‘Mindhunter’ Netflix Season 2 Episode 8 Recap: Bridge Over Troubled Waters

Did you know: This season of Mindhunter is just nine episodes long. If you’re reading this, it means the chances are good that you’ve just watched the penultimate hour of that season. Did it feel penultimate to you? Have things been building to a head? Or is it more like, I dunno, you followed a whole bunch of false leads and wash-out strategies, only for the climax to fall into your lap pretty much out of nowhere? If you’re like me, it’s the latter scenario. That tells me Mindhunter Season 2 is doing its job very well.

After all, isn’t that the experience of Holden Ford, Bill Tench, Jim Barney, and the rest of the various federal and local authorities investigating the Atlanta child murders? Maybe it’s a black predator. Maybe it’s a white plumber. Maybe it’s the Klan. Maybe it’s a pedophile in that brick house down the block. Or maybe he lives in a brown house by the stadium. Hey, did you know a few of the kids knew each other? Hey, did you know half of the kids knew each other? Maybe they were picked up off the street. Maybe they voluntarily went to some guy’s house. Maybe local organizations will find him. Maybe profiling will find him. Maybe traditional cop shit will find him. Maybe the cops are infiltrated by the Klan. Maybe the local organizations are embezzling. Maybe they’re glorified vigilantes. Maybe we can lure the killer out at a memorial march. Or a benefit concert by Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra. Or a security-guard job flyer. Maybe the killer returns to the same sites. Maybe he’s changed his MO and is now dumping bodies in the river. Maybe we should stake out the bridges. Maybe Holden’s too zealous. Maybe Bill’s too tuned-out. Maybe they’ll run out of money. Maybe it’ll interfere with the BSU’s main task. Maybe it is the BSU’s main task. Maybe they’ll run out of time.

Or maybe they’ll pinch a guy on the very last night of the stakeout.

See what I’m saying? This episode plays out the way the whole season has: fits and starts, a step forward, a step backward, a stumble into something fruitful, a stumble into something pointless. The Klansman Bill and a local cop interrogate is a dead end. So is the Frank and Sammy fundraiser, because red tape around getting flyers copied and distributed kept Holden from setting up job interviews for security-guard wannabes beforehand.

It looks like the plan to watch the bridges for anyone dumping bodies is another failure waiting to happen. There’s even a musical montage set to Gary Numan’s thunderous synth-fest “M.E.” that drills home the tedium of late-night stakeouts, with all the room-service breakfasts and mosquito bites they entail. Then, suddenly, over the police band, someone reports a splash, and within two minutes Jim, Bill, and Holden have a suspect in hand. It’s so deftly done you might not even realize it’s doing anything, until it’s over.

Perhaps ironically, the home lives of Bill and Wendy are more dramatic than anything from the hunt, save those final two minutes. For Wendy, this means the dissolution of her relationship with bartender Kay when she’s accidentally present for a custodial handoff from Kay’s ex-husband. Wendy tells Kay that for all her bullshit about living an actualized life, she sounds and acts like a totally different person when her ex and son are around, though it sure seems like Kay telling her ex that the person waiting upstairs in her apartment was nobody “important” is what really got to her. Hard to blame her, really.

On the other hand, “You’re a bartender who takes relationship advice from bus-stop magazines. I hope things work out for you” is a horrifically nasty thing to say even when you’re breaking up with someone. It reveals that there’s something of the ivory-tower academic left in Wendy yet—or perhaps it’s a government bigwig thing. Either way, it’s classist and ugly, and it creates a new wrinkle for an increasingly compelling character.

Bill and his wife Nancy, meanwhile, are suffering the tortures of the damned as they struggle to reconnect with their son Brian, or to get him to connect to anyone or anything. Nancy wants to sell their house to get a fresh start someplace else, and it sounds more and more like she’ll do this whether Bill comes with her or not.

Moreover—and it takes guts to let a woman say something so un-motherly on a crime drama, given what crime drama audiences are like—she says of her adopted son that she’s “relieved that [Brian] wasn’t really mine. His body didn’t come from my body. None of it was my fault.” It’s tough to hear. It’s probably tougher to admit to yourself.

Bill has not given up on Brian, not yet. But nor is he above more or less begging the boy to open up about his feelings, whatever they might be. “I just need to know,” he tells his son. “Because this scares the shit out of me, Brian. And I don’t want to be afraid.” Brian’s face registers shock when he hears his father cuss, but not enough shock to start talking again. And Bill knows better than most that some cases can’t be cracked.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Stream Mindhunter Season 2 Episode 8 on Netflix