The Handmaid’s Tale season 1 and 2 are full of turmoil, and drama but displays it with such beauty you almost forget the bleak and destructive world they are living in. The series provides an in depth look at what the world might come to if we start to move backwards instead of forwards. The first two seasons of the show are some of the most powerful filmmaking i’ve ever seen before.
The show is about a portion of the United States that has turned into a totalitarian society called Gilead. The fundamentalist regime treats women as property of the state and is faced with environmental disasters and a plummeting birth rate.
In Gilead the few fertile women are forced into sexual servitude and called handmaids. We follow the journey of the main character June now called Offred in Gilead and her struggle to escape this terrifying new world, and make her way back to her family.
Offred is placed in a home with a husband and wife named Frank and Serena. We soon find out they play pivotal roles in Gilead’s government, and June seeks to take advantage of that power. How far will she be able to get and will she be able to form a revolution to take down Gilead?
Performances in the series around the board are captivating, powerful and play on every aspect of the physiological imperative of living as a woman during a time of such abuse and discrimination. They are able to form networks with one another to try and start revolution and get out of this suppression.
Watching The Handmaid’s Tale is a perfect example of how impactful film and shows can be. The show can relate to things that we are seeing in our current state. It is explicitly is about women’s rights and how if we start to move backward in that aspect of politics such as overturning Roe vs. Wade or women’s rights in the workplace how much we would suffer as a nation.
In my opinion the most interesting dynamic in the show is between the main character June and Serena. The relationship between the two characters seems at first to be one that may flourish and become one that blossoms into advocacy together. But we soon find out that is not the case and that Serena is hell bent on following the rules and become a ruthless opponent to June. There are signs of light that start to shine in season two that there may be a change of heart with Serena.
Serena has this mentality that nothing must change and June has the exact opposite of that and there is an amazing moment where the two come together to go against the rules and defy the odds, but when the husband finds out and imposes a strong beating on Serena, she quickly turns back to a terrorizing figure and goes back to being sidelined by men.
June constantly fights to chip away at the fragile shell of Serena but does so to little success until a Serena breaking point towards the end of the second season, and the same goes to say about June trying to change the world she is living in.
The show can be so bleak that it almost turns you away because of how heavy the material is, but there are little specks of light that pop up throughout both seasons that give you hope, but then are dimmed once again by the reality of the situation.
We truly are witnessing one of the most important TV shows of our generation. It gives us a glimpse into what life would be like if we were to give into hate and bigotry, and allow them to start to rule our politics.
I feel that The Handmaid’s Tale is a show that everyone should watch because of the importance of the topics at hand and how so many groups are disadvantaged in this new terror of a nation now called Gilead.
I give The Handmaid’s Tale an A.
