Signs of a Psychopath (s1-6, 2020-2023)

Here’s a continuing series that seriously deserves all its content warnings because it can pack quite a punch. It’s a bit of a variation on the ubiquitous youtube true-crime videos based on police interrogation tapes. Usually those often very long episodes are focused on police interrogation techniques, to valorize or condemn them according to the video-maker’s own bent along with what’s on the tape. Signs of a Psychopath instead offers up 21-minute blasts of apprehended murderers who are variously still high on their work as they talk to police and the show describes their crimes. It is very chilling stuff and thus often gratifying to learn of their current status, usually incarcerated, sometimes dead of state execution or suicide. The show also includes a handful or more of long-faced forensic psychologists and such explaining the ins and outs of psychopathy. A few episodes are twice as long and tediously preachy about how to detect and stop psychopaths at large in the world (spoiler alert, it’s not easy). They’re not all the same, these miscreants. Some are cocky and jokey, others are dead-voiced (“so then I killed him too”). I don’t know what’s worse. They’re all quite disturbing. But once I found the show I streamed quickly through the rather short seasons, maybe six to 10 of these 21-minute bursts. Yes, it’s a freak show, I admit. They are the geeks and I am the gawker. And I get what I’m looking for—shock, followed by queasy outrage and ultimately despair. Good times! The crimes are heinous. Many fit the mold of classic serial killers—multiple murders, often with sexualized overtones. Others are more unusual, such as a nurse at a nursing home who killed a handful under her care for misbehaving in her judgment. One aspect of the show that sort of tells on what it’s trying to do is its disproportionate representation of women in this realm, which is overwhelmingly populated by men. —Still, ya know, gotta say, it’s pretty freaky, what these women do. And the men, of course. I think, actually, now that I think about it, it’s the cocky, jokey killers that seem worst to me. They dole out crumbs of teasing information to investigators trying to close cold cases, just for the attention, just for the lulz. One, giving the details on one of his crimes, makes a point of saying he knows more than he will ever tell about other murders, and shortly after that kills himself. Feel the despair.