Note: This discussion reveals big plot points of The Handmaid’s Tale’s second season finale.

Although he’s continuing to stay tight-lipped about the actual plot of his directorial follow-up to recent Oscar-winner Get Out—outside of noting that his new film, Us, is about relationships, and will be a “social horror thriller” in a familiar vein—Jordan Peele continues to assemble a pretty stellar cast for…

In “Holly,” Elisabeth Moss sweats, grits her teeth, groans, howls, whispers, and weeps. She is a marvel. In a mostly wordless, though not soundless, performance, she pulls the viewer into this haunted house with her. It’s her best work of the season so far, and that is really saying something. Moss makes this sojourn…

It was impossible not to think about what’s happening to immigrants at our country’s southern border when watching this week’s episode of The Handmaid’s Tale. June and her daughter, Hannah, share an all-too-brief reunion that ends with the two ripped apart all over again. It’d be a difficult scene to watch under…

Note: This review contains descriptions of sexual violence, physical violence, and child abuse.

In times of trouble, it’s wise to think strategically. Redundancies are helpful. So is careful image management. The wise look for opportunities to tilt the balance of power, to take a calculated risk, to change the narrative. Moving deliberately is advisable. Acting impulsively often is not. But sometimes, the…

This post discusses plot points of The Handmaid’s Tale episode “Women’s Work.”

In January, Bruce Miller gave an interview about The Handmaid’s Tale to The Hollywood Reporter. In it, writer Josh Wigler asked him about how long he imagines the series could run.

Aunt Lydia, grieving for the loss of women she thinks are children, women she tortures but thinks she nurtures, calls out words that she believes to be names. She weeps, because she believes. She makes it a ritual, the calling of those false names, because she knows rituals have power—to comfort, to manipulate, to…

It’s an odd war that Serena Joy and June wage in “First Blood,” an often excellent but ultimately baffling hour of The Handmaid’s Tale. It begins when Serena Joy, scared and guilty, literally removes the wall that separates her from the woman carrying “her” baby, giving her a chance to see it on an ultrasound monitor.…

This post discusses plot points of The Handmaid’s Tale episode “Seeds.”

Dandelions, or Taraxacum officinale, spread their seeds after they flower. Once the bright yellow florets have dried and fallen away, a “parachute ball” opens up, covering the head of the flower in puffy white parachutes. The seeds mature, and when they do, the tiny white parachutes fly away on the wind, ready to land…

“My darling,” said he, “I beg of you, for my sake and for our child’s sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when…

Ever since the surprise success (and excellence) of last year’s Get Out transformed him from “well-liked sketch comedian” into “bold new film-making talent,” we’ve been eagerly waiting to hear what Jordan Peele’s got cooking up for horror-loving moviegoers next. And while he’s dropped a few hints about some projects…

This post discusses plot points of The Handmaid’s Tale episode “Baggage.”

There are works of art that ask you to read between the lines, to intuit and evaluate and search your mind and thoughts and assumptions, to ask that you experience it without hand-holding. Bruce Miller’s The Handmaid’s Tale is not such a work of art. The performances are often subtle, because these actors are, almost…

This post discusses plot points of The Handmaid’s Tale episodes “June” and “Unwomen.”

In the second episode of its second season, The Handmaid’s Tale goes somewhere that the novel on which its based never did: the Colonies (and also the Boston Globe.) More significantly, however, it continues down a path on which it started last year, and one which the novel never even approached. With an hour split…

And you shall obey his word, and the word of his servants here on earth.

The first season of The Handmaid’s Tale, Hulu’s adaptation of the eponymous Margaret Atwood novel, made for some of the best TV in 2017. Every bit as harrowing as its source material—in which the few fertile women left in the world are reduced to incubators by an oppressive, theocratic regime—Bruce Miller’s series was…