• About
  • Editorial Board
    • Staff Writers
  • Advertise
  • Join Us
  • Archives
The Wellesley News -
  • News and Features
    • Professor Phillip Levine Discusses “A Problem of Fit”
      Professor Phillip Levine Discusses “A Problem of Fit”
    • CS Department shifts CS 111 course structure
      CS Department shifts CS 111 course structure
    • WAMI and WRJ host discussion on criminalization of abortion
      WAMI and WRJ host discussion on criminalization of abortion
    • News
      • News in Brief
      • Nation & World
      • President’s Corner
      • Senate Report
    • Features
      • Alumnae Spotlight
      • Eye on Science
      • Faculty Focus
      • LGBTQIA+ Column
  • Opinions
    • Andrew tate: ending the cycle of toxic masculinity
      Andrew tate: ending the cycle of toxic masculinity
    • Turn it off: healing from news fatigue in the digital age
      Turn it off: healing from news fatigue in the digital age
    • Let them eat bread: the unequal effects of food price inflation
      Let them eat bread: the unequal effects of food price inflation
    • Staff Editorial
    • Letters to the Editor
    • The Elephant in the Room
  • Arts
    • The 95th Academy Awards Nominations: The Cool and The Controversial
      The 95th Academy Awards Nominations: The Cool and The Controversial
    • Lucy Dacus Brings a Minimal Yet Powerful Performance to Northeastern University
      Lucy Dacus Brings a Minimal Yet Powerful Performance to Northeastern University
    • “Glass Onion” Takes Shots at Easy Targets
      “Glass Onion” Takes Shots at Easy Targets
    • Arts In The News
    • Reviews
    • Music Peek
    • Books Before Boys
  • Sports and Wellness
    • Student-Athlete of October
      Student-Athlete of October
    • Athletics Update Oct. 19, 2022
      Athletics Update Oct. 19, 2022
    • The Case for Body Neutrality
      The Case for Body Neutrality
    • Athlete of the Week
    • Boston Sports Update
    • The Vegan Digest
    • The SHE Corner
  • The Wellesley Snooze
    • Rejected Snooze Articles for the Week
      Rejected Snooze Articles for the Week
    • Happy Valentine’s Day from Spog
      Happy Valentine’s Day from Spog
    • The Four Best Places to Loudly FaceTime Someone on Campus
      The Four Best Places to Loudly FaceTime Someone on Campus
  • Miscellanea
    • President’s Column: The Butterfly Effect
      President’s Column: The Butterfly Effect
    • Administrators shocked to learn that students dislike being left in dark
      Administrators shocked to learn that students dislike being left in dark
    • 50 Lies You Tell Yourself in Order to Survive Until Graduation
      50 Lies You Tell Yourself in Order to Survive Until Graduation
    • The Dose
    • The Olive Branch
    • Multimedia
      • Galleries
      • Infographics
      • Videos
By Ciara Wardlow Arts, ReviewsMay 2, 2018

“The Handmaid’s Tale” season 2 lives up to the original, for better and for worse

Photo Courtesy of Hulu

How can you tell an uncomfortable, painful and more or less joyless story and still make people want to watch it? The art of making unpleasant yet engrossing content is perhaps one of the trickiest arts any storyteller can master, and in season 2, Hulu’s Emmy-winning “The Handmaid’s Tale,” adapted from the novel of the same name by Margaret Atwood, continues to be one of the most adept television narratives at walking this tightrope. In the world of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” an extremist religious group executes a successful coup d’etat against the United States government in response to a mounting fertility crisis, establishing in its place the Republic of Gilead. The few fertile women remaining are stripped of their identities and autonomy and forced to become surrogates — handmaids — to the members of the ruling class of this authoritarian theocracy and their wives.

The second season of “The Handmaid’s Tale” picks up where the first left off, but with one key difference — the admittedly ambiguous ending of season one also marked the end of Atwood’s novel, meaning that the plotting and dialogue are now firmly in the hands of showrunner Bruce Miller and his colleagues. Miller claims that Atwood, a producer on the show, did contribute ideas to the new season, which likely assisted the mostly smooth transition, with the show generally maintaining the tone, pacing, and style established the first time around. That said, the transition is nonetheless apparent in more than one regard. Protagonist June’s (Elizabeth Moss’s) interior monologues, for example — which in season one were lifted more-or-less verbatim from Atwood’s pages — are somewhat less prevalent and decidedly less poetic. Though the writers clearly try to emulate Atwood’s style, June doesn’t quite have the same eloquence she once did.

Admittedly, the new season is not entirely divorced from Atwood’s novel. Various elements that did not make it into the first season of the Hulu series are explored in this second installment, such as June’s relationship with her mother and the radioactive wasteland known as the Colonies, where trouble-stirrers and other undesirables are sent to work themselves to death. It may be a brave new world, but in a sense the series still has training wheels on.

“The Handmaid’s Tale”’s emphasis on being timely and relevant is a strength in certain regards — the plausibility of its horror in how a very familiar U.S. landscape could transform into the autocratic nightmare of Gilead in a matter of years packs a decided punch, with pre-Gilead flashbacks very much reflecting real-life 2018 — but it’s a hand that the show at times overplays. While the series is fundamentally dark and uncomfortable, it nonetheless has a comfort zone it rarely strays from, much to its own detriment.

While the show clearly prides itself on its feminist fury and ‘real world’ relevance, it seems strikingly unwilling to address issues such as race and socioeconomic privilege. Yes, it addresses concepts of privilege in the dystopian Gilead, but not so much in flashbacks to the pre-Gilead United States, when June was a book editor and other prominently featured handmaids were of comparable backgrounds, such as Emily (Alexis Bedel), a former handmaid sentenced to the Colonies, who was, prior to the collapse, a tenure-track academic.

While Moss performance lives up to the numerous accolades it has already received, there are times at which the show’s dedication to June and her perspective seems slightly questionable. As season two finds her pregnant, she is immune, or at the very least far less vulnerable, to the repercussions of the act of rebellion she instigated at the end of season one than her fellow handmaids. One would imagine that the perspective of one of these other women might be interesting to explore, but the two episodes released thus far have not yet done so. However, there are still 11 more scheduled for this season, so there’s still time.

“The Handmaid’s Tale” is available on Hulu with new episodes uploaded on Wednesdays.

 

Share on

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Google +
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
Previous articleDespite seemingly massive losses, “Infinity War” operates with no real consequences
Next articleKanye West overlooks Trump’s racism

You may also like

The 95th Academy Awards Nominations: The Cool and The Controversial

image of lucy dacus playing the guitar in multicolored lights.

Lucy Dacus Brings a Minimal Yet Powerful Performance to Northeastern University

“Glass Onion” Takes Shots at Easy Targets

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Email Newsletter

Sign up to receive our weekly digest in your inbox

* indicates required

Top Articles

  • Logos of social media apps such as Twitter, Tiktok, Netflix, Spotify, and Discord. Andrew tate: ending the cycle of toxic masculinity
  • Stone-Davis dining staff report mistreatment
  • The 95th Academy Awards Nominations: The Cool and The Contro...
  • A collection of a wide variety of foods in the colors of the rainbow Let them eat bread: the unequal effects of food price inflat...
  • Red envelope that contains money to celebrate the Lunar New Year. America’s cultural appropriation is a modern form of i...

Recent Tweets

Tweets by @Wellesley_News

The independent student newspaper of Wellesley College since 1901.

Sign up to receive our weekly digest in your inbox

* indicates required

  • About
  • Editorial Board
    • Staff Writers
  • Advertise
  • Join Us
  • Archives
COPYRIGHT © 2023 THE WELLESLEY NEWS
Back to top