The Handmaid's Tale Season 1 Review

The Handmaid's Tale (2017-)
Season 1 - 10 episodes (2017)

Watch The Handmaid's Tale on Hulu
Created by: Bruce Miller
Starring: Elisabeth Moss, Yvonne Strahovski, Joseph Fiennes, Ann Dowd, Madelaine Brewer, Samira Wiley, Alexis Bledel
Rated: TV-MA
Watch the trailer

Plot
Set in a dystopian future, a woman is forced to live as a concubine under a fundamentalist theocratic dictatorship.

Verdict
This show drops you into this strange world that is purportedly a few years into our future. The world is intriguing on its own, and the plot is about enslaved women which is relevant culturally. This setup provides a lot of tension as episodes flashback to when the enslaved handmaids were free. The story is fantastic, and Moss does a spectacular job in a show that tackles serious subjects of power and control while warning of the effects from extreme ideology. A new country was created from the ground up with new rules and ideas yet no one seems any happier. People only desire gain power, control each other, or vent their frustrations on someone else.
Watch it.

Review
Based on Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel, this series starts by throwing a lot of questions at you. The world is a divided class where Offred (Elisabeth Moss) is some kind of slave or domestic servant, a handmaid. I suspected this was a totalitarian regime and it is. The hook of this show is the question of what this world is and how the characters got there.

Offred hates her situation. It's soon revealed that this world is a possible future of our world. An infertility plague and civil war caused the dissolution of the U.S. and the rise of a new country, Gilead.

Women that can reproduce are imprisoned as sex slaves and domestic servants. Sex is a means to reproduction. It's intriguing that fertile women are denigrated rather than revered, but it's because of subjugation and control. The ruling class set the rules and fashioned them so they could stay in power. Women have a commodity and men subjugate them to control it and limit womens' influence.

The powerful use the Bible as a weapon, a blueprint for control. The Bible applies only when it benefits the ruling class. The first episode depicts the handmaids killing a man accused of rape, but I wondered what he really did as the society sanctions it between handmaids and the ruling class.
The handmaids kill him because that's how they avoid punishment, it's also misplaced rage. They can take out their frustrations on this guy.

The system pushes them to distrust. Offred hates her shopping partner, but soon realizes her partner hates the system too. They each thought the other was a pious believer. With spies everywhere, they were hesitant to reveal their feelings.

It's such a strange society. Men do as they please and all women are grouped by the color of their dress. Women are maid's reproduction slaves, sex slaves, or colony workers. This setup is what makes the story so poignant as it grapples with issues of power, control, and gender.
Why does the ruling class think handmaids have the intellect of a child? It has to be a play at control.
Even the ruling class women are subjugated. Why would they agree to that? I suppose it was a gradual creep, then again if the majority of lawmakers are men it isn't a surprise.

Strahovski and Joseph Fiennes play Serena and Fred.

Offred belong to Fred and Serena. They are nice to Offred, aside from the imprisonment and rape.
Serena seems terrible at first, but then I wondered if she wasn't that bad. She seemed sympathetic to how people treat handmaids, but she is that bad. Part of Serena's disdain for Offred is the fact that Offred can provide her husband what she can't. Serena helped shape this new government then was pushed out for being a woman. Serena takes her frustrations out on the person at a lower rank than her, Offred. Offred is only a means to an end, a baby. Serena may be sympathetic to handmaids in general, but only when they are out of her home and someone else's problem.

The first few episodes of this show are electric, but it began to cool in the middle of the season. Only meaning I wasn't watching a few episodes in one sitting. It's still very good, it just doesn't have the same hook. The world building is fascinating and I missed it when we had a grasp of the world and the show moved into the plot.

Elisabeth Moss plays Offred.

Moss is amazing as Offred. She conveys this sense of underlying rage while having to act subservient. She has a few scenes where she gets to really show off the emotion she can bring to the screen.

No one in this world is good, or at least few people are. Power corrupts. Those in power try to control everyone around them which breeds resentment. Resentment breeds hate, direct and displaced. The only way to make this society work is to have spies everywhere which spawns fear.

I began to wonder why handmaids don't revolt even at the penalty at death. Surely that's better than servitude. Offred wants to save her daughter. The entire system is designed to make women subservient. They're brainwashed not to revolt. The series is powerful, and becomes even stronger when you begin drawing parallels to history.