Summary
Mindhunter Season 2, Episode 3 puts the characters in different places with opposing objectives in a filler-feeling chapter.
This recap of Mindhunter Season 2, Episode 3 contains significant spoilers. You can read the recap of the previous episode by clicking these words.
Following on from the previous episode, Bill gets drawn into the horrifying crime that hits close to home. The detective on the scene is not coping well with the brutality of it. As Bill scours the crime scene, it is noted that the back door was open, a toddler was killed, and that he knew the family. His wife Nancy is distraught, wondering what she can do to help.
Due to the horror happening in his personal life, Bill leaves Holden to go to Atlanta to interview a pair of killers. He meets up with Agent Jim Barney and their first interviewee is Pierce Hickman. Pierce makes the interview difficult for Holden, sidetracking each question, and being racist towards Jim. He also denies more murders. Holden stops asking questions, but Jim gets more out of him by offering him chocolate. Jim researched Pierce beforehand.
Back at his hotel in Atlanta, Holden raises eyes from the receptionist Tanya, who is eager to take him to his room. She invites him out for a meal. Holden naively believes the invitation is a date and splashes on the spray. The meal is actually a meeting with a few black women wanting him to look into brutal child murders that keep happening. Holden, trying to be the hero, offers to help and meets senior GBI Agent Garland. Garland wants out that if Holden is looking for a predator, it’s poverty. When Holden reports back to Tanya she’s disappointed and asks him to leave. Once again the black community has been let down.
Holden holds another interview in Episode 3 with William Henry Hance, a serial killer mentioned by Wendy in a previous chapter. Again, Holden struggles to interview the man as he purposefully makes his answers complex. Jim Barney takes over again and helps him go into more detail.
Back at the BSU Wendy accuses Holden of losing interest in both interviews. It seems that unless Holden takes a keen interest in the killer, he becomes less engaged. He wants a connection, which is strikingly concerning.
As Mindhunter Season 2, Episode 3 ends, Bill and Nancy attend a church gathering where the murder near their home is the key subject, and Bill feels the need to calm everyone down and inject confidence into the lead detective. Wendy visits the same bar where Kay works and asks for a date.
The Altered Tapes
- There are plenty of themes regarding black communities in Atlanta in Episode 3, how they are less served than the white areas.
- Wendy is concerned about Holden doing interviews in the field alone.
- Episode 3 opens up with the BTK killer in the library sketching women he’s tied up. It’s almost like he is trying to remember his victims by visualizing what he did to them.
- Gregg raises that he does not believe racial grouping is the dominant factor in the serial killer cases.
You can read the recap of the fourth episode by clicking these words.
