Review: Season Two: The Handmaid's Tale

HBO's adaptation of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is hard-core. Duh. If you're telling this story honestly, what else could it be? The Happy Fun Bear's Tale it isn't.

As bloody horrible as it is, the source material is good SF. Atwood sharply imagined her hellish world. The show's world-builders have done justice her original vision. They've ret-conned the tech that's moved on since 1985. Filled in the sketchy details that Atwood only implied. Without elbowing you in the ribs, they connect the dots with the contemporary outbreak of alt.fascism. It can happen here seems to be the point.

OK. Point taken.

Season One took us up to the end of Atwood's original nightmare.

Season Two continues the tale. The creators have nicely extrapolated the events that unfolded after her novel's last page. Good writing, acting, directing, cinematography. But ...

Now what's the point?

The screenwriters have written themselves into a corner.

Where's the show going to go now? 

There are two basic choices ...

There's some act of public or private rebellion— or both. June escapes! (Or not.) But there's an invasion force from Canada! Women fight back! The Handmaids rebel! There's a Third Civil War — and half the former United States splits off from the religious nut nation and joins the holdouts in Alaska. The final battle is on!

Either that — or the oppression grinds on. And on and on and on. June and the other handmaids remain stuck in their Handmaid Hell. Tune in next week to see how they're raped, beaten, humiliated, mutilated and murdered!

If a rebellion spoils the status quo, we're coming to the end of the tale. (And a happy ending yet.)

If not, it's like watching The Abused Wife show every week. As brilliantly imagined as it is, the show is damned depressing.

Would I want to watch a year's worth of episodes exploring the miserable fate of Winston Smith after the Thought Police broke him and he "learned to love Big Brother" ...?

Would you?

A Taste of Armageddon ... with Waffles

"A Taste of Armageddon" was an original "Star Trek" episode — one of many in which Capt. Kirk violated the Prime Directive. Basically, the inhabitants of planets Eminiar VII and Vendikar were at war. To mitigate the destruction, they agree to fight the war as a computer simulation. If you "died" in the simulation, you had to report to a disintegration chamber where you were promptly annihilated. The citizens of both planets sheepishly complied, until Kirk ordered Spock to destroy the simulation computer. Righty-right.

 If a lottery ticket arrived in the mail ordering people to show up at a firing squad, there'd be mass revolt. But it amounts to the same damn thing.

Granted, the "Star Trek" episode involved a totalitarian government killing its own people. The American government lets the people kill each other.

Either way, a political system is in place. Random fatality is the price of maintaining that system.

Arguably, the floating lottery of mass shootings is form of totalitarian government as a distributed system. We all live with the knowledge that the sketchy dude (or clean-cut dude) at the next table might be packing —and you never know what triggers might trigger his trigger finger. (The words "Vietnam," "Trump," "Clinton," "9-11," or "Niagra Falls" just might set him off!) Auggh — is he looking this way? Oh god, oh god. Whew. OK. Stay cool, pay the check, go, don't talk too loud, don't make eye contact, avoid public spaces, know your exits, keep your head down and, just to stay on the safe side, stay home and lock your doors. As I've said before, "Charlie Manson is watching you."