Anna Torv Was the Secret Ingredient in Mindhunter's Criminal Profiling Team

While Mindhunter was spending its first four episodes introducing the audience to the rich and rewarding buddy-cop relationship between FBI agents Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) and Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff), the show was also quietly introducing my favorite character, Dr. Wendy Carr. I had simply watched far too much Fringe not to be enraptured when Anna Torv appeared on screen with an unfussy bob haircut and a doctorate in psychology.

Wendy is an enigma for her first few episodes, an outsider to the Bureau who's looking to latch onto Ford and Tench's research into serial killers in order to publish a study. The initial vagueness of her character invited assumptions: that her Boston academic background would clash with Tench's more flat-footed tendencies. That Ford's obvious attraction to her would lead to a more conventional romantic complication. This stretch of episodes — "Episode 4" through "Episode 8" — brings her character and her role on the team into sharpest focus.

Ford and Tench continue to help the local police in Altoona investigate the murder of Beverly Jean Shaw, a sordid tale involving her sexually intimidated fiancé and his dead-eyed brother-in-law. The case’s proto-Mare of Easttown vibe only serves to let Tench and Ford's rolled eyes at the overmatched local law enforcement play like commentary on the true-crime genre. But while our FBI boys are interviewing suspects, Wendy is back in Boston, diligently assembling a methodology for the team's burgeoning work in criminal profiling. On paper, Wendy's work is less exciting than watching Tench nudge the fiancé into saying something incriminating. But there is something in Torv's performance, the way she rattles off pathologies, that is utterly captivating. Unlike the Altoona district attorney, I have full confidence that a jury would be convinced by her expert testimony.

Torv is Mindhunter's most obvious nod to the J.J. Abrams sci-fi series Fringe. That show also featured Torv as part of a three-person investigative team operating out of a university in Boston (there it was Harvard, here it's Boston University). Fringe outright stole its method of 3D location titles from David Fincher's Panic Room, so think of this as returning the favor.

Torv had already completed the five-season run of Fringe by the time Mindhunter aired, which made it more than a little rude that the only thing any outlet could think to write about her was how often people on social media mistook her for Carrie Coon.

Disrespect aside, Torv brought the cool professionalism she'd perfected on Fringe to her character on Mindhunter, helping bring the team's dynamic into focus. Ford was the hotshot, delving boldly, sometimes recklessly, into the foul waters of these serial killers, not repulsed by anything, willing to indulge these killers in any way in order to extract the candor he needs. Tench was the consummate cop, looking for concrete information that they could use to help nail criminals now. By adding a third spoke to this wheel, there would have been a temptation to write Wendy as a mediator between these two male points of view, to essentially have her play mother to these mismatched brothers. What Mindhunter's writers did instead made for a far more compelling show. Wendy approaches the serial-killer research from a perspective that's more pragmatic and incredulous than Ford (who always seems like he's a few clicks away from Stockholm Syndrome-ing himself into becoming a serial killer himself, Hannibal-style) but far less prejudicial and viscerally repulsed by their subjects than Tench.

This three-way tension in approach comes through most clearly when the team sets out to interrogate Jerry Brudos, a real-life serial killer (only the names of his victims are changed for television) who murdered four women and became infamous for his fetish for women's shoes. Initially, Brudos lies to Ford and Tench that he's been in contact with Ed Kemper, who called them "morons." Tench is frustrated that Brudos is messing with them, while Ford is somewhat hilariously wounded that Kemper would describe him this way, but when Wendy listens to the transcripts, she's intrigued that Kemper and Brudos' contrasting levels of post-incarceration forthrightness could give them another data point to track. Nothing is going to stop this woman from cross-referencing her way to a breakthrough in criminal profiling!

Lest we simply chalk Wendy up to an emotionless questionnaire in human form, these episodes also introduce her personal life. Lena Olin makes a brief appearance as Wendy's girlfriend, Annalise, who is not at all fond of Wendy working with the Feds. Their relationship exists in a glass closet: they're open among friends in academia, but Wendy keeps her sexuality secret at Quantico. When the Bureau ends up offering her a job, she's faced with the choice of her career or her relationship, and she appears to choose her career, since next thing we know she's moving into a furnished apartment in Virginia.

This set of episodes goes heavy on questions of the cost that comes with such up-close-and-personal research into depraved killers. It's very obvious that this is getting to Tench (he says so outright). It's also bleeding into his home life, as a babysitter finds his (already troubled) son Brian looking at a crime scene photograph Bill brought home. Ford represents the other end of the spectrum, showing absolutely zero signs that he's even all that repulsed by these killers, something that obviously bothers Tench. "If what we're doing doesn't get under your skin," he tells Ford at one point, half-incredulous and half-accusing, "you're either more screwed up than I thought or you're kidding yourself."

When it comes to Wendy, the question is whether she's too removed from the flesh-and-blood interrogations to put herself at risk of any collateral psychological damage. This threatens to turn her into a lesser character in the audience's eyes, as she doesn't have as much at stake as Tench and Ford. But in "Episode 7," director Andrew Douglas pulls off some nimble sleight of hand that addresses this very issue. He depicts Wendy in her sad, furnished apartment for singles. She has no contact with her neighbors; the hallways are eerily quiet at night. There's maybe a noise outside her door, but no one is there, so she decides to do some laundry.

In this dimly lit laundry room with its cinder-block walls and sparse lighting, we in the audience realize that we're the ones who have been affected by the horrors of these killers. After six episodes' worth of stories about mostly women victims being abducted and attacked, we're terrified watching Wendy go downstairs to do laundry alone, much less investigate what sounds like a cat hiding just beyond the darkness of the basement. What we've been watching has gotten under our skin, even if it's not under Wendy's yet.

Up next: Ford and Tench go to interview Richard Speck, and the Atlanta Child Murders set the stage for Season 2.

Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.