With Dr. Wendy Carr, Mindhunter is making up for its original sin of not portraying women as fully realized people

The Ringer

"When Mindhunter first premiered in the fall of 2017, I couldn’t stand it," says Alison Herman. "My objections to the series included the usual TV critic gripes with late-stage prestige projects, from a lack of consistent structure to overlong episodes. Mostly, however, they boiled down to a single original sin, a flaw in Mindhunter’s foundation that colored every narrative choice thereafter. Mindhunter was a story about violence against women, much of it sexual, that did not seem capable of portraying women as fully realized people." But in Season 2, Anna Torv's Dr. Wendy Carr has evolved from being a disappointment to the key to the season. Her Season 2 storylines, says Herman, "do more than help Mindhunter finally pass the Bechdel test. They deepen its understanding of the deception and disclosure, repression and revelation that govern its study—and, the show implies, every human interaction. You don’t have to be a killer to know how many of us go through life wearing a mask."

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