‘Handmaid’s Tale’ regains its footing with rousing third season
“The Handmaid’s Tale” has got its groove back. Or maybe its fruit.
After a second season that could most generously be described as misery porn, the Emmy-winning drama returns to Hulu Wednesday (new episodes released weekly, ★★★☆) for a third run that rights many – though definitely not all – of Season 2’s wrongs.
The new season is more propulsive and watchable, although it doesn’t quite reach the heights of that first moving season. But “Handmaid’s” regains its footing by setting off on a new path.
Last season ended on a sour note when June (Elisabeth Moss) turned down an opportunity to leave the totalitarian state of Gilead, handing her newborn daughter over to Emily (Alexis Bledel) as the van that was supposed to take her to freedom drove away. June stayed behind, ostensibly to rescue her elder daughter, Hannah, from Gilead as well.
Of course, if June had gotten into the truck with Emily and left the country, the show would have no reason to go on. But the narrative contrivance required to keep her in that red cloak and white bonnet was frustratingly poor storytelling. Heading into the new season, the biggest risk was that the series would celebrate June’s bad choice and the story would become repetitive.
What’s gratifying is how, almost immediately, the other characters acknowledge June’s idiotic move. The show doesn’t make her a hero or a martyr. It makes her ungrateful and obtuse. Much of the season premiere is spent on the consequences of June’s unwise decision and Emily’s path to freedom. There’s a fiery goodbye to her time with the Waterfords, then June moves to a new household, and after a rocky start tries to fight back against Gilead.
It’s in June’s sometimes clumsy and misguided efforts to join the resistance that “Handmaid’s” gains the momentum the series has long been missing. It’s invigorating to get out of the claustrophobic Waterford house, to see new faces (especially Bradley Whitford’s semi-psychotic Commander Lawrence) and for the story to move forward instead of trotting in miserable place as it did for so long last year.
However, some of the plotting and characterization stumbles as Season 3 progresses, particularly when Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski) and Fred (Joseph Fiennes) get back into the mix.
Although Strahovski and Fiennes are fine actors, the Waterfords are the least compelling characters in the series. Their story is joyless and dull, and Serena Joy’s arc is muddied by a development that brings them back into June’s circle near the end of the six episodes made available for review of the season’s 13.
Outside of Gilead, “Handmaid’s” continues its delicate touch portraying life after trauma. Bledel does some of her best work as Emily recovers in Canada and tries to rebuild life after years of brutal abuse. Luke (O. T. Fagbenle) has some great scenes as he reckons with his wife’s baby (conceived with another man), but the writers are sorely underusing Samira Wiley’s Moira for a second straight season.
Although “Handmaid’s” found a better way forward, Season 3 retains one deep fault it’s been plagued with ever since the series surpassed Margaret Atwood’s novel. There just isn’t enough story to go around, and the deeper the series dives into Gilead’s bureaucracy and culture (including a jaunt to Washington, D.C.), the more the cracks in the world-building start to show.
June may have some fight in her this year, but I wonder how much of her “Tale” is really left to tell.