The Handmaid's Tale

There are some mind-blowing plot developments to come: some of them quite soul crushing, while some of them are very moving, and others truly suspenseful and thrilling.

This remains a big, bold, brassy show.

Grueling and gripping. [10-23 May 2021, p.9]

Thankfully, season four finally regains some momentum and forward motion. Based on the eight out of ten total episodes made available to critics, this is the best The Handmaid’s Tale has been since its first season.

While entertaining largely due to Elisabeth Moss’ phenomenal acting, a feeling of “enough already” permeates the show in its constant brutalizing, dehumanization, and the way it favors the hierarchy of privileged women.

The first three episodes of Season 4’s back half are not outstanding, though No. 8 is pretty damn close. They’re just good — they do what needs to be done, they do it well, and they don’t waste any time (well, they don’t waste as much time). June’s evolution pushes the series beyond the traumatic horrors of past seasons and into unsettling antihero territory. Eventually, Season 4 delivers on delayed payoffs and does so with as much urgency and, dare I say, joyous gratification as one can expect from this show.

The storytelling feels almost as clear and deliberate as it did when The Handmaid’s Tale first began, even if this series might never recover its initial urgency. After non-stop pain, it seems we’re finally in for at least a little catharsis.

It's possible to continue to admire the show's high-quality pieces and still think that end should come sooner rather than later.

There's not a whole lot of pleasure to be had in the waiting. June's ordeal has now started to feel like our ordeal. We need to have it resolved as much as she does. but like her, don't have any choice in the matter because we're invested too.

We already know that life for women in Gilead is abhorrent, and it feels like the more interesting story now lies outside the bounds of this hellhole.

Isn't it nice to see the women giving the men their own medicine? Blessed day. And quite telling when murder and castration come as sunny relief.

New things, things we've waited for, start to happen in episode 6. A few of these moments are genuinely cathartic and moving, but others feel underplayed and dulled by such a long delay.

The Handmaid's Tale is solidly entrenched in the things it does well — with Elisabeth Moss' performance as an unimpeachable centerpiece — and most frustrating in its bleak and repetitive rhythms.

While the fourth season moves toward breaking that old catch and release merry-go-round, it doesn't sufficiently persuade us to wholly invest in any hints at evolving beyond it. June despises Gilead and hates it more each time she's forced to go back, but without providing a vision as to where the story's headed the best we can muster in reaction to her plight is a yawn.

If you don’t mind continuing to churn through a storyline that effectively adds up to one step forward and one, perhaps one-and-a-half, steps backward … then yes, watch Season 4 of The Handmaid’s Tale.

The show has become another one of TV’s never-ending stories, another “Homeland,” where seasons are crammed with action-adventure filler, as June runs from one safe house to another, always escaping from seemingly inescapable situations. ... By the time I reached the third episode of the new season, I remembered all the criticisms of the show’s excessive violence, and I had to concede. The show seems to fetishize June’s punishments.