The Handmaid’s Tale “Safe”

Well, here I am at the end of the penultimate season of The Handmaid’s Tale.  That’s probably a good thing for me.  There’s only so much of this I can take every time it comes back at this point.

Yeah, again, there’s good acting and all, but I just can’t get too much behind the writing.  It’s either designed to make everything and everyone as miserable as possible or it’s there to make this show more of a soap opera.  Characters who probably should have been dead many times over keep surviving because they have that plot armor I keep making notes about.  That may be best exemplified in this episode by, of all people, Janine.  Given a chance to live with the Lawrences to be at least near her baby, she instead tells the former Mrs. Putnam exactly what she thinks of the woman, and for that, she’s arrested by the Eyes and taken away by men who feel the need to remind Aunt Lydia just where she is in that society by knocking the older woman down.

Says Janine, “I’ll be OK.”

And yeah, I think there’s a good chance she will be.  Why not?  She has survived everything else.  I could suggest this is unearned bravado or a symptom of a mind that has fractured under all the suffering she’s endured, but the way this show goes, no I think she probably will be just fine.  If she does end up dying, it’ll probably be in the last couple episodes.  She may suffer, but Janine seems to exist to suffer so other characters don’t have to.

Then again, Nick is also in jail for popping Lawrence one.

Oh, and Luke was arrested for murder.  If the show didn’t know what to do with him, that’s a good way to deal with him.

But between that and June’s escape (with Nichole) to Alaska, of course Serena Joy is on the same train as June.  Why wouldn’t she be there?  And once again, a Wife thinks her Handmaid is her friend.  Mrs. Putnam assumed that about Janine, and Serena assumed it about June.

What is wrong with these people?  I don’t understand how Gilead has fans, how Lawrence doesn’t see he’s become the very thing he claimed to hate, or how this show ends well for anyone.  Is June supposed to somehow triumph?  How?  And will I care that much when the final season airs?

Eh, I’ll probably watch it anyway.  I’ve come this far.

But now I need something else for Mondays.  Hey, Titans came back.  Mediocre Mondays continues.

Well, maybe Titans will at least give me a cool guest star.  And maybe a story that doesn’t make the season look like the show should have been called Nightwing and Friends.