BEST OF 2017: THE HANDMAID'S TALE

3.   THE HANDMAID'S TALE (HULU)

Schwartzblog is generally big on plotting and forward momentum, but The Handmaid’s Tale is compelling despite never really attempting real propulsiveness.  The world of Gilead is as bleak as the darkest corners of Westeros, but where Game Of Thrones (like most dark and dystopian fiction) aims to keep you invested via a narrative knife at your throat, Handmaid’s measured gait and claustrophobic focus creates a threat more akin to narrative asphyxia.  I prefer a rapid pace as a rule, but nonetheless have to respect how defiantly not-bingeworthy the show makes its vision of a misogynistic theocracy.  The ultimate goal of most streaming shows is to keep you glued to the couch, but when I finished an episode, I needed to get up and take a walk, have a drink, do pretty much anything except turn on the next episode. 

But the show seemed utterly indifferent to "hooking" me, moving instead like its heroine on one of her highly supervised trips to the grocery: carefully, quietly, intently focused on the woman hidden within the distinctive bonnet that allows only the occasional furtive glimpse at the horrors of her surroundings.  But in those glimpses, Margaret Atwood’s dystopia is brought to painterly, horrifyingly vivid life.  And when the tight focus is on a powerhouse performance from Elizabeth Moss (not that we expect anything less of her at this point), it justifies the confidence to move deliberately and avoid leaning into the more YA-friendly aspects of the material in favor of an atmosphere more terrifying than any horror movie I saw last year. 

At the same time, I’ve also started to wonder, is it possible for something to feel bleak and quaint at the same time?  As 2017 wore on, issues of misogyny and rape culture came to dominate more and more of the national conversation.  But while Gilead as the fevered fantasy on Mike Pence’s vision board seemed highly topical in January, the continuing ineptitude and cartoonish venality of the Trump administration have made it increasingly clear that they are more apt to bring about the moronic hellscape of Idiocracy than anything as formidable, or remotely competent, as the show’s religious junta.  And the wave of firings, disgrace, and resignations that followed the outing of Harvey Weinstein as a rapacious monster have brought different, more subtle forms of sexual abuse to the fore of our collective consciousness.  This rot is sunk deep and wide across all strata of society, and removing it will not be as relatively simple as opposing a uniformed, expressly fascist regime.  It will be interesting to see if when it returns next year, the show will have a specific take on how it’s not just the men with guns that pose a danger to women.  Even if it doesn’t touch that angle, it is likely to remain the most effective horror story, built around one of the best performances, of the year.

Watch It For:  Alexis Bledel’s harrowing spotlight episode, an object lesson in brutal understatement which resulted in one of those rare Emmy wins that was completely justified.