The Hurt Man

Structurally the simplest and most discussed hour of the season: Erik, in a prison visiting room, telling Leslie his account in what plays as a single unbroken monologue.

The content is the abuse — the grooming, the rape, the learned belief that this was how his father loved him, the mother's rituals of checking him for disease. Whatever a jury later makes of the killings, the episode argues that this testimony — believed or disbelieved — is the hinge everything else swings on.