The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
The darkness is back
Hulu’s acclaimed drama series ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ returns, gloomy — and riveting — as in acclaimed first season
Who’s up for a return trip to Gilead?
The first season of Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” was all bathed in glory. A masterful adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s nightmarish 1985 novel about gender oppression, it nabbed a pile of awards, captured the zeitgeist and elevated lead star Elisabeth Moss to her rightful place among television’s acting royalty.
But as the series moves beyond the pages of Atwood’s book, can it keep us riveted? Season 2 reunites us with Moss’ Offred, our rebellious hero who is determined to free herself and her unborn child from the clutches of a totalitarian society.
Here’s what to expect from the new episodes that became available this week:
Illuminating the past
In Season 1, we learned a lot about how the Republic of Gilead operates. In the wake of environmental disasters and a plunging birthrate, it’s ruled by a fundamentalist dictatorship that treats women as property of the state. The few women who are still fertile have been turned into babymaking slaves for high-ranking “commanders.”
What we didn’t learn so much about were the terrifying events that led to the formation of Gilead. Season 2 fills in the blanks via a series of compelling flashbacks. There are also flashbacks that give us glimpses into the past lives of Offred and several other characters.
It’s darker than dark
Warning: You might not want to binge all of this season’s 13 episodes in a single sitting. That’s because the narrative gets even bleaker than last season, if you can believe that. There are times when it becomes painfully difficult to watch.
The opening episode, in particular, is excruciating. How excruciating? It doesn’t quite reach the sadistic torture-porn levels that “The Walking Dead” did with the introduction of Negan, but it creeps somberly close.
Moving past the source material
Season 1 ended the way Atwood’s novel did — with a cliffhanger that had Offred (her real name is June) boarding a van en route to an unknown destination.
Now, the series enters uncharted territory, but showrunner Bruce Miller insists it remains true to the foundation that the author laid.
“It’s just an expansion of that world,” he explains. “I certainly don’t think we’re beyond the story that she was telling. I think she’s very much the mother of the series. So we were noodling around in that world and just going further, but it’s not exiting that world at all.”
Atwood, incidentally, continues to serve as a consultant on the show.
We go to the colonies
One of the ways the series expands is by pushing into previously unexplored parts of Gilead. That includes our first look at the Colonies, a horribly desolate and toxic outpost where Offred’s friend Emily (Alexis Bledel) was exiled.
Basically a concentration camp, it’s here that enslaved “Unwomen” spend their days shoveling radioactive waste into bags carried off by horses that are treated better than the women are. And you thought “Great Expectations” was grim.
The series also takes us to the safe territory of Canada, where refugees like Moira (Samira Wiley) are trying to rebuild their lives.
Baby on board
At the end of Season 1, Offred was pregnant with the child of her commander’s driver, Nick (Max Minghella). But she’s not exactly ready to throw a joyous baby shower.
“(We’ve) talked about how this child growing inside her is a bit of a ticking time bomb,” Moss says. “And the complications of that are really wonderful to explore. It’s a wonderful thing to have a baby, but she’s having it potentially in this world that she may not want to bring it into. And then, if she does have the baby, (it) gets taken away from her and she can’t be its mother.
“So obviously, it’s very complicated and makes for good drama.”
There’s no baseball in Gilead?
In the opening episode, Offred and a group of fellow handmaids are muzzled and herded by armed guards onto a wide-open, weedstrewn field, where a long row of gallows has been erected. Truly ominous stuff.
Eventually, it becomes clear that they are standing in the middle of a beloved sports venue that has fallen into wretched disrepair.
Somewhere, baseball fans are weeping.
New faces pop up
Season 2 brings aboard some very welcome fresh additions. Among them are Marisa Tomei as the wife of a commander, Cherry Jones as June’s free-spirited mother, Holly (a key character in Atwood’s novel), Bradley Whitford as a commander, and Clea DuVall as Emily’s wife.