Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Murder Mindfully’ Season 2 On Netflix, Where A Stressed-Out Lawyer Kills People To Keep Him In Balance
Where to Stream:
Murder Mindfully
Powered by Reelgood
We were never sure if the Netflix comedy Murder Mindfully was a comment on how we in Western society are over-therapized or not. We just thought it was a funny idea that the main character killed people to keep himself calm. In the show’s second season, the main character finds another way to guide his urge to kill.
Opening Shot: We hear a kid’s parrot toy that records what people say say something along the lines of “I dismembered my client, and now I am free.” Nicole (Britta Hammelstein), a cop who is after a lawyer named Björn Diemel (Tom Schilling), thinks she has the smoking gun, but when she yells in celebration, the parrot just plays her yell back; the admission is lost forever.
The Gist: “Some Months Later.” Björn is in the Austrian Alps with his wife Katharina (Emily Cox) and daughter Emily (Pamuk Pilavci). They’re on vacation, and they’re going to a lodge that he remembers going to with his family as a kid; he wants Emily to have the same memory.
Once they sit down at the lodge, though, something’s wrong. Where’s the waiter? Björn goes to look and starts to get enraged when he sees the server scrolling his phone in a back room. The longer the waiter takes to take their order, the angrier Björn gets, much to the embarrassment of Katharina. Then his food arrives cold, and he thinks this memory he wanted for his daughter has been ruined.
This is what he recounts to his therapist, Joschka Breitner (Peter Jordan), whom he’s gone back to after Katharina threatened to leave him if he didn’t get help. What he doesn’t tell Breitner, though, is that he unlocked a loading gate in the restaurant’s back room, leading the waiter to fall to his death down the ravine that’s on the other side of the gate.
He also doesn’t tell Breitner that he’s now calling the shots of two crime families, after dismembering one boss and kidnapping the other. Somehow, as he runs his enterprise out of a school building, both families think their respective bosses are running the show.
Breitner tells Björn to access his inner child, because his memory of the lodge visit is way different than the memory he wanted to give Emily, and “take your inner child with you into our world.” After that, Björn imagines his younger self literally by his side, as he purchases a Land Rover or deals with the loud teens next door. He seems to listen to his younger self more often than not, which is probably not such a good thing.
Photo: Anika Molnar / Netflix
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Murder Mindfully, based on the novel by Karsten Dusse, has a bit of a Weeds-meets-Dexter vibe.
Our Take: So now that Björn has learned that killing people is the key to mindfulness, at least in his own twisted head, it seems that in Season 2 of Murder Mindfully, he’s going to use some other instruction by Breitner to murder in a different way. This time, he’s going to be guided by his inner child, and he is certainly not going to follow Breitner’s instructions to only follow the instructions from his younger self that make sense.
Don’t get us wrong: Murder Mindfully still has funny moments, especially during the times when Björn’s narration says things like how on a vacation, families have the same arguments, just in a new, overpriced location. But as he gets deeper into his ruse, and as Nicole gathers more evidence to go after him again, it feels like things are just going to get silly, especially with this imaginary version of his younger self along with him as he kills people.
There are certainly issues this show could explore, like how Björn’s harsh childhood informs his current-day need to lash out, or how his family life is going to ultimately pay the price for his odd form of workaholism. It could also be a comment on how people take therapies and run with them in directions the therapist never intended. Or it could just be more of Björn killing people to keep himself calm. As long as the show stays somewhat grounded and keeps the funny moments coming, it should be OK.
Photo: Anika Molnar / Netflix
Performance Worth Watching: Tom Schilling always seems to play Björn calmly even when he’s getting angry, which makes the anger even more intense.
Sex And Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: Björn finds out that the mob boss they have held captive has escaped.
Sleeper Star: We’re not quite sure who the kid is playing the younger version of Björn (the credits just list names, not characters), but we like that he goes from hurt to mischevious as soon as he’s by his older self’s side.
Most Pilot-y Line: Björn has various severed thumbs in a pen case so he can add an authentic seal to the documents from both crime families. Eww.
Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re not sure if the second season of Murder Mindfully is going to fly off the rails or not. But it’s still funny enough to keep us watching, at least until it gets too ridiculous to bear.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
