In the depths of its path, “The Handmaid’s Tale” has found itself – or a version of itself, at once more graceful and exotic – once again.
In the past, I’ve written that this show, which has a solid cast supporting perhaps the leanest artist on television, has been frustratingly unable to break from the efficacy of its setting. Season after season was spent re-litigating Elizabeth Moss’ damages back in June, all while transforming her from a well-known human to a character history. The show explained that June had changed due to the shock very well. Now, though, John feels liberated. In the wake of the season 4 finale, in which our heroine leads a mob to kill her executioner (Joseph Fiennes), Moss’ performance feels open, as does the series’ creative world.
This new season, brilliantly, takes place largely outside of the show’s post-American Gilead theocracy, and outside of the immediate concerns of The Handmaid’s Life. Admirably progressing in the story, John now discovers her next job, as someone who frees himself, kills her enemy, and helps unleash a resistance that has visibly triumphed. The nonsense of the forces of benevolence, and the sudden resilience of Gilead, is of interest, as does June’s concern: Who is she, after years of her crusade, if she isn’t fighting? Elsewhere, Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovsky), the former world-supremacist anti-feminist who has sat at the center of Gilead’s power structure, finds herself punished with the tools she helped craft into what proves to be a satisfactory example of narrative mathematics. Without her husband, she is not an authority broker. According to the rules I created, they are nothing.
It’s not exactly her punishment: in fact, the question that haunts this season is what it means, and whether it is possible, to forgive the real damage. But the reflection allows each character to show a new side. In Strahovski’s case, that’s a regret that is still shaded by Serena Joy’s pride and her near-total inability to truly admit what was wrong. For Moss, pride comes into the equation too, with her clashing with Serena Joy, giving June the sense that her belief in herself as a transformational character isn’t everything in her head, and raising the question of how far she can go. push things.
These collisions stress naivety, even in this series whose tricks we now know: the “maid” has to be the “maid”. This means pushing characters together in permutations that only make sense in a world where June has the looks of a superhero and Serena Joy from a super villain. They’re among the only characters in Gilead or in Gilead, especially given the marginalization of the supporting cast. Ann Dowd’s aunt Lydia feels accidental about the proceedings. Alexis Bledel’s Emily, in the wake of the artist leaving the show, was explained in one hasty scene. And Commander Lawrence as Bradley Whitford, who emerges as Gilead’s last boss, reigns supreme over it all with a performance of brilliant intricacies (even if, in the depths of the season, the writers couldn’t resist the temptation to let him explain so much about his thinking and schemes in Bond style villain).
However, the show seems endless, as we see our way toward a possible end for Gilead and, crucially, a world beyond him. June arrived in Canada before this season, but now the choices before her seem clearly defined and reveal a character, not just the problems the character is facing.
Even as someone who has often missed “The Handmaid’s Tale” in the past, one must concede that it was an above-average attempt to solve a near-intractable problem. To the wit: We’ve come to an intriguing place, as June has to make decisions about how to proceed against her abusers, precisely because of the many hurts she’s suffered. But getting there wowed viewers with frustratingly repetitive TV, keeping the show and his talent in stasis (with June slowly advancing toward freedom, then getting slapped) for years. What happens now matters because of what happened before, which at the moment was ineffective due to repetition. We feel more aware of the June liberation because of our association with events that have become as vulgar as they have done evil.
What has been accomplished, and “The Handmaid” in a new and wonderful age, an era that is at its best when not constrained by current events. Attempts, for example, to link Gilead’s world to the new American tradition of separating children from parents at the border are understandable in terms of their intentions but fall short: If there is a show that can deal with the gravity of this shame, it isn’t this one. The show, which was planned before the rise of Donald Trump and based on a generation-old novel, took heat from its closeness to an energetic right-wing movement. But the recent reversal of a woman’s basic right to choose has occurred so recently that it has not been possible to respond to these recent episodes; Instead, the new “handmaid” approach allows for a different kind of insight. It’s another reflection: The show excels in its fifth season when it treats its situations as symbolic and its characters real.
The first two episodes of “The Handmaid’s Tale” will be released on Wednesday, September 14 on Hulu, with new episodes to follow weekly.
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