I just watched all three seasons in a row. S1 was great and a pretty good adaptation of the book. Moss was fantastic and all the long close-ups of her face actually served to tell the story. Very impressive. S2 was still good, though not as consistent as S1 imo. The best part about it was the ever changing dynamic between June and Serena. But S3 really went in a weird direction. So many things made no sense and it felt as if by now June could shoot a Commander on 5th Avenue without having to fear any consequences. And at the end she seems to have developed a full Moses complex. I'm kinda worried about where the show will go from here.
BTW, I just started Atwood's "The Testaments", the sequel to "The Handmaid's Tale". So far I like it and I was surprised that she incorporates elements from the TV show in her story, like baby Nicole.
"“The Handmaid’s Tale” is coming back, in case you forgot about the haunting dystopian drama whose last new episode was released in August of 2019. The 10-episode fourth season will premiere with three episodes on Hulu on April 28, then release an episode a week on Wednesdays. The story will pick up after the events of the season 3 finale, with June getting shot after helping dozens of kids escape to Canada. By the way, the series has already been picked up for a fifth season...."
Believe it or not, this wasn't the carrot that finally got us to take a bite of Hulu. My wife, feminist that she thinks she is, just had to join so she could see Ms. America, a mini that traced the movement through the '70s. We binged Handmaid's through Season Three, and the only thing that's kept us there, was a) a neighbor gave us their password to Netflix, so we felt we needed to share something with them in return during quarantine. Then my sweetie, a ravenous fan of Modern Family, binged on Black-ish. And, now we were just hanging on awaiting the return of Handmaid's, and only last month found out it had been renewed for Season Five as well. Good thing it's relatively-inexpensive (we like to think of it as, "Disney-minus"... ). I've been keeping track of the meager offerings as the nets, channels and services try to get back to production on series we've followed before the pandemic shut shooting down, checking these sites infrequently, and updating my list to keep tabs: 2021 TV Premiere Calendar 2020-21 TV Season Scorecard Nice to have another premiere date to put on the slate!
show was pretty unbearable by the end of the last season. i guess hulu's strategy is to drag shows on and on beyond their shelf life just like showtime.
"Unbearable"...? I found it quite cathartic, myself, with the cult starting to face the real-world head-on, and finding themselves without the ethics for the job. Naturally I'm sorry that we had to lose the momentum of where the narrative was going due to shooting shutdown, but I seriously doubt the story wasn't going to deviate all that much from what Margaret Atwood was getting at in the first place. And now they're going to expand what they previously thought the climax and denouement was going to land, so I can only assume that gives them more time to stretch character development, and perhaps add an arc or two that would help viewers better understand what they have not chosen to read of the original. Don't forget the place the country was at the time of the release of Season 3, and how that may have affected your acceptance of social changes and plots that were written long before the audience living in 2016-onward, were experiencing outside their doors. And then going through Season 3 in more of a contained, quarantined environment, which must have feel a lot more claustrophobic, and of course that wasn't Hulu's or anybody else's fault (that we could name here in context with our thread).
In true SHF tradition, now I'm going to bitch about what I choose to watch or listen to... Is nobody watching this? Spoiler: Spoiler through S04. Ep. 04 Okay, so, yeah, June is healed and on the run. We knew that would happen. She's a hero in Canada and boy do they let us know it! Meanwhile, June heals up and takes command of a troop of Handmaids and Marthas. No big deal; this is what she does. It's pretty cool, but it's still the most transparent show on TV. That is, outside of the nice cinematography, every actor over-acts in such a way that I'm longer watching the show; I'm watching how clumsy this is written, how unbelievable the characters are. Nobody would speak, or act, this way in real life. But that's nothing. I've invested to much into this torture porn to let it go now. However, when they capture June, and instead of killing her on the spot, like they would have done anybody else - 40 times over - instead they torture the piss out of her to find out where the other handmaids are. Well, who cares where the other handmaids are. Kill June anyway, and if you find the other handmaids, fine, and if you don't, fine! But no, through Lydia we find out that no handmaid can be spared, so we're sending them all off to a birthing farm. Hold up, though, I notice that June's one-eyed friend changes her eye patches. When she's in the habit of a handmaid, she gets the crimson eye patch to match her duds. When she was out on the farm, though, she cast off her handmaid raiments, opting for something grey, like the rest of them, whereupon her eye patch is now grey. She has to match, you know. Anyway, on to the birthing farm, you just know that living June is going to escape, and her escape doesn't come a second too soon, as they stop the van for the driver/goon to relieve his bladder. Of course this is their time to escape, but no they don't kill Lydia in the process of beating feet. What happens, though, is that with no authorization, without calling for backup, without even listening to Aunt Lydia, this driver/goon, who is probably like a buck private in the Giliad Army, decides to shoot the fleeing handmaids, thus killing the vital resources that Gilad went through all the trouble of torturing June over. The goon takes it upon himself to kill. Two of the handmaids get squashed by a train (or is it three), but whatever; it's only June and the one-eyes chick left. None of this makes any sense at all. Otherwise, it's pretty good. I hope this is the last season, though.
I will be watching. I’ll wait for the season to conclude, then I’ll sign up for a month. Yes, I’m a cheapskate.
I do not "enjoy" this show. It makes me uncomfortable and angry. Angry toward a specific subset of people, some of whom I have to deal with on a daily basis. But I keep watching because I'm "invested".
I feel like this is another Game of Thrones. There you had a lot of source material, but here You have one classic book, so maybe two good seasons tops. It’s really interesting where they went with it, but it’s been spinning its wheels for a long time. The writers of these shows are doing their best, but they aren’t George Martin or Margaret Atwood and they have to fill X episodes in Y seasons. I’d like to see more prestige shows start out with a set story outline and end it when it’s time. Two, three four seasons, whatever. Like David Simon did with the Wire. Get in, get out and leave on a high note. I know the GOT guys had Martin’s outline, but they did a piss poor rush job of wrapping it up.
I watching and current on the latest episodes. Didn't the handmaids use to have trackers embedded in their ear lobes? What happened to those?
Were those tracking devices or just tags like the ones used on cattle ? I binged the first four episodes of the new season yesterday - still enjoying it. For everyone who isn't, there's always Cheer The Walking Dead or Law & Order - Parallel Parking Unit... D.D.
I thought it was both a tracker and an ID with a number. googled it...Why Did June Cut Her Ear On 'The Handmaid's Tale'? The Bloody Decision Had A Powerful Purpose Well, if you think back to some of the flashbacks viewers encountered in Season 1, it's revealed that Aunt Lydia had tracking devices implanted in all the handmaids' ears — that cuff that was roughly stapled into June's ear apparently could provide her exact coordinates to anyone looking to hunt her down. “You are so very precious — we wouldn’t want to lose you,” Aunt Lydia tells her. So it only makes sense that in order to fully escape from the Waterfords' home, June needed to separate herself from them completely, and that meant digging that horrible GPS device out of her skin by whatever means necessary. You'd think the PTB would just tag June again.
I stand corrected, thanks. I think she was re-tagged, she had an ear thingy during the torture scenes.
I am not yet watching the new season - in the UK, we won't get it until October time. I really liked season 1...enjoyed S2... was bored silly through most of S3, and TBH, am not even sure if I will watch S4. I gather from spoilers that most of my favourite secondary Maids and Martha's are now dead.... Janine is the only character I really love, which probably means she will be killed in a particularly awful manner very soon. I think I may have lost interest in the show when June killed Chris Meloni, big Chris Meloni, with a pen.
I'm glad I'm still holding-off on watching, in case the urge to binge is too strong. There is definitely a change in your observations of a series, when you have a bowl of them in your lap, and you can eat as much as you want like a serving of ice cream (with no consequences of going for the next bowl out of your own freezer). You don't actually feel the consequence, until the bowl is empty and the carton in the freezer is, too. It's not that I mind at all the luxury of being able to binge; just that, you still are better off pacing yourself. Having some time to absorb what writers and showrunners labored over for months to bring you, which the author may have labored over for years before that, is just a richer experience. When you're plowing through a dense narrative like Dark, it's hard enough to keep tabs on the plot in real-time, with all the character and temporal shifts not always being laid-out for you. The plot and episode benefits from sitting in your head for a bit, like marinating a good piece of meat. And I did appreciate the leisure in which Amazon Prime doled-out a short season of The Expanse for viewing, knowing there wasn't going to be any more for quite some time. So, I made other plans, watched other stuff, and didn't start until we were about five weeks in...and then chose at my convenience to tackle one every one-to-two weeks. I just wrapped it this weekend. But it's still a year off before we get Mrs. Maisel, I fear... I try to hold us to no more than two episodes of anything at one sitting now, knowing it's still going to end sooner than we would like, and still leave us hanging on a cliff. Maybe for a year. Maybe for more. The pandemic has given us back some semblance of restraint, I suppose. Some days I'll see my wife on the sofa, cramming episode after episode of some light comedy into her noggin, and just shake my head thinking, there but for the grace of God go I. I'm still okay taking in one-to-two episodes a night, every night, for a short mini like Looking For Alaska, or The Mess You Leave Behind. I can get just enough in two episodes for the plot arcs to stay with me while I process it in the back of my head. And then get to some denouement in reasonable time.
I could care less what happens to June at this point. The only character I'm remotely interested in is Aunt Lydia. Maybe Serena Joy.
I read the second novel, so I’m with you on Aunt Lydia. They could just pull the plug and fast forward. I also went back and listened to the Orecks & Crake series. Not worth it.
