The Watch - How Spider-Man’s Split From Marvel Will Impact Fans of the Franchise, Plus ‘Mindhunter’ Season 2, Episodes 6-9 | The Watch

Episode Date: August 23, 2019

News broke this week that Spider-Man will be exiting the Marvel Cinematic Universe after Disney and Sony were unable to reach a deal to coproduce the franchise (1:00). What does this mean for fans of the movies and the future of the MCU (5:47)? Plus, we break down episodes 6 through 9 of ‘Mindhunter’ Season 2 (12:58). Host: Chris Ryan Guest: Jason Concepcion Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am editor at the ringer.com and joining me in the studio, your friendly neighborhood web slinger, except only for a 50-50 profit split. Drop that bag. It's Jason Concepcion.

All right, so the Jason Marathon on the Watch continues. Obviously, we got a lot of stuff going on right now. You can check out our after show for Succession. It's called Number One Boys. You can find that on YouTube. You can find that in all the usual spots. We've been running the audio for our number one boys on the watch feed.

So as you watch Succession, you can always hear our long recap of the episode of Succession on the watch. Jason and I also have been breaking down Mind Hunter season two. So in Monday's show, we did episodes one through five. You can watch a video version of that breakdown on YouTube. That's under the flat circle banner. That's sort of our true crime show thing that we're doing. And you can check that out.

And today we are talking about the second half of Mind Hunter's season two, episode six through nine. But before we got into that, I wanted to talk a little bit about the Spider-Man stuff that came up this week. So obviously, Sean and Wesley and Amanda had a great conversation on Spider-Man in its relation to a larger existential crisis about the state of the movies. And that's a really awesome talk that people should check out. I wanted to ask you sort of more practically about this story as a fan service story. Yeah. And also as it relates to like Marvel going forward. So basically like the broad strokes of the story.

Tell me what you understand about it. The broad strokes of the story are this really kind of groundbreaking agreement that was hashed out rather quickly between Sony and Marvel, Amy Pascal and Feige is the point people. Kevin Feige, he runs Marvel yet. To share Spider-Man, essentially like Marvel would rent him. has now come to an end. The products of that were two standalone Spider-Man movies, homecoming and far from home, both really fun.

And then various appearances by Spider-Man in the MCU, Civil War, Infinity War and Endgame. And in those movies, seemingly being groomed to be the next figurehead of the MCU. Right. The next Tony Stark, he gets the sunglasses, He gets Tony's sunglasses, which give him, you know, access to Tony's vast weapons array, tech array. His bit torrent library.

His incredible bit torrent library of dark web shit, like terabytes of information on people and, you know, potentially like trillions of dollars worth of assets and money. and where we left it at the end of Far From Home was Peter's secret identity released to the world. Yeah. And now that's over. Marvel wanted, as you noted, a 50-50 split. Sony was like, hold on a second, we've got your most popular character. and both Captain America and Tony Stark are out of the picture. Yeah.

So the feeling, I guess, from Sony's perspective, right, it would be like, we have some leverage. We're not given you a 50-50 split. Right. Like, this is a very, like, I don't know if this is a completely accurate way of looking at it, but this is sort of like, what if the Lakers were like, let's split Zion Williamson this year? Right. I mean, it is kind of like you're talking about a draft pick of that caliber of that kind of value in a world in the same way.

Disney was like, it's not really worth it to us to do this for 5%. Right. If you want Kevin Feigey's golden Midas Touch, we got to split it 50-50. And on the flip side, because it's competitive marketplace, Tom Rothman over Sony is apparently like, I like my chances. Right. I like my chances doing the two more Spider-Man movies we have Holland under contract for. That's right. And making him a part of the Spider-Man universe.

that we're trying to build at Sony, that is Venom. You hate it on Venom, and now you love Venom. Everybody was shitting on Venom, critically panned, and guess what? 800 million. Yeah. Get at me!

They've got Venom, too, and they've got Jared Leto starring in Mobius. I don't even know what that is, but it's just a thing that they're making. Freaking vampire. So based on Jared Leto's actual life. There's a couple of takeaways from here. One is that...

I think Sony wants Spider-Man movies that have faster clip than Disney is prepared to make them. Now when I say prepared, I don't mean like Disney can't make him. Right. I mean, Disney's like, there's a 10-year plan here. We've got like all these different things we've got to launch. Our vision is for Tom Holland to pop up for five minutes at the end of Captain Marvel 2 or something and kind of be the connective tissue through these as Downey was in a lot of these Marvel movies.

That's maybe our vision. This is not based on reporting. This is based on like my read of the story. And Sony's like, how about this? How about this dude gets back to work right now? And we keep jamming out Spider-Man movies while this guy's still cute. Because that has always been kind of the element hanging over Spider-Man movies is it's a young man's game.

He's a kid. And this guy's about to go make Nico Walker's novel Cherry with the Russo Brothers where he plays an opioid addict veteran. That's going to age him 12 years. But it's going to take a little bit of bloom off the rose. You know what I'm saying? Tom Holland is not going to be your younger sister's Tom Holland in two years. Rothman is like,

mailing Tom Holland a box of Paula's choice skincare products and being like, son, you need to be moisturizing like under your eyes and the whole thing, washing your face three times a day. I don't want to see a wrinkle. He's showing him the Irishman trailer. He's like, we can do lots of stuff, okay? No need for you to go lose weight or gain weight or do whatever it is you're thinking about doing.

Just like stay golden pony. There's another aspect to this, which is Phil Lord and Chris. Miller of Lego movies and various other things, did Spider-Man into the Spider-verse, the animated film, which was amazing, maybe my favorite movie of last year. And so they're thinking, hey, like, maybe we've got cutting-edge, like, faggy clones of our own. We like our team. We like our team. We like our squad. Yeah. And so that's a very, very good point. Yeah. And I wonder whether or not the big takeaway from this is this collision between these four or five corporations that own everything

calling all the cows back. You're like, hey, it's time to come back. You know, it's cool. Friends, you were on Netflix for a while. Time to get on this service. You know, the office, you were on Netflix for a while. Why don't you come back? You're on the NBC Comcast Universal Streaming service.

Spider-Man, that's great. Glad Disney gets to, like, cash in and, like, ride out on, like, being like, look how we fix Spider-Man. Fuck that. Why don't you come back and stand around in Venom movies? Because no matter what,

we feel like we're going to make our money. And that idea of this consolidation of corporate assets, which is essentially like, as Sean and Amanda and Wesley talked about, saying this consolidation of corporate assets is a sad way to look at movie making and storytelling.

That colliding with a lot of people just being like, I just want Spider-Man to be in these Marvel movies. Like, I don't give a shit. Who is it? say Sony on the check or Walt Disney on the check or what. And that's going to be like a real tension going forward. I agree.

You know, it's interesting. It used to be about stars and now it's about IP. And I do wonder, you know, I could see from Sony's perspective, they would think, okay, well, we've got Marvel's most popular character back in the fold. We like our team. And, you know, listen, how many people really pay attention to the inside baseball, Hollywood Reporter business side of the movies, to your point, like they just want to see Spider-Man in a movie.

Yes. And then from Marvel's perspective, you know, it's interesting to look at Spider-Man's appearances in the MCU through this lens and really try to game out like how Marvel was possibly preparing for this moment. This didn't happen yesterday. It didn't happen yesterday. This was always a possibility. And if you really look at it,

Peter Parker's one point of contact in that Marvel, in the Marvel U, was Tony Stark, and Tony Stark is dead. Yeah. So theoretically, it wouldn't be that hard for them to just cut the cord, you know, like Nick Fury appears in Far From Home, spoiler, kind of. And, but like he's on a spaceship the whole time. They never actually directly talk. So it feels like Marvel has always kind of left themselves and out. Yeah. And there's like, so that's exactly right.

There's a very vocal amount of people who are like, no way, boycott all Sony products. I'm going to light my PlayStation on fire because you guys took Spider-Man out of the MCU. And then there's like the rest of the world. The vast majority of the world. Hey, you see the Spider-Man is going to be in Venom too? Sick. Awesome. Yeah, I'm going to go see that.

And that's like, that's the tension right now. That's like what's going to happen going forward a lot. And I think that the more that people are just like, I think that when Warner Brothers was like, we have to have a unified theory of Justice League and Batman is going to serve as the backbone of all this and Superman is going to be in this and there's going to be like a continuing plot line

and then they kind of screwed it up by like not knowing what direction and they made these movies way too dark and way too unfunny. Right. And then they accidentally had suicide squad and people were still like a billion dollars with people and they were like, so it doesn't matter.

Right, it doesn't matter. Like nobody really cares. and if we just make this movie cool, like all these people are going to go see it. They're still going to go see it. And look, I mean, like, there's plenty of other things in the world. I would love to spend nothing more than to spend all my time talking about Steven Soderberg adapting a Deborah Eisenberg screenplay.

Like, that's definitely where my, like, passion is. Yeah. But I'm saying, like, this is a major deal because we're talking about the next 15 years of movies in some ways. And your point about, like, I wonder how long this has been an issue. I wonder how long they were like, yeah, this is going to probably, when this contract lapses, I don't think Rothman's going to let us do this for 50-50. And they were like, let's protect ourselves. Let's make sure Marvel goes into space and into different timelines so that Spider-Man's absence is not like,

hey, did you guys have to erase this guy out of the movie? And it's like black mirror or something? I think your point is really valid. Gosh, thanks. Thanks. Okay. So that's Spider-Man. You know, we could get into Deborah Eisenberg some other podcasts.

I love Deborah Eisenberg. We'll talk about some of the other stuff happening in the TV world. By her short story collections. I know. Seriously. She's really great. She's this incredible. For Monday's show, obviously Succession. We'll have a lot of other stuff.

Thank you for listening. We're going to get into our breakdown of Mind Hunter, Season 2, episode 6 through 9 right now. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Kroger grocery stores. Did you know that one in eight Americans struggle with hunger? Yet 40% of food produced in the United States gets thrown away, and a lot of that food waste happens at home. When food waste is sent to landfills, greenhouse gases are released, so it's a problem for our planet, too. But think about this. If we redirected just one third of the food we waste to people in need,

we would more than cover the unmet food needs across the country while helping to protect our planet. That's what Kroger is doing with their Zero Hunger, Zero Waste Foundation. Last year alone, Kroger donated 325 million meals to local food banks. And they've got some great tips to help reduce food waste at home, too. It's all part of their goal to achieve zero hunger and zero waste by 2025. Check out Kroger.com slash ZHZW to learn more. That's Kroger.com slash ZHZW. All right, we are back.

It's The Watch. I'm here with Jason Concepcion, and we are going to talk about the second half of the second season of Mine Hunter now. What a normal show. Yeah. What a totally not sick, depraved show that makes me feel super great about humanity. This is episode six through nine. So on Monday, Jason and I covered one through five.

You can also see that video on YouTube, where we did it as the flat circle, our sort of true crime endeavor, our umbrella for all the things disgusting in this planet. And so episode six through nine of Mine Hunter Season 2 are largely concerned with the pursuit of, the capturing of and the interrogation of the Atlanta child murderer, Wayne Williams. But before we even get to that, I guess a little context about the Atlanta child murder. So I think I would go into, I would say I was aware but not an expert on it. How aware of Atlanta child murders were you going into this? Pretty aware, unfortunately.

Okay. I mean, there's a lot of, you know, people who have looked at this case fall into three, camps basically. One is Wayne Williams is good for all of it. Two is, Wayne Williams is good for some of it. And three is Wayne Williams didn't do any of it. Right. And he was eventually convicted of two

of the 30 murders, I believe that was eventually... Right. It was not all children, but a lot of children, 28 children, I believe, and two adults. That's correct. And police would probably say that they consider him good for like 20

some odd of the victims, but there's certain ones that don't seem to fit. Like, there were two girls who were killed. One of them was abducted from her home. One of them was, like, bound with duct tape. Both things are, like, emmo, or are details that are kind of, like, out of the ordinary for whoever the perpetrator is. We think Wayne Williams. On the other hand, like, the killing stopped when Wayne went to jail.

And this is also what Jason's sort of alluding to with the idea that what's the M.O. What is the profile here? That's kind of like one of the consuming themes of the second half of the season is whether or not real life is adhering to Holden's hypotheses about serial killers. The profile, the profile, it doesn't fit the profile. He doesn't fit the profile. They bring in, and throughout episode six through nine, just a little bit of background, like episode six through nine are directed by Carl Franklin, who directed one false move, who's directed a lot of television. He was on the watch two weeks ago or a week ago now, and it has a different sort of feel, I think,

to the first five episodes, which are directed by David Fincher and Andrew Dominic, but it definitely is within the Mind Hunter vocabulary, like visual vocabulary. So it doesn't feel like a different show, although there are some different flourishes, and I think it's good that there are different flourishes because the show really opens up.

It's like, for the most part, Mindhunter is like a very, like, interior, dark, windowless room, overhead light, two guys kind of going through files and asking questions, and the high points are an interrogation with an already caught serial killer about their history. The second half of the second season, though,

is almost a crime show. Yeah, it is very much a procedural, and all of a sudden we're outside and outside in the daytime at times. Yes. And in a painstakingly recreated 1980 Atlanta. And just to give you some idea about what was going on back then,

you've got, you know, maybe not the mass, that we're accustomed to now, but there was definitely a lot of attention being paid to crimes like this because there was, I mean, Jason and I talked about this a lot on the true detective episodes that we've done, this idea of Stranger Danger, this idea of it's 10 p.m., do you know where your kids are? Just starting to bubble at this time and really. The collision of Reagan's America and this idea of going back to white picket fences or this idea versus you can't lock your doors. You can't unlock your doors at night. You can't let your kids play outside because you don't know what's going to happen to them. you combine this with Atlanta changing. So earlier in the season, Ford arrives in Atlanta and Hartsfield's becoming one of the biggest airports in the world.

And Atlanta's got a lot of investment coming in and what does Atlanta want known about itself? How does it want to be perceived? Not serial killings. Yeah, not as a bastion for child murder, obviously. And in 1985, James Baldwin were a book called Evidence of Things Not Seen. It was pieces that he was writing for Playboy

about the Atlanta Child Murders, and he said, the state of Georgia had never before exhibited so intense an interest in black life or black death. And Holden's interfacing with that phenomenon is kind of a major part of the second season. I think that in some ways, the emotional kind of climax of the season is Holden running through this vigil with a cross. And it's probably the most visually, like, kind of the most virtual. of the season is lent to that where they switch footage stocks and they shoot it almost like a 1960s like Zapruder film kind of thing. It looks like all washed out and you see the film grain and the transitions. So let's just talk broadly about how you felt like what did you think of the way that they moved through the Atlanta child murders in this last four episodes?

I was, you know, I'm not, I was really surprised at how tightly they hewed to the actual case. the way Williams was caught, the kind of cat and mouse back and forth, his real arrogance. In the way that he handled himself with the authorities. And then, you know, the denouement and him eventually going to jail.

All that was very historically accurate. They caught him the exact same way. He was driving over a bridge. The Atlanta PD heard a splash and they pulled him over and questioned him. Didn't hold him that night, but eventually did manage to put him away. And all of that is exactly what happened.

And I think it's really interesting to think, to kind of like zoom out and think about how this show might continue in further seasons. Yeah. Considering how tightly they have maintained the details of this case. Yeah, there's no Hannibal Lecter moment. Yeah, they don't crack him. Yeah.

You know, and I would highly recommend people who are interested in this, and Jason hit me to this. The Atlanta Journal Constitution has done a really good job collecting all the work they've done on the Atlanta child murders over the years. And it's a fascinating sort of archive to go through both the pieces from the time, like from 1980, and then interviews with Williams 10 years after that. It continues to this day. The case continues to be looked through because certain victims, as we said before, it's unclear whether he actually is responsible for those days. death. So the investigation really continues. And the cases were closed, even though he was only convicted of two murders, and that's sort of

the end of the season is holding to the mothers and stop and Camille Bell, especially, and talking about whether or not this gesture is justice. So it's like we got him. I feel really good about the guy we got in terms of like my certainty that he is responsible. Do we have a connection to, can I give you the closure necessary to know that this is what happen to your son, no, I cannot do that. Right. So that's, and it's, it's the impossibility of, of closure

beyond justice. And Jason and I spent so much time, we talked about this on Monday about like the, like, sort of signifier idea of like a lot of law enforcement, a lot of justice things where it's like, you think that this is the end, but it doesn't, it's only the end in one arena of life. It's not the end for the

people who suffered these traumas. And this show really reckons with that. It really does. And it reckons it with it in every strand of the plot, you know, Wendy's love life, Tensh's home life, all that stuff feels like it's seeping into everything.

And you're kind of forced to contend with the idea that, is it possible that Wayne Williams and BTK are better at compartmentalizing their lives than these... The investigators. Normal people who are after them. and it's really an interesting thing to consider. Yeah, and this show brings up lots of ideas about forgiveness. Obviously, in the second half of the season,

the mother of the toddler that Brian is a party to the death of, that sentence makes sense, comes to Nancy and is like, I've come here to forgive you because I think that I've been looking to God for an answer, and I've finally arrived that forgiveness is what I need to give you. And that in itself almost says, off a repulsion in Nancy at her son, who's adopted, and maybe the most searing part of like the entire series so far,

is Nancy looking, you know, talking to tension, saying like, every day I wake up and look in the mirror and I know he didn't come from my body, and I'm thankful for that. I was just like, you're just like, okay, I got to go walk into the ocean now. It's unbelievable. And then her, you know, eventually what she comes to is just escape this.

Yeah. None of this happened. We're not going to talk to child's, services anymore. We're just leaving. We're moving. We're moving. Yeah. And whatever that means for the marriage is whatever it means. We're out. Yeah. And, you know, with Nancy Intentia, I thought it was interesting, too, because Mine Hunter doesn't go over the top. And you and I like to draw the connections of if something is set during this time, let's play it out. Like, what would have been in the air culturally at that time? And, you know, Mindhunter does like a nice job here and here and there

with like a KKK member being like, I think the Braves are terrible. Right. And Bobby Cox should be fired. Yeah. But at that time period in 1980, like you're not too many years removed from like the Omen. Yeah.

You're only a few more years removed away from The Exorcist. This idea of like children somehow being vessels of evil was definitely like a thing. I don't know. It's not explicit, but I am sure the Exorcist and the Omen are two movies that like David Fincher is high key aware of. And you know, the late 60s and 60s and, 70s was really like a boom time for child psychology, Dr. Spock, like all that stuff was just coming

into the popular culture. And you add on to that the fact that TENCH is like on the cutting edge of developing these tools to identify behaviors that could signify truly troubled people. And now he has to grapple with the fact that like his alarm bells are going off when he's looking at his son. Yeah. And what is, and he's hoping that these tools, like, aren't as good as he thinks they are. The shot of when Brian's coming out of the school. Yeah, and he's just... And, like, all the kids have kind of parted, like, the Red Sea, and he's just got that look on his face.

And then you can just see Tensh's face darkened as he realizes, like, there's something wrong with him. Yeah. It's pretty chilling. Let's talk a little bit about... One of the things I thought was really interesting about the way that they construct these episodes. is in a lot of procedurals, especially if you've watched a bunch of them, you wind up kind of being like, I know the ropes.

Right, right. Like I kind of know, here's the episode of Law & Order. There's going to be a guy who looks nailed on as the killer, but obviously it's just he's not his alibi sticks or, you know, he dies before that, you know, like something happens. Like you said before, they're obviously adhering to history with Mindhunter,

but I thought that each of the people that they bring in for questioning, the plumber and the KKK member before they get to win, even much to Holden's chagrin because he's just insistent that there's no way that the killer would have crossed racial lines

and that there's no way a white killer could go undetected in Atlanta, even though Jim eventually is like you don't fuck you're talking about. You're not from here. Atlanta is not Baltimore. Atlanta's different. It's more mixed.

There's more intermingling. But I thought each of those guys who they bring in serves as like a really like almost like a census of right the South at the time like the plumber who's just kind of like I'm just trying to get my head down right right just trying to do my thing I don't really care who I work for right I know that the KKK exists but I was raised differently you know I got to hate anybody and then the KKK guy is like I'm for sure a racist piece of garbage right and also there are a lot like me and probably in positions of power and guess what you're never putting me away right right But I didn't kill this. But I didn't kill it. Yeah. And then when they finally come across Wayne on the bridge that night, the thing that Wayne has that Kemper had that a lot of these guys have is it does adhere to Holden's ideas about these killers

and that there is a fascination with the investigation of him and there's a fascination with the possibility of getting caught. Yeah. And all that stuff with Wayne is so electric. Yeah, there's that moment at, I think it's the end of episode, five when they first, or episode six when they first show up in Atlanta. Yeah, so five's in Manson. Six, they go to Atlanta. And then the press shows up and they're running around.

And you have Wayne. That's our first introduction to Wayne is in that moment. He steps out of a car with his camera. And then the moment on the bridge really is, like I got an absolute chill, a camera drawing in on him. I was fascinated with, you know, the first interrogation in the car in the next episode. when they're asking him, you know, about the, you know, any connection to these kids? He's like, I'm not.

And the derision with which he spoke about them. And that, and you get that first hint of his real arrogance. Yeah. And maybe a hint of what the motive might possibly be. That stuff was absolutely electric. Yeah. And then again, it's like what this show does so well is, it looks at behavior. It looks at like someone's life.

And then it's like, you know what? If you stand two feet to the left and, like, kick. the tire's a little hard, you can start to bend things towards narratives. And that's, and that's why, you know, like a majority of the people in the, in the task force that's working on the Atlanta child murders is like, it's the clan. It's the South. The people who, who kill black kids in the South are the clan. They've been doing it for years. We should be looking at the Klan. And Holden is just dead set on it cannot be that because that's not what my intuition tells me and what my research tells me. And you just wind up seeing, like, with Wayne, it's like when you start

investigating when you're like, well, yeah, like, obviously it had to be this guy. Like, this guy obviously wants to get caught. When they go to the studio and talk to the dude who's like cleaning up at the studio and he's just like, yeah, he's got a temper. And he always would be railing about these kids and stuff. And there's obviously like an undercurrent about child prostitution going on in Atlanta where the kid, Holden goes up to the kid and tries to give him money for the arcade and the kid's like, what do you want for this? And he's like, what do you mean? And he's like, what do you mean? What do I want for it? And then he runs away. It's just like they don't, they do so much, they do so much show, not tell on this show. Oh yeah. And they play around

with our ideas about what we expect from a show like this. And even, even things like the bad news relay that I've always talked about like with like in Broadchurch where like they essentially will dedicate like 15 minutes of an episode just so you can get to the point where someone gets bad news. It's like in Saving Private Ryan is a better example of like the huge sequence of saving Private Ryan that is just the mother seeing the car coming up the driveway to give her the news about her sons. And it's like a building and building and building. And it's John Williams music. That never happens in Mind Hunter. It's a great point.

There's so much of like stymieing the forward momentum, you know, all these dead ends, whether it be the plumber, KKK guy. the good idea to put the crosses out at the march, hopefully to draw the killer and get stymied. The trying to find the killer, identify him at the concert with Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. And Sammy Davis Jr. Doesn't work. All these different things.

And then finally, okay, I guess the bridges. And the way that kind of just unfolds, like all of a sudden without anybody expecting it to is just like so vibrant. it and you get a chill when you just hear it. Like, I love the way the audio cue is like their tension and Holden are talking. And then it's almost like in the background. I heard a splash. You barely hear it.

And then everything just keys in on, is there a car? Like, let's pull out and try and get them. And it's just things start happening so quickly. And it's, I was just on the edge of my seat. It's like they can't believe that after six weeks or however long they've been out there, sitting up through the middle of the night, sleeping all day, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, and eating fast food, that on the last night at the last moment, on the last shift, this guy drives across the bridge.

Like, he is basically saying, like, okay, I don't want you guys to go without knowing it was me. Let's talk about a couple of different things here. I wanted to ask a little bit about what you felt like. Did you feel like the show changed visually a little bit once Franklin takes over in the second half of the season? Oh, for sure. I mean, you know, the march, I think, and the march in Holden's race to put the cross out, I think is the most obvious example. It just opened up.

All of a sudden we're brighter. So that was a moment where I was like, this is so symbolic. I don't even know what it symbolizes. Right. Because you've got like a white guy running through a predominantly black vigil holding a cross. Shots of him in the foreground,

the marchers in the background, approaching him, everything in focus. Yeah. And then there's like all these cutaways where it looks like 8mm or 16 millimeter grainy handheld footage that almost looks like this Pruder film. I thought maybe we were supposed to consider it as, you know, these murders and these killings are sort of seen as these discrete events and they can

be studied and analyzed by places like BSU, but they're actually part of a larger wave of history and, like, the civil rights movement and Atlanta's place as this land of, like, constant change. What did you think was, like, sort of the significance of changing the film stock at that moment, though? Yeah, I'm still trying to figure it. I think it's just, you know, the idea of, here is the moment where this investigation bursts into the public view, the public of Atlanta. And that people would have been filming him. Yeah, they would have seen it. They would have seen this man running through the streets with a cross and been like, what is this? Who is this person? So this kind of like interconnection

where, you know, the shadows come into the light, all these kind of like cutting-edgey ideas about behavior and where that meets with traditional police investigation, where that meets with civil rights and local politics, and all that stuff in that moment. meeting in the broad daylight in one moment. Yeah, and then there's the idea that, I mean, because you're already dealing with Brian having put that kid on the cross to bring him back to life and Tensh's life. The idea that maybe like Holden's running around with this cross,

but like the kids are gone. Like there's no, there's no one even to bring back. There's no resurrection to happen because there's this absence of a closing chapter to their stories in a lot of ways. How devastating was that moment when there is, assembling the crosses ahead of the march. They get him in the boxes. They got him in the boxes. And one's on the ground and Tensh is just staring at it.

Yeah. And this Paul comes over his face like, oh man. Let's talk a little bit about Tension Wendy's lives because Holden's largely taken out of it. Holden and his relationship to Debbie was kind of the personal element of the first season. And then aside from his brief flirtation with Tanya at the Omni Hotel. extremely bra in Atlanta. He doesn't really have like a personal life per se. And I think that, you know, Allison's commented on,

Alison Herman commented a little bit about like, I don't think that he's supposed to have a personal life. Right. He doesn't really seem to be a well-rounded person. But Wendy's got this relationship with Kay that has some mirror, it mirrors Holden's relationship with Debbie to some extent. And then Trench, obviously,

is dealing with the evil at home and also the inability to sort of sustain an active political side of his work life where he's negotiating for more power of BSU and getting BSU more funds, but then also like being at home. And then when he is at home, he

obviously seems just catatonic. Yeah. I thought it was part of what makes it so heartbreaking is you know, Tensch too late realizing how dire his marriage and home life is becoming

starts making an effort, taking Brian out to ice cream. Yeah. Trying to tell him stories about going fishing and stuff like that. That moment in the backyard where he's showing him how to cook hamburgers and stuff. And, you know, Wendy has a look of satisfaction. Like, oh, this is what it should be always about, you know, on her face. And then the phone rings and he's got to go again.

I think, you know, this is a theme that, you know, Fincher really seems to like, which is, Uber competent, driven people who throw everything into a pursuit at the cost of everything personal and dear to them. And it's really affecting, man. When Tensh comes home, first when he calls home and there's no answer, you know. And then when he gets home and it's just empty, you know. I can't remember if that's the Mary Ann Faithful song playing or if that is Peter Gabriel is playing when he comes home here. I was like, oh no. And, you know, there were rumble.

You know, Nancy had said we should move previously. And then there was that moment before that where she was like, you know, we should just get rid of this couch. Yeah. And she leaves the couch for him. Yeah. Yeah, because she's like, this was the couch that we have and we moved her. Wendy's relationship to Kay, which ends kind of with Wendy, you know,

she overhears Kay talking about how, oh, the person who's upstairs isn't that important. It's not that important that my son meet him. And she's trying to tell her ex-husband, like, yeah, don't worry about it. It's just a fling. We don't have to introduce the kid to him, to her. And then Wendy's kind of like, you can't lecture me about being honest because Wendy's obviously gone back into the closet when she moves to Quantico from Boston. I thought, like, you know, deciding who the public self is versus the private self was was was really what Wendy's story was because that's the conversation she's having also with Henley in Texas and with the killer in New York

City when they go and talk to him about all the murders and the gay bars that he was possibly a part of. Yeah, Wendy. Bateson, I think it was the name of the guy. Paul Bateson, who, by the way, is in The Exorcist, the real guy. Really? Seriously? Yeah. He, okay, the scene where Reagan, she has first started to have the incidents and they take her to the doctor and then the radiologist does a thing on her. That is the real Paul Bateson. Get out of here.

Yeah. He was in the exorcist? in the exorcist. Holy shit. That's disturbing. Yes. You know, Wendy really has an issue. Agency is like really important to her.

And the fact that she's had to go into the closet has made agency in the rest of her life like really important. She doesn't want to get reassigned in her, you know, she doesn't want to get reassigned from BSU. When she's in her relationship. she'd like the person to move in, but on her weird, like, very vague... Yeah, you can have the guest room. Very vague terms. You're my roommate, yeah.

Don't wear the heels because I'm wearing flats. Like, it's all these things that are like, just let me be in control because I'm not in control of this one aspect of life. Yeah, and they ask, I mean, that's the same thing that happens to her in BSU is she's starting to become like a burgeoning interior and a field officer.

And Gunn is like, just stay in the basement, right curriculum, analyze transcripts, come up with, like come up with these profiles, I don't want you out in the field talking to Henley.

Right. And we don't even know is that retribution for her not going home with the guy who is offering to fund the BSU from D.C. So I'll be really curious

to see where they take these characters personally. Oh yeah. Let's talk a little bit about the future of Mindhunter. I'm going to go out on a limb, although I don't know

and say that they'll probably keep making, the show for as long as David Fincher wants to make it. It's definitely, I think it's one of the most interesting television shows on right now. It's extremely interesting. They have talked about how Fincher had a five-year plan for it. Currently, Fincher's making a movie called Mank, which is about the screenwriter of Citizen Kane. He's making, I believe, for Netflix, he's shooting it in black and white.

I think his father wrote the script. But, you know, one would assume that they would get back to work on Mindhunter. There was a two-year gap, I guess, between season one and season two. where do you think this goes? We've speculated about the other serial killers it could investigate, but where do you think it goes sort of thematically from here in 1980?

Well, you know, there's a bunch of serial killers who were active at the time. I can't stop thinking about just what an interesting show this is from the sense of it's not like a normal procedural where there's closure and they close the case and everybody feels good. BTK, as we've known it before,

doesn't get caught till like 2005. Right. That's, you know, two and a half decades from where we are right now in the story. So that payoff is a long way off. And you're talking about Green River Killer active during this time, you know, Dahmer, Golden State Killer. I think, and that's the kind of thing that really leads me to the idea that this is like less a show.

it's less a procedural in that sense and more like a la zodiac a show about violence, obsession, and ritual, and how that affects people. So, you know, they can do that for as long as, as you said, as long as Fincher wants to do it. Where do you think they do? Well, it's hard for me to believe that they've dedicated, even though he's only in the beginning and ends of episodes, it's hard for me to believe that they've dedicated this much time to BTK without a larger plan

towards addressing his case head on. Now, on one hand, you could say that those interstitials are supposed to illustrate the actual acts and the sort of preamble to those acts that they're investigating on the show. I also think it's supposed to suggest the impossibility of ever actually, like, ever actually stopping these people. Right. Because out there in like the, not the wilds of Kansas. but just for the sake of conversation,

like the wilderness, yeah. You just don't know what people are doing. You just don't know whether the guy in the van at the end of the street is a guy taking a nap and eating a sandwich

or something much more sinister. I mean, statistically, these kind of crimes are really rare, but they, you know, are pretty persistent in the fact that they do happen and they do exist. I was reading an article, like, recently about how right now is

the low, the lowest incidents of serial murders in, like, America since they've started studying it, which either means great, these people aren't around, or... What's taking its place? Or they're very good at what they're doing now. So, you know, it's just... It is a very eerie subject to think about. Yeah, and then there's some practical concerns, like how long do you have the...

So, tension and Ford are based on real people, but I think that they're taking liberties with these characters, personal lives and with their movements. Could you feasibly have these guys working as hard as they are, I guess, in 19, you know, it's hard to imagine the TENCH character

in 2005, still being alive, frankly. Right. Or at least being an active FBI agent. You know what's fascinating to think is like, say the show goes into the 90s, like what do are BSU agents think of

Silence of the lambs when it comes out. Yeah. What is their reaction to that? Yeah, the popularization of the thing that they sort of discovered is fascinating to think of. It's also like, it's obviously like an expensive show

to make, I mean, in terms of, it looks expensive to make. The attention to detail, like we talked about before, is immersive but not showy. So you're in the Omni Hotel and you get to see this indoor mall that's in the hotel itself.

But it's not like stranger things where they're like, oh, and we're in the mall. Let's go to the frozen yogurt place. It's like, no, there's an arcade. The arcade is one of the truly the only safe places for Atlanta's kids to go after school that isn't like being on the streets.

So they come into the arcade and they just kill time until it's time to go home. The construction of those, the recreation of that environment is just breathtaking. So, yeah, MindHunter, man. I think it's one of the best things

It's come out this year. It's definitely going to haunt me for a long time. It's haunted. It really stands up to repeat viewing. So I would just say that if you've watched it or if you're watching one but or just listening to this and thinking about it, like, it is like a great film. You can go back to it over and over again and study different shots.

Is there any other stuff you want to talk about with Mind Hunter? Just how smart the, you know, those scenes where Tench is regaling people with... Oh, yeah, the FBI stuff. You know, with the stories of BSE. what Manson is like, what Kemper is like. The way he's able to use that as currency in his various conversations with the child services people.

And it gives you this idea, you know, it's really a commentary on how fascinated we are by this stuff. Yeah, and he's the salesman. Yeah, we don't, these are horrifying crimes committed by like horrifying nightmare people. And yet, like, we want to know about it.

What are those people? Like, what was it like to send? next one. Like, what, you know, like, and it's a, it's a real commentary on, like, why we watch this show. Yeah, because I think, and one of the fascinating conversations that comes out of the Atlanta child murders is the, whether or not, like, this killer is separated from some sort of ideology.

Right. And whether or not this guy is an extension of the racist attitudes of the South at times, or whether or not he is a black predator, like, like, like, hunting black kids. And, you know, now we live in a time that's, like, hyper ideology. Yeah, is informing a lot of crime in terms of our interpretation of it and obviously in terms of the motivations behind it. So it hardly like am I looking at like the 80s with like this like time of like with through rose color glasses. Right. But they are different eras when you think about our relationship to crime.

And also like I think the ability people had to be like that can't happen here. Right. I mean, you know, I was talking with a old corocor virus, Remberg Brown. And he was like, I remember like I wasn't really allowed to like go outside for periods of time growing up in Atlanta. because of this. And I'm sure you and I both have stories in Philly and in New York about times where we weren't allowed to do the normal everyday kid shit where you go outside and ride your bike all day and don't check in. Like that's the thing that like I always think about with True Detective is just like you would leave your house at 10 a.m. and come back at 7.

Right. And like that was just you were off the grid. You just off the grid. So this, you might get to a pay phone and call, but probably not. And they might be home when you did. Yeah. Yeah. So it was just like that that idea of being unreachable and that you're just kind of like going along on this social contract that your child can go outside and be safe, that you could go out into the world and just kind of go about your day. And then you see a scene, and this is probably the most chilling scene in the entire show to me, it's the fucking scene of the BTK guy making Xerox copies of his drawings and poetry. And you're just like, dude, like, who hasn't been in the library next to a weird guy? You know? And that is, that is the

freakyest part about it. And it's the thing that this show gets so well is, like, how this stuff can breed fear. Yes. All right. Thanks so much for watching and listening to us talk about Mindhunter this week. We'll be back next week,

obviously, Succession and a bunch of other stuff for Monday's show.