The Handmaid's Tale (Season 1)

[Spinal]

Finished this last night and I was pretty disappointed with the final episode. I think it might be the weakest of the series. The climactic confrontation between the handmaids and the powers-that-be just doesn't ring true.

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Offred has just learned for a certainty that her daughter is alive. So, the next thing she does is make a stand that could very likely get her killed? I understand that Waterford's baby gives her a degree of protection. But I don't understand the need to turn her into Gandhi. Janine is back one episode after jumping off a bridge? What? This absolutely drains any power from the tense events of Episode 9. And it also drains any sense of danger for Offred when she is finally escorted into the black van. If the show isn't even willing to kill freaking Janine, why am I supposed to worry about Offred? I'm supposed to believe Aunt Lydia is going to allow herself to be embarrassed publicly by her own crew and not immediately respond with discipline and cruelty? I'm supposed to believe that Janine wouldn't just get shot on the spot if she's already scheduled for execution? And that sequence with Nina Simone ... just awful.

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Moss is wonderful, but I think I'm out after this season.

[number8]

I think you have it in your head that the handmaids are more expendable than the show makes them to be? Gilead considers fertile women to be a very rare and extremely valuable commodity that upsets everyone when one is lost, so it makes sense to me that they're not constantly threatened with looming death (I certainly don't watch the show thinking of that as the stake). [

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They all knew from the Red Center that Janine is mentally unhealthy but they still sent her out to several homes to be a handmaid anyway, and when they caught Emily in a sexual relationship with one of her house's marthas, they only hanged the martha. I got the impression that Auntie Lydia was so beside herself in that execution sequence because Janine's was the first time it's ever been ordered. She did threaten consequence for the handmaids, but these people are freaks about their rituals. If the court wants her stoned to death, an Auntie isn't really in a position to hold an impromptu firing squad.

] It's not like this is a war-time world with trigger-happy gestapos. We were shown that Gilead has some semblance of due process, however tipped.

[Milky Joe]

And that sequence with Nina Simone ... just awful.

Yeah. Can we please retire that song being used in TV already?

[DavidSeven]

Finished this last night. It's certainly compelling, but I'm not sure how much of this isn't just propped up completely by Moss's performance and the superb production values. The lone episode where Moss isn't front and center definitely felt like the weakest and felt like an episode of a bad TV show. So far, I'm not convinced that the writing is superior. Too often, characters don't seem to be saying or doing things that would be helpful to their cause, and the show seems to be playing it fast and loose with its internal logic. There's a good foundation here with Moss and the show's design, but there's still considerable room for growth from a characterization and storytelling standpoint.