Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Propaganda Machine
Jan 2, 2005

Truthiness!
It's just that it usually takes until season 5 for a show to vet this far off track. I mean misfits season 3 definitely wasn'tnt great but I still d enjoyed watching it.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Die Sexmonster!
Nov 30, 2005

Zane posted:

the book is creatively successful for its individual, psychological, portrait, rather than its comprehensive historico-social mapping, of a hypothetical totalitarian society. it is only successful--and only attempts to be successful--on this basis. the substance of the narrative drama turns upon the very limited information it provides to both the reader and the protagonist. this creates a deliberately claustrophobic psychological environment. offred has to contend with a world of constant and universal suspicion; she has to perceive, interpret, and utilize small events, and small pieces of information, in order to understand her situation and to survive. the relationship between offred and the commander--the mystery of the commander's intent, the opacity of certain gestures--is endlessly exploited and takes most of the book to unfold. it is never actually revealed why the commander gives offred special favours. the mystery of the characters to each other gets efficiently at one of the deeper psychological truths of a totalitarian society: which is that you never know if the person next to you could be your greatest friend or your greatest enemy in the world.

in the hands of a skilled director and writing room the tv show could reproduce this very deliberate dramatic approach in a slow and very 'minimalist' way. it wouldn't have to invent a sketchily plausible totalitarian society because it wouldn't have to trouble itself with the larger picture. it could make a big deal out of small events and conversations. but the showrunners are not very skilled and have instead fallen into the style and plotting of a more or less bog standard television procedural. the plot and the characters have run quickly out of road; the themes are confused (should we feel sympathy for the commander's wife? is gilead a plausible, even justifiable, response to an apocalyptic situation?); and things will only get sloppier from here.

I still got a lot of this in season 1, despite waiting on reading the book until after it aired.

Season 2 didn't really throw this out entirely until the last episode, where I'm with you entirely.

SixFigureSandwich
Oct 30, 2004
Exciting Lemon
I rewatched Escape from L.A. and the intro is now canon in my mind with the foundation of Gilead: fundie Presidential candidate predicts the destruction of LA in the far future of the year 2000, this happens, President gets a lifetime term of office, National Police Force founded to keep the ruins LA separate from the mainland and to serve as a prison for various undesirables.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISMR-Wl_73I&t=120s
(skip to 2mins if needed)

stev
Jan 22, 2013

Please be excited.



Just wrapped up season 2.

It was just really, really great. The only things that don't really work are the first escape (which would've been fine if the season didn't end the way it did and make it entirely redundant) and the colonies (which were just there to show us them and a lot was lost when both Emily and Janine made it back fine).

I really liked what they did with Serena too. It took a long time to get there but it felt earned.

Propaganda Machine
Jan 2, 2005

Truthiness!
Hoo boy.

dirksteadfast
Oct 10, 2010

Steve2911 posted:

Just wrapped up season 2.

It was just really, really great. The only things that don't really work are the first escape (which would've been fine if the season didn't end the way it did and make it entirely redundant) and the colonies (which were just there to show us them and a lot was lost when both Emily and Janine made it back fine).

I really liked what they did with Serena too. It took a long time to get there but it felt earned.

Those two are perfect examples of how the show lacks the needed imagination to really go to good places. Every time they tried a new idea it was quickly swept away to reinstate the status quo. They had a hit on their hands and wanted to keep the train rolling, but without anything new from the source material they just spun their wheels for a while season hoping to buy some time to write something.

Wafflecopper
Nov 27, 2004

I am a mouth, and I must scream

Wait, are you saying they wrote a season of TV to buy themselves time to write a season of TV?

dirksteadfast
Oct 10, 2010
I never claimed to be very smart.

The Ninth Layer
Jun 20, 2007

The show is about June and the Waterfords and their hosed up relationships and once I came to accept that I enjoyed what I was watching a lot more.

Pingiivi
Mar 26, 2010

Straight into the iris!

The Ninth Layer posted:

The show is about June staring at the camera.

Fixed that.

veni veni veni
Jun 5, 2005


As I read these posts my stare is slowly turning into a sinister smile and as I walk towards the camera a Joan Jett song starts playing.

QuickbreathFinisher
Sep 28, 2008

by reading this post you have agreed to form a gay socialist micronation.
`

veni veni veni posted:

As I read these posts my stare is slowly turning into a sinister smile and as I walk towards the camera a Joan Jett song starts playing.

wow, all the rape and abuse that she endured was actually feminist the whole time

Evernoob
Jun 21, 2012
My favorite episode, by far, was the Canada episode. I wan't to see more of the international diplomacy stuff.

Escobarbarian
Jun 18, 2004


Grimey Drawer
I’m finally finishing off this season and the “I thought it would be something to make Gilead go boom” line was so loving bad oh my god

nwin
Feb 25, 2002

make's u think

So I just got done with the episode in season 2 where june meets Hannah.

Did nick get shot? There was some gunfire but no idea wtf happened. Yeah it will
Probably just resolve itself next episode, but just curious.

Also-I haven’t read much of this thread but it seems like this loving show just drags on and on. Yep I get it-Gilead loving sucks and needs to be brought down.

Somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen this season or next season.

Edit: gently caress it, I hate the pacing of this show so much and the plot holes that I decided to spoil the ending. gently caress this show.

nwin fucked around with this message at 02:12 on Aug 27, 2018

precision
May 7, 2006

by VideoGames
I'm legit interested in next season only if it leans hard into the hammy "June for Junedetta" thing and it would very much appear that's where they're going so I'm all in.

I wanna see June walking down the streets of Gilead with an AK-47 slung over one arm and a cigarette dangling like some kinda Punisher In Red.

jerry seinfel
Jun 25, 2007


June Wick

PostNouveau
Sep 3, 2011

VY till I die
Grimey Drawer

precision posted:

I'm legit interested in next season only if it leans hard into the hammy "June for Junedetta" thing and it would very much appear that's where they're going so I'm all in.

I wanna see June walking down the streets of Gilead with an AK-47 slung over one arm and a cigarette dangling like some kinda Punisher In Red.

I was thinking about it, and I'm not as sure now as I was at the end of the season that this is going to happen. It seems ridiculous for June to be able to go back, but Serena played a part in getting the baby free, so she'd support whatever crazy bullshit June told the authorities. New commander guy insists on her as his new handmaid, and we're back to June passively hanging out in Gilead for a new season.

precision
May 7, 2006

by VideoGames

PostNouveau posted:

I was thinking about it, and I'm not as sure now as I was at the end of the season that this is going to happen. It seems ridiculous for June to be able to go back, but Serena played a part in getting the baby free, so she'd support whatever crazy bullshit June told the authorities. New commander guy insists on her as his new handmaid, and we're back to June passively hanging out in Gilead for a new season.

That's possible. I do think it's a sure thing that the new Commander will be a main character because why the hell else would they get someone so well known for one episode?

Owlbear Camus
Jan 3, 2013

Maybe this guy that flies is just sort of passing through, you know?



They're never getting off the island.

jerry seinfel
Jun 25, 2007


Season 3, june escapes
Season 4, we gotta go back to gilead

less laughter
May 7, 2012

Accelerock & Roll
https://twitter.com/THR/status/1038611804027584517

Zwabu
Aug 7, 2006

I just finished binging through both seasons of this. I have not read the book although I have it and now intend to.

One the one hand I think in most ways it's a very good show. In my opinion the best one that's come out of a streaming service so far.

On the other hand I really hope (but am pessimisstic) that the creators have a sense of the necessary pacing for a show this dark and grim, rather than the usual American TV "if it continues to be popular we'll grind seasons out of it until it's utter poo poo and everyone hates it".

The show is about a grim dystopia, a slave society with the sexual enslavement of women and structured around a dour religious framework.

You just can't watch endless seasons of torture, rape and beatings and cruelty. If there's no happy ending and the boot is still on everyone's neck at the end, then it must be short in duration.

Otherwise, there has to be at least an arc towards hope. I don't need the show to end with Gilead blowing up like the Death Star. But there has to be a sense that things have changed, that circumstances have changed in a material way and that the possibilities of an end to this are there.

It would be ridiculous if June kept winding up back in the Waterford house multiple times after getting away. Gilligan's Island as someone had posted earlier. Honestly I don't know if I could watch anymore if she winds up back there next season. Sadly I pretty much expect her to because the Waterfords and June are the principals of the story and I don't know if they know HOW to do the show without it being set in that house with those characters. But it would be insane that June and Nick could be there after spiriting the baby away, holding Fred at gunpoint etc.

I have issues with how things were paced at the end of season 2. The whole event of Serena suddenly feeling bad about the situation of women in Gilead and then getting her finger choppin' comeuppance with subsequent face turn came up in a flash. Too quickly to be believable in my opinion. Likewise the appearance of the Professor Lawrence character (who I like) and his reveal to be kind of a goodish guy seemed really rushed. I felt like what the gently caress were they doing in the early half of the season.

I think the business with June staying behind in Gilead would have been easier to swallow if they'd created a little more sense of the Mayday movement, if June had had a little contact with people and you had a sense she knew someplace to go, someone to contact, if people had talked about rumored safe houses or areas or friendly homes that would harbor underground railroad Handmaidens on the run. This would only have taken a snippet of dialogue here or there. But since they did none of that it just seems like "I'm gonna stay back and become Batman and get mah baby" with NO PLAN in mind, when she couldn't fight her way through a loving garage door a couple episodes earlier.

I don't know what the gently caress anyone talking about a ten season run for this show was thinking. No way "Ceremony Night at Massa Waterford's Slave House" is going to be a watchable thing for multiple seasons without being unbearable, utterly ridiculous, or both.

For me I feel like even if they avoid some of the pitfalls I mentioned, it's hard for me to imagine the show being decent beyond one more season and I worry it might have run off the rails irretrievably already.

nwin
Feb 25, 2002

make's u think

Zwabu posted:

I just finished binging through both seasons of this. I have not read the book although I have it and now intend to.

One the one hand I think in most ways it's a very good show. In my opinion the best one that's come out of a streaming service so far.

On the other hand I really hope (but am pessimisstic) that the creators have a sense of the necessary pacing for a show this dark and grim, rather than the usual American TV "if it continues to be popular we'll grind seasons out of it until it's utter poo poo and everyone hates it".

The show is about a grim dystopia, a slave society with the sexual enslavement of women and structured around a dour religious framework.

You just can't watch endless seasons of torture, rape and beatings and cruelty. If there's no happy ending and the boot is still on everyone's neck at the end, then it must be short in duration.

Otherwise, there has to be at least an arc towards hope. I don't need the show to end with Gilead blowing up like the Death Star. But there has to be a sense that things have changed, that circumstances have changed in a material way and that the possibilities of an end to this are there.

It would be ridiculous if June kept winding up back in the Waterford house multiple times after getting away. Gilligan's Island as someone had posted earlier. Honestly I don't know if I could watch anymore if she winds up back there next season. Sadly I pretty much expect her to because the Waterfords and June are the principals of the story and I don't know if they know HOW to do the show without it being set in that house with those characters. But it would be insane that June and Nick could be there after spiriting the baby away, holding Fred at gunpoint etc.

I have issues with how things were paced at the end of season 2. The whole event of Serena suddenly feeling bad about the situation of women in Gilead and then getting her finger choppin' comeuppance with subsequent face turn came up in a flash. Too quickly to be believable in my opinion. Likewise the appearance of the Professor Lawrence character (who I like) and his reveal to be kind of a goodish guy seemed really rushed. I felt like what the gently caress were they doing in the early half of the season.

I think the business with June staying behind in Gilead would have been easier to swallow if they'd created a little more sense of the Mayday movement, if June had had a little contact with people and you had a sense she knew someplace to go, someone to contact, if people had talked about rumored safe houses or areas or friendly homes that would harbor underground railroad Handmaidens on the run. This would only have taken a snippet of dialogue here or there. But since they did none of that it just seems like "I'm gonna stay back and become Batman and get mah baby" with NO PLAN in mind, when she couldn't fight her way through a loving garage door a couple episodes earlier.

I don't know what the gently caress anyone talking about a ten season run for this show was thinking. No way "Ceremony Night at Massa Waterford's Slave House" is going to be a watchable thing for multiple seasons without being unbearable, utterly ridiculous, or both.

For me I feel like even if they avoid some of the pitfalls I mentioned, it's hard for me to imagine the show being decent beyond one more season and I worry it might have run off the rails irretrievably already.

Just finished the s2 finale and I agree with al of this.

I dunno how June and Nick are able to remain in Gilead with what happened.

What a stupid loving show.

Tiggum
Oct 24, 2007

Your life and your quest end here.


Zwabu posted:

I really hope (but am pessimisstic) that the creators have a sense of the necessary pacing for a show this dark and grim, rather than the usual American TV "if it continues to be popular we'll grind seasons out of it until it's utter poo poo and everyone hates it".
Too late.

precision
May 7, 2006

by VideoGames
In a world where The Walking Dead is on season 8 I really feel like calling this show "loving stupid" is an overstatement. Yeah season 2 wasn't perfect but goddamn I still enjoyed it, tactical realism be damned.

Next season will be the real make or break season I think, hopefully they pull it together.

esperterra
Mar 24, 2010

SHINee's back




The first season was such a perfect adaptation of the book that I'm kind of wondering if I'll ever finish season 2. I might wait for 3 to start and see what reaction to that is, tbh. 2 doesn't seem like unwatchable trash, or anything, it sounds really tedious though with some big missteps in the end.

e: comparing a show like the handmaid's tale to the walking dead is a bad example b/c it's based on a still ongoing comic that has tons of stupid stuff in it. handmaiden's tale is based off a one off, serious, dystopia novel

like yeah the walking dead takes itself super seriously from time to time, but anyone going into that expecting the same we should expect out of an adaptation and continuation of the handmaid's tale is weird. like they're just two way different types of story and have diff things people want out of them imo

esperterra fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Oct 8, 2018

Escobarbarian
Jun 18, 2004


Grimey Drawer
I think it’s a fine enough watch, the flaws only really come into focus once you think about it afterwards. I don’t regret catching up on the last 6 eps.

nwin
Feb 25, 2002

make's u think

precision posted:

In a world where The Walking Dead is on season 8 I really feel like calling this show "loving stupid" is an overstatement. Yeah season 2 wasn't perfect but goddamn I still enjoyed it, tactical realism be damned.

Next season will be the real make or break season I think, hopefully they pull it together.

Sure, it's not as bad at The Walking Dead, and maybe calling it loving stupid wasn't the best choice of words, but everything in S2 was just the same poo poo over and over again.

They just kept beating us over the head with how lovely a place it is. Ok, I get it, only bad things happen-I don't need to keep on seeing it ad nausem-give me some loving vindication. What happen instead? Oh, June looks at the camera again and somehow thinks she's going to change the world. Ok.

veni veni veni
Jun 5, 2005


I'm gonna give season 3 one or two episodes to see where they go with it but it's unlikely I'll stick with it at this point. Season 2 was just not very good. The smartest move is just to watch the first season and move along imo.

The weekly release schedule doesn't help considering the snails pace the show moves at either.

Zwabu
Aug 7, 2006

Overall I still found S2 to be entertaining, but I feel like they used up their "return June to Waterford household" cards. Actually they used one more than they actually had.

I knew almost nothing about the story or show before watching except it was a dystopian alternate history with religious and sexual enslavement of women.

After watching the first episode I was actually surprised there was more than one season. Upon learning there were two seasons I was pretty surprised about halfway through S2 when it became clear the story wasn't going to be wrapping up in two seasons.

Honestly I think one season would have been probably perfect and two about tops for this, if nothing else just from the sheer bleakness and misery quotient of the subject matter.

Roots was a fictionalized miniseries about an actual slave society that lasted for generations. 8 episodes, done.

Someone mentioned that the S1 finale is the final event of the book. Makes sense to me. Gilead is not ended yet, but the event establishes that control is no longer complete, people will make a stand at some point even at great cost. The trajectory towards hope or justice exists even if the specific path is uncertain.

It would be hard to continue with a season of open rebellion happening and the crumbling of Gilead's power without it becoming an entirely different type of show, with a lot more action, stuff happening in other places etc.

The only way it would be interesting to still have a lot of scenes in the Waterford home and neighborhood is if there were gradually and then more rapidly appearing visible signs that the control and order in Gilead were slipping out of the grip of the Commanders, like you literally saw the houses start to look less orderly, started to see some trash on the streets, and then the odd suicide bombing at the marketplace or something.

Honestly between the bombing and June's act of rebellion at the end of S1 there should already be stuff like that creeping in. The only thing you really see aside from more hung bodies from the crackdown (which then was resolved in like one episode with the magical frame up of that one security guy) is the increased use of given names among the Handmaidens.

Giant Tourtiere
Aug 4, 2006

TRICHER
POUR
GAGNER

Zwabu posted:

Overall I still found S2 to be entertaining, but I feel like they used up their "return June to Waterford household" cards. Actually they used one more than they actually had.

That's exactly where I am. Some stuff they did in s2 was really impactful (the stuff at the former newspaper really hit me, for some reason) but June not getting in the van in the last episode is the absolute end of my patience with their resetting things.

I'm gonna watch the start of s3 at least but if she goes back to the Waterfords, I'm out. At some point you either have to advance the story, or end the story.

veni veni veni
Jun 5, 2005


June not getting in the van was the most frustrating end to a really frustrating season of television. It actually pissed me off watching it lol.

Zwabu
Aug 7, 2006

veni veni veni posted:

June not getting in the van was the most frustrating end to a really frustrating season of television. It actually pissed me off watching it lol.

:same:

DropsySufferer
Nov 9, 2008

Impractical practicality
For those who dislike season 2 I keep hearing it won or at least was nominated for 20 emmys. Point is someone must like it. :shrug:

I hope s3 focuses on June moving in with the fun traitor commander and just building up the resistance.

precision
May 7, 2006

by VideoGames
Emmys are almost never about things being Actually Good though. Did season 1 get nominated? Might be a case of "trying to make up for ignoring season 1"

But considering both Rectify and Patriot got zero Emmys is enough to prove they're meaningless :colbert:

esperterra
Mar 24, 2010

SHINee's back




They never gave Keri Russell an Emmy for The Americans and I am forever salted.

Vanderdeath
Oct 1, 2005

I will confess,
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.



esperterra posted:

They never gave Keri Russell an Emmy for The Americans and I am forever salted.

This is legit the tragedy of The Americans. Forever underrated and the best actor on the show gets shafted one last time after the final bow. While it was cool that Rhys got an Emmy and he was definitely great in the show, Russell was on fire for the last two seasons straight.

esperterra
Mar 24, 2010

SHINee's back




Like Rhys was amazing, don't get me wrong, but I think Russell was the faaaaar better actor for the whole series (which says a lot 'cause Rhys slayed). She played Elizabeth so loving perfectly and I'm salted she didn't win.

Tho I'm glad Claire Foy took it over Elizabeth Moss.

I think the greatest crime against The Americans was every time GoT won best writing over them. ffs one of those wins was a battle episode with barely any dialogue, the director would have done most of the heavy lifting there!

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Your Gay Uncle
Feb 16, 2012

by Fluffdaddy

evenworse username posted:

That's exactly where I am. Some stuff they did in s2 was really impactful (the stuff at the former newspaper really hit me, for some reason)

I really liked the Newspaper segment as well, June binge watching sitcoms on her laptop in a darkened room was very relatable.

  • Locked thread