting the second one if I can’t get past the level in the first I’m stuck at).

I go through mobile games quite frequently. Be it for Game Warp or not (since I really only review a fraction of the ones worth my time), I’m on the move a lot so when I need to change the pace from reading, I play games on my phone. The latest one I’ve been playing is Once Upon a Tower. Its pretty fun although I always have the same issues with touch controls being not as sensitive as time resulting in my dying. I’ll do a review on it over for Game Warp soon.

And NOW! For the Update!

As you saw in the Watching section of this post, I’m really behind in a ton of stuff. I was looking through the tentative schedule (yes, I do that now to try to be organized), I have a lot of outstanding stuff unwritten and just sitting there nagging me everyday. Since Tranquil Dreams is a fairly versatile blog, I don’t want to shock you with the sudden overload of movie and TV binges but I have to do it. I promise you to stay diverse at the minimum with Goodfoods and some baking stuff I have coming up as well as book reviews here and there but for the most part, I’ll have to get this movie and TV posts out of the way before 2017 ends. Overall, thats the general goal for all things to really get a lot of catch up done to not have anything backlogged hop into 2018 so we can start fresh with possibly a brand new schedule or set-up (that is something I’m thinking about depending on whether I can get the discipline for fixed segments which I’m not completely confident about).

Its not a huge update but I just don’t want you lovely people who don’t care for the TV and movies to feel like I’ve abandoned it all and just changed to a movies and TV blog entirely which I haven’t. If I make any big moves, I will always post about it.

That’s it for today! With that said, I have a movie review coming up later today!
What have you been watching, reading or playing?