"The Handmaid's Tale," Year One

I never read Margaret Atwood's "A Handmaid's Tale."  It was one of those books that simply fell through the cracks, one I knew was a classic and would probably appeal to me, but I just never got around to.  When the new Hulu adaptation was announced, I debated whether I should finally read it to be on the same page as everyone else, but ran out of time.  So I'm embracing the ability to go into the series totally blind with no preconceptions.

"Handmaid" presents a grim dystopia where the United States has become a radical Christian country called Gilead.  Women have been reduced to second class citizens, whose rights are severely restricted.  Fertility declines have spurred the enslavement of the few fertile women left, who are forced to be breeding stock, or "handmaids," to the ruling elite.  Our protagonist is Offred (Elizabeth Moss), the newly assigned handmaid to Commander Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) and his wife Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski).  As Offred navigates her tightly restricted life, we learn about her past and family, how Gilead was created, and the stories of some of her fellow handmaids.

From Offred's POV we learn about her world, the camera often keeping her face in close-up, even as she's rendered all but invisible from everyone around her by the wings of a starched white bonnet.  So much of the storytelling comes down to Elizabeth Moss, her carefully guarded reactions to the horrors she witnesses, and the roiling fury of her inner monologues, often provided in sarcastic voice-over.  She carries the entire series effortlessly, and I think the series is worth a watch for her alone.  It's largely thanks to her performance that some of the show's weaker writing and pacing issues aren't as glaring as they could be.  While this is clearly a prestige project for Hulu, and they put an impressive amount of resources into it, there are some fundamental weaknesses to the first season.   

The biggest issue is that the ideological construction of this world is fairly flimsy, and it was never explained to my satisfaction how the U.S. went from relatively sane to a color-coded Puritanical nightmare so quickly.  However, the dystopia itself certainly feels genuine on a personal level, where every social interaction is governed by dehumanizing rules and rituals, with plenty of real world parallels.  Beautifully shot, with striking costuming to delineate the hierarchy of every character in every scene, "The Handmaid's Tale" looks absolutely fantastic.  The look of the handmaids in particular are instantly iconic.  The cast also boasts a bumper crop of excellent performances, that go a long way toward selling the paranoid oppressiveness and misery of Gilead's society.  Moss and Strahovski are the MVPs, but well-drawn secondary characters played by Alexis Bledel, Samira Wiley, Ann Dowd, Max Minghella, and Madeline Brewer also help make the world feel more plausible and immersive.

So it's easier to forgive the occasional creative missteps, like centering two episodes on male characters in a way that makes those installments feel like filler.  Or the ironic use of pop songs to underscore some of the big emotional moments.  The show's creators get the important things right, like the infuriating little hypocrisies of the Waterfords, Offred's complicated relationships with the other handmaids, and the small but meaningful acts of resistance.  For those who might be wary of "Handmaid" because of the subject matter, the series is far from all doom and gloom.  There are plenty of intense emotional moments, and some jarring violence, but also welcome instances of humor and triumph.  Ultimately, I found the show very uplifting.

 

Also, though I understand that the first seasons covers the entirety of the source novel, "The Handmaid's Tale" feels like it could easily spawn several more seasons.  In fact, I'd have been very disappointed if the show ended after only one year, because I feel like it could significantly improve in the future.  I would love to see a spotlight episode for Ann Dowd's character, for example, and the worldbuilding gaps could be easily patched.  As alien and frightening as the world of Gilead is, the show got me to care about the characters enough that I want to follow their stories for a while.

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"Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior" Liveblog

And now, because I really have no interest in writing up a full review for this show and yet I still feel the need to convey my frustrations, here I am liveblogging the second episode of "Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior."

10:00 PM - Opening murder scene flashback, where unnamed male and female voices trade cliched pervert/victim dialogue, and fail to be as creepy or as pervy as probably intended.

10:02 PM - Forrest Whitaker shows up on a motorcycle, because motorcycles are shorthand for badass.

10:04 PM - Was that a title sequence? Damn, blink and you miss them these days.

10:08 PM - Back from commercial. Note the lack of the usual "Criminal Minds" opening pretentious quote, which ensures a higher chance of the viewer mistaking this for any other generic CBS crime drama.

10:10 PM - To be on this team, you need to have a degree in snark. Bonus points for being able to rattle off gadget statistics like a Fry's Electronics savant.

10:11 PM - Forrest Whitaker emulates Bill Shatner in a desperate attempt to make the dialogue sound competent.

10:12 PM - Was Garcia's head caught in a blender? Full of carrot juice?

10:14 PM - This whole "stone-cold killer" label is really undercut by the droning narration. Are the actors paid more if they don't emote? They just sound bored.

10:18 PM - Let's review our leads - Sam Cooper (Forrest Whitaker), Beth Griffith (Janeane Garofalo), Bald Guy (Michael Kelly), British Accent (Matt Ryan), Blonde ("TRON Legacy" hottie, Beau Garrett), and Garcia (Kristen Vangness). I shudder to think what would happen if Garcia weren't here.

10:20 PM - Cue the twenty-year old actress trying to pass herself off as a high-school age stabbing victim.

10:24 PM - Cue the standard impassioned mother speech. The daughter's supposed to be fourteen? No, really?

10:30 PM - If this unsub is so smart, maybe he shouldn't be provoking the armed Feds.

10:33 PM - I'm guessing the killer is either a split personality or it's a
Svengali/Stockholm situation. Whitaker goes for Svengali.

10:36 PM - Oh, NOW he wants counsel present.

10:38 PM - Need an exposition and backstory dump? Call Garcia. I know she's supposed to be a hacker genius, but they're just going to have to come out and admit that she's secretly made of magic.

10:40 PM - "I need to be alone with my client." Bow chica wow wow.

10:41 PM - Wouldn't that just be the most wonderful excuse? A charismatic criminal mastermind made me sleep with all those other men! I had no control over my actions!

10:43 PM - I love how mentally unstable emotional basket-cases can somehow flip a switch in their heads to go all iceberg in order to pull off complicated criminal schemes complete with misdirection and disguises.

10:48 PM - I approve of Adrien Brody's Stella Artois commercial.

10:50 PM - I'd buy this scenario so much more if the woman being controlled wasn't so obviously a photogenic actress who looks like she just walked out of a salon instead of a mental institution. This is why I always liked the original "Law & Order." Their criminals usually have the decency to look like hell. And their Svengali would be so much more convincing if he wasn't MADE OF HAM.

10:52 PM - Janeane Garofalo's very good at being an aggressive lady-cop. It's too bad that she doesn't have much to work with here. Would it be too much to ask for to get her a personality beyond righteous sarcastic? Or at least some better zingers?

10:55 PM - Put away the Gregorian chanting! Too much! Too much! You know, that death scene might have actually been effective if it weren't so oversold. With a score like that, I was expecting her head to split open and start spewing CGI bats.

10:57 PM - Was Whitaker's scene with the reverend supposed to be character development? Closure? Were the vague Biblical references and taunting from the B-grade psycho wannabe something that actually needed a visit with religious counsel?

10:58 PM - Oh, I was wrong. They closed with a Haruki Murakami quote. Which really had nothing to do with this week's plot. Natch.

Here endeth the liveblog. And any urge I have to watch any further installments of "Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior." Good night.

The Devolution of "Criminal Minds"

I know enough about the criminal justice system and all the affiliated governmental agencies to be pretty skeptical about anything that happens on prime-time crime dramas. Nonetheless, most of them do a darn good job of being entertaining - I just wish they didn't make me suspend my disbelief so often.

Take "Criminal Minds," which follows a group of FBI profilers out of Quantico who track serial killers. I've gotten hooked over the past month thanks to ION running through about ten episodes - nearly half a season - every week. It's currently in its fifth year on CBS, and started out as one of the better entries to the cop-show genre with good writing, good actors, and a better eye for accuracy and realism than most. Subsequent seasons have been wildly uneven in tone and quality, and now it's pretty much been dumbed down into another "CSI" clone. Sure it's still entertaining, but I do miss being able to watch a whole episode without spotting things that would never, ever happen in real life roughly every five minutes.

Some of the biggest recurring issues:

1) Wardrobe - One of the first things I notice about most crime dramas is that the law enforcement professionals aren't dressed right. The women have overdone makeup, inappropriate hairstyles, and low necklines. The men tend to come off better, but still have a tendency to push the dress code. The "Criminal Minds" pilot had most of the cast sporting the suits and ties and tasteful blouses we expect with G-men and G-women, and it all went downhill from there. Subsequently the only one still regularly seen in a suit is the team leader, Agent Hotchner (Thomas Gibson). Meanwhile Agent Morgan (Shemar Moore) has been in T-shirts and polo shirts for the better part of four seasons and the team techie, Garcia (Kirsten Vangness), has seen her outfits go from business casual with a few quirky accessories to looking like a younger version of Mimi from "The Drew Carey Show."
2) Getting Personal - It's natural that as we get to know the principals in the show, we'll see their personal lives intersect with the job. I don't mind this happening on occasion, like the cliffhanger season finales that traditionally feature go-for-broke dramatics. The trouble is that the writers have been relying on it far too heavily, turning most of the major characters into walking founts of angst. I don't think there's a single character left who hasn't been revealed to have a troubled or tragic childhood. Poor Agent Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler) apparently doesn't have enough to deal with, being a socially awkward prodigy profiler who is the youngest member of the team. No, he has to have a schizophrenic mother, a father who abandoned them, job-related PTSD, a drug habit, and a peculiar ability to be taken hostage at the drop of a hat.
3) Celebrity Rehab - Luke Perry, Wil Wheaton, Frankie Muniz, and way too many other B-list celebrity guest stars have shown up in various episodes. It's one thing when you have good career character actors like Tony Todd dropping in for a cameo, but it's another thing entirely when you're cycling through former teen heartthrobs of the 90s of dubious talent and billboard appeal. By far the worst instance was a post-"Dawson's Creek" James Van der Beek playing a serial killer with dissociative identity disorder. The guy could hardly handle one personality, let alone three.
4) Tropery - One of the things I really loved about the first season of "Criminal Minds" was that every member of the ensemble was professional, intelligent, knowledgeable, and contributed equally to cases. The characters had different specialties, but the crucial deduction or ultimate insight could come from any of them. Since then the writing has suffered a significant drop in quality (alongside the cinematography, direction, and pretty much everything else). All the characters have now been neatly distilled into their most obvious personality quirks, with most of the greatly reduced exposition coming from Garcia or Agent Reid. The character who's suffered the most has been Agent Morgan, whose role has largely been reduced to kicking down doors and providing innuendo-laced banter.

I know that Mandy Patinkin's departure at the end of the second season was a major turning point in the show for the worse, but it also looks like budget cuts did away with most of the interesting visuals and research-intensive writing that characterized the earlier seasons. What depresses me is that this has actually helped the show, because the ratings for "Criminal Minds" have been steadily improving even as the quality has dipped.

I do find it refreshing to find a crime drama that is so shamelessly pandering to women. Thomas Gibson, Shemar Moore, and Michael Gray Gubler provide a great variety of masculine eye-candy. On the female side of the cast, Paget Brewster, AJ Cook, and Kirsten Vangness are certainly not unattractive women, but neither are they aggressively sexualized the way you see in so many similar shows.

All in all, there are enough redeeming elements that I keep watching "Criminal Minds." Despite all the issues I have with it, I have to admit that it's far better written than most of the other crime dramas and will occasionally do something really riveting. It's just a shame that the federal agent characters it portrays are somehow less realistic and believable than the ones found in far older and less ambitious shows - like "The X-files."