The Commander has sex with the handmaid while the handmaid lays in the Wife's lap.
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If you want to organize your own Handmaid protest, the nonprofit group the Handmaid Coalition can help you assemble your costumes.
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The Wife holds the Handmaid in her lap as the husband thrusts into the Handmaid, who lies there limp as a rag doll.
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How could a Handmaid eat with her mouth pinned shut?
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Rather, each handmaid is multidimensional in her backstory and character.
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She works as a handmaid for the wealthy Spurnrose family.
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Maybe June joins the resistance while keeping her Handmaid cover.
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Handmaid: Fertile women who bear children for Wives and their Commanders.
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At that point, the Handmaid is assigned to serve another Commander.
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But on the other hand, Handmaid outfits aren't just protest symbols.
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Waterford looks contrite when he visits his handmaid the next morning.
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The show follows Offred, a handmaid, living in Gilead, a totalitarian society.
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Become Offred — become a handmaid — and you're liberated, she seems to say.
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Does it mean that Serena Joy will eventually become a Handmaid herself?
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Atwood sketches her initial idea for the Handmaid costume on an iPad.
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She feels maternal toward her little handmaid clan, and especially toward June.
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The last scene circles back to when we first see handmaid Offred.
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Basically anyone who couldn't assimilate to being a handmaid or a Martha.
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"We all know what happened with your first handmaid," Naomi says bitterly.
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From there, you can pick whatever your heart fancies, be it the series finale of "The Americans" (Alexa, play "The Americans") or season 2 of the smash hit "The Handmaid&aposs Tale," (Alexa, play "The Handmaid&aposs Tale").
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While Elisabeth Moss' Offred has resigned herself to life as a handmaid — aka a woman whose singular life purpose is to bear the children of her Commander — Moira, her best friend, escapes before she's given her handmaid assignment.
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We've only seen one handmaid made pregnant by a Commander: Janine (Madeline Brewer).
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Elizabeth Moss' portrays Offred, a handmaid who's role is defined by her fertility.
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As a Gilead handmaid, June routinely "sleeps" with Serena's husband Fred (Joseph Fiennes).
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The Handmaid uniforms are disturbing, but they are also supposed to be beautiful.
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The handmaid uniforms, when used in protest, were satisfying because they were scary.
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Like Bilhah in the Bible, the Handmaid is reduced to a childbearing vessel.
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She has probably been told that her mother was turned into a Handmaid.
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"Promise me you'll protect the handmaid," he urges his superior, and Pryce agrees.
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A sexy handmaid Halloween costume already exists, so should this really be surprising?
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As a Handmaid, she wears red and barely gets to speak to anyone.
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It takes place in a flashback; we've already seen Offred as a Handmaid.
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Fred and Serena blame each other for losing their handmaid for the second time.
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The terrible thing about being a handmaid is that you cease to be white.
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This year's most ire-drawing have included a Handmaid's Tale inspired "sexy" Handmaid costume.
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Wiley will play Moira, Offred's best friend from college and fellow handmaid-in-training.
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Martha is sentenced to the "common mercy of the state" and Handmaid 8967, a.k.a.
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Before she became a Handmaid named Offred, June was just a normal American woman.
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Was it strange playing her as that outgoing person and then as a Handmaid?
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And then we see Offred refusing to participate, refusing to kill her fellow Handmaid.
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She is talking to the government's worst-behaved handmaid, and that is what June says?
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There's also the important fact that not all handmaid scars are obvious from the outside.
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But does this mean that June's daughter will become a Handmaid herself when she's older?
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If a handmaid successfully has a baby, she is spared from going to the Colonies.
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Nolite te bastardes carborundorum: A messaged carved in June's closet by the Waterfords' previous handmaid.
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She's been poisoned by Emily, who is still furious for her treatment as a handmaid.
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In season 1 finale "Night," we find out the handmaid is pregnant with Nick's baby.
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"I'm sorry, Aunt Lydia," is one of the first phrases that a new Handmaid learns.
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When June returns to the Waterfords, she's treated like a queen, not like handmaid scum.
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His Handmaid Emily is gone, so Lawrence has an opening in his house for one.
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Rachel convinces Jacob to impregnate her handmaid, Bilhah, so Rachel can have children "through" her.
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There's nothing more threatening to Gilead's threatening regime than a handmaid who's great at Scrabble.
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Oh, and on that note: "It's a shame what happened to your handmaid," he warns.
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The original novel follows Offred, a "handmaid" living in a dystopian America known as Gilead.
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The narrative centers on a handmaid named Offred, whose name echoes her male master, Fred.
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This system is explained by Offred ("Of-Fred", the name of her Commander), a Handmaid.
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"The dynamics between a wife and a pregnant handmaid are always challenging," she tells him.
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Todd: My assumption is that June will wind up a Handmaid again sooner or later.
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You have Hollywood right now doing, like, "The Handmaid&aposs Tale" and all these dystopian shows.
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Since Oliver is Emily's biological child, she became a handmaid and wasn't sent to colonies immediately.
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With each Commander-Wife-handmaid ceremony, Prayvaganza wedding, and "under his eye" greeting, Gilead is internalized.
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The tense teaser shows off Elizabeth Moss' character Offred, a handmaid in the Republic of Gilead.
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That is why June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss), our lead handmaid, is never sure who to trust.
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The first viral Handmaid protest came shortly after the show's premiere on Hulu, in March 2017.
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But as the Handmaid became an icon of political protest, she also took over pop culture.
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And now she knows her husband's affection is on the handmaid, even if he says otherwise.
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It comes as no surprise, then, that words are the most forbidden contraband to a handmaid.
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The red-hooded Handmaid costumes have taken on a life of their own beyond the show.
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It involves the husband, and the wife, and the handmaid all together at the same time.
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Again, there is no proof Ofmatthew hasn't experienced similar pain during her many years as a handmaid.
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The book, which is the first-person account of an unnamed handmaid, ends with a surprise twist.
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When you're watching The Handmaid's Tale "correctly," you don't want to enter Gilead and be a Handmaid.
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As protest symbols, Handmaid outfits are serious evocations of what the future of America could look like.
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I get why it's there, though, especially if Emily is going to be Lawrence's Handmaid long-term.
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There's profound calm to it—each Handmaid apologizes to gobsmacked Aunt Lydia—but it's a death sentence.
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Handmaid plotlines in The Testaments are there mostly to propel our new heroines' emotional and intellectual journeys.
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"It'll let her know she's not alone," Moira says about the next handmaid to see the message.
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It needs to give her agency again, as unlikely as agency is for a Handmaid in Gilead.
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"I'm wondering why such an import brilliant man would take in such a shitty handmaid," Emily eventually asks.
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It's named after the Biblical story of Rachel and Leah, which provides the framework for handmaid-Wife arrangement.
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A green and red string are intertwined, one symbolizing the wife (green string) and the handmaid (red string).
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Offred is captured and forced into her new role as handmaid, bearing children for the society's barren elites.
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Waterford, who is worried that they'll look like part of the Resistance if people know their handmaid escaped.
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Will she be chained up in the basement like that Handmaid of Foreshadowing we saw earlier this season?
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In its concrete depiction of torture, abuse and cruelty, Handmaid outstrips Margaret Atwood's original novel in dramatic impact.
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During ovulation, the Handmaid sits in the lap of her mistress, and is raped by the family's patriarch.
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The glass is shatter-proof, but it isn't running away they're afraid of — a handmaid wouldn't get far.
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The show's shapeless red clothes denote victimhood; there's no complexity or subtlety to the role of a Handmaid.
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The book moves fluidly among three time periods: before Gilead; Offred's training as a handmaid; and her present.
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The Handmaid seemed to evolve from a symbol of advocacy for victims into a way of playacting victimhood.
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The handmaid rebellion, which began in earnest with season 2's many swipes at violence, is only growing stronger.
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And love has just about evaporated from the Waterford household, once again in turmoil thanks to their rebellious handmaid.
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But she also knows Luke lives in Canada and that she's a handmaid—forced to reproduce or face death.
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Jones joined "Weekend Update" hosts Colin Jost and Michael Che initially dressed as a handmaid from The Handmaid's Tale.
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The handmaid uniform women are forced to wear in the series is meant to denote their status as handmaids.
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Lydia informs June that his wife became a handmaid (her worst nightmare, remember?) and the son was given away.
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When June became a handmaid, her ear was affixed with a tracker — with that, June became another person's property.
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All wore matching handmaid costumes and sipped on specialty cocktails (named "praise be vodka" and "under his eye tequila").
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If a handmaid conceives, the baby is taken from her to be raised by the father and his wife.
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All of a sudden, the possibility of becoming a handmaid, or sex slave, becomes a form of social control.
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"Praise be, ladies," Handmaid Kylie Jenner said, standing at the end of a long red tunnel and greeting guests.
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Like if there's any pop culture costume that should be exempt from a sexy halloween version, it's a handmaid.
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After holding baby Angela, Janine begs to be the Putnams' handmaid again so she can be with her daughter.
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While serving as his handmaid, Offred develops an affair with Fiennes, which it's also unclear whether she consents to.
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After giving birth, the Handmaid Janine (Madeline Brewer) struggles to give up her baby to another woman — understandably so.
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Offred (Elisabeth Moss) is a handmaid assigned to Commander Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) and his wife, Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski).
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Elizabeth Moss (Mad Men) will star as Offred, a handmaid whose sole function in society is a reproductive one.
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Iron Chef Martha grills him about how he feels about this particular handmaid, and seems unconvinced by his answers.
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Unfortunately for June (Elisabeth Moss), the clue was on his bookshelf – and as a handmaid, she's forbidden from reading.
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"Mayday" also benefits from returning to the theme of Handmaid solidarity that made the season one finale so effective.
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Ofmatthew, for once, is staring out into space, seemingly contemplating the existential crisis that is her life as a handmaid.
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And in another scene, a Handmaid cocks a shotgun, which can only mean that more death is coming to Gilead.
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Georgia members of the Handmaid Coalition protest the passage of HB 481 outside the capitol in Atlanta on March 8.
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Truthfully, I had been surprised, earlier this season, by how easily everyone accepted the Waterfords' "Our handmaid was abducted!" lie.
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Over the course of the summer, more Handmaid protesters appeared across the country, guided in part by The Handmaid's Coalition.
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"When they go shopping, it's not in some old-timey-looking place," says Samira Wiley, who plays the handmaid Moira.
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The story is opening up and becoming The Handmaid and Company's Tales — and it should, if it wants to continue.
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Desperate, she asks Jacob to sleep with her handmaid, Bilhah, so that she may have a child to care for.
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Offred once had a husband and child, but she torn away from her family and forced to become a handmaid.
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"Once a month, on fertile days, the Handmaid shall lie between the legs of the Commander's wife," Aunt Lydia explains.
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He tries to send her to her room (like a child, or a handmaid), but Serena is waaaay past that.
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Offred is out on her own walk when her handmaid friend (if anyone remembers her name, please comment) accosts her.
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At first, she resists Aunt Lydia's wheedling requests for her to slip back into the scarlet robes of a Handmaid.
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But I was disappointed that we didn't get to witness a few days in the life of a "good" handmaid.
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But if a handmaid works with three Commanders without giving birth to a successful baby, she is sent to the Colonies.
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Margeaux Hartline, dressed as a handmaid, during a rally against the bill Tuesday, outside of the Alabama State House in Montgomery.
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Now, after meeting Holly, we know where June derives the strength that has carried her through her years as a handmaid.
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While training to be a handmaid at the Rachel and Leah Center, June finds out how Gilead caged her mother's spirit.
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Orange is the New Black star Samira Wiley will play Moira, Offred's best friend from college and fellow handmaid-in-training.
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The Old Testament story of Rachel and her handmaid, Bilhah, is the basis of Gilead's strategy to combat its fertility crisis.
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Right now Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale season 3 is, as usual, fairly obsessed with June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss), its unstoppable handmaid.
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That doesn't seem to be the message of the Year of Atwood, with "Grace" and "Handmaid" standing like beacons centuries apart.
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"How many of my eliminated queens were you able to capture?" she asked Chad Michaels and Alaska, back in handmaid robes.
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When the Econowife, terrified to be harboring a fugitive, asks June whether she's a handmaid, June confirms that, yes, she was.
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The part that I've been thinking about is that Mayday is not the handmaid rescue organization — it's the anti-Gilead organization.
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Both she and the fans watching can finally see a light at the end of the hellish tunnel for the escaped handmaid.
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After being transported to a safehouse by Mayday, June (Elisabeth Moss) is instructed to leave any trace of her handmaid identity behind.
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So instead of having the relatively cushy existence of a pregnant handmaid, she's trapped in a bare room until she gives birth.
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Nick approaches Serena with his concerns for the handmaid, who is walking around the house with a dull look in her eyes.
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T. Fagbenie), her best pre-Gilead friend and fellow handmaid, Moira (Samira Wiley), and her child, Hannah (Jordana Blake) are all black.
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Serena Joy is unable to become pregnant, and so has a Handmaid to conceive a baby so she can become a mother.
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A feminist activist in her life before Gilead's takeover, she, like June, is kidnapped from her old life to be a handmaid.
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Is she reacting to the trauma of her life as a Handmaid by trying to find meaning in something bigger than herself?
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They are women who, because their husbands are poor, have to play the role of Wife, Martha, and Handmaid all at once.
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On the off chance a baby is conceived and born, the Handmaid immediately cedes all control of the infant to her mistress.
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If you watched Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale, you'd be forgiven for thinking maybe we'd seen the last of Alexis Bledel's handmaid character.
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When June is transferred to her new handmaid post at Lawrence's ramshackle house, figuring out her new boss becomes her primary objective.
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Women across the globe have taken to protesting in red handmaid robes and white bonnets, particularly when reproductive rights have been attacked.
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Our narrator Offred, nee June (Elisabeth Moss), is a handmaid: a fertile woman forced to bear children for the heads of state.
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Fred's soft spot for his errant handmaid still throbs enough for him to help her this episode with a Commander Lawrence personality assessment.
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Blood pours down the left side of her face and neck, as red as the handmaid uniform she'd just thrown into the fire.
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The last time we saw the disgraced Handmaid, she was being taken away after the women refused to kill her during the Salvaging.
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Because why not dress as a sexy Handmaid from Handmaid's Tale, when an actual, IRL lingerie company thought it was a good idea?
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" When the Handmaid doesn't answer, refusing to blame herself, Lydia encourages the girls to answer for her in an unrelenting chant: "Her fault.
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I was most fond of the mute (probably tongueless) former Handmaid played by Erin Way, who's been so good on Alphas and Colony.
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Offred, once a woman with a husband and child, now works as a handmaid: someone who bears the children of high-ranking officials.
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As the van pulls away, Offred approaches her handmaid friend who always seems to know what's going on (I don't know her name).
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Serena Joy comes roaring back into the mix with her barely restrained frustration that her Handmaid seems to be a defective, defiant model.
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In "Seeds," however, that redness, which signals fertility as well as prostitution and violence, sums up what it means to be a handmaid.
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Offred finds the truth when at the very end of the episode it isn't Ofglen who greets her but an entirely new handmaid.
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She's also the only handmaid other than Moira to be both a woman of color and someone whom Offred has meaningful interactions with.
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The cast of "The Handmaid&aposs Tale" has starred in many major projects, but not all of them have been hits with critics.
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Moss plays Offred, a handmaid that navigates this male-dominated world where punishment is swift and brutal for those that don't follow the rules.
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The unknown woman would only know such a fact if the handmaid network is fully operational and growing — it's a long way to Toronto.
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Instead, she ended up giving her little girl to another handmaid, Ofglen/Emily (Alexis Bledel), while staying behind to save her older daughter Hannah.
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George is clearly high up in the food chain of Commanders, with the status symbol of an absurd number of children plus a Handmaid.
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The point of all these flashbacks to the pre-Handmaid Days is certainly to show that the regime crept in before it burst in.
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Due to the handmaid shortage, Janine (Madeline Brewer) and Emily (Alexis Bledel) are pulled from the Colonies and stationed back in Cambridge as handmaids.
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She went through a lot in season 1 as a handmaid and as a jezebel, so I'm trying to show that in her clothes.
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Later on in the episode, Serena teaches Eden how to discipline a handmaid by making her pick up knitting needles she dropped on purpose.
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As handmaid June (Elisabeth Moss) fights within the system to try to bring it down, the world's political climate is progressively getting more definition.
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Offred ends up on the floor, writhing in pain, before the scene is interrupted by Serena Joy, crying out that her handmaid is pregnant.
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In one room, the open door reveals a bunch of guys cheering as one man has sex with a woman dressed as a handmaid.
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For example, we were very interested in this season about what happens when Emily [a handmaid played by Alexis Bledel] gets across the border.
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Speaking of forgiveness, I don't know that if I were a handmaid, I could forgive Aunt Lydia for some of the things she's done.
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I've never blamed Offred for having an affair; anything a handmaid can do to survive her bleak existence and exercise free choice seems warranted.
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Then again, this is Gilead, and if the role of Handmaid helps the Commanders continue to manipulate women, so the concept could stick around anyway.
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Would she suffer the same fate we saw befall another pregnant handmaid in the season 2 premiere, and end up chained like a disobedient dog?
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Offred (Elisabeth Moss), the handmaid was taken away in a black van on the orders of Nick (Max Manghella), the father of her unborn child.
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During the unveiling of the Rachel and Leah Center, a handmaid goes rogue and sets off a bomb on the Gilead Commanders and foreign dignitaries.
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The story is told from the point of "Offred" — a name given to one handmaid to denote her status as "Of Fred," her assigned officer.
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He's the one who's supposed to get to do illicit literary things with the Handmaid in the study, he seems to think; not the Wife.
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The Handmaid's Tale takes place in a society that views womanhood not as something human, but as a series of thankless roles — wife, domestic, handmaid.
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Dany also begins to show homage to the slaves she has freed by copying her handmaid Missandei's metal collar that designated her as a slave.
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"But we have the power to make change," says Madeline Brewer, who portrays Janine, a handmaid who was mutilated for daring to mock her oppressors.
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Later, we learn that she was found in what sounds like a version of the Red Center, which suggests she was a handmaid in training.
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It's the uniform of the handmaid, a social class in the fictional land of Gilead that exists solely to reproduce and stay out of sight.
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And in The Handmaid's Tale, Moira is a Handmaid with a secret — as a lesbian, she's labeled a "gender-traitor," a crime punishable by death.
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In the Bible section, Rachel offers her "handmaid" Bilhah to Jacob because she's deeply jealous of her sister Leah, who is able to have children.
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When he stroked the red tag on June's ear that signifies she's a fertile Handmaid, I crawled out of my skin right along with her.
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What did you realize about moving through the world just dressed in your own clothes, as opposed to wearing the much more restrictive Handmaid costume?
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And Elisabeth Moss made a meal of her introduction as a Handmaid gritting her teeth through a terrible reality, making every single close-up count.
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But then Janine (Madeline Brewer), a somewhat unhinged handmaid whose right eye was plucked out because of disobedience, gives Offred news that nearly breaks her.
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Hulu&aposs hit show "The Handmaid&aposs Tale" is filled with a talented cast of actors who have been in some not-so-great films.
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Critic score: 8% On "The Handmaid's Tale," Alexis Bledel plays a handmaid named Emily who used to be a doctor with a wife and child.
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Would commanders really be O.K. with a handmaid who had obvious mental health issues that could easily be passed along to any of her children?
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When we see June at the Red Center after leaving the Waterfords, a fellow handmaid whispers confirmation that Emily got to Canada safely with June's baby.
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We see it again when another Handmaid unbuckles her gag to reveal that below it, there are metal rings through her mouth that hold it closed.
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The show primarily follows a Handmaid known as Offred, using flashbacks to establish the rise of the authoritarian, theocratic regime known as the Republic of Gilead.
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After working together to get themselves out of a hairy situation, the women have officially abandoned the confines of their adversarial roles as Wife and handmaid.
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And Pamela discovers that she never wanted a man at all, as she and her handmaid Mopsa (Taylor Iman Jones) declare their love for each other.
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Aunt Lydia uses torture, such as shocking Handmaids with cattle prods, whipping them, and partially blinding one divergent Handmaid in an effort to gain complete obedience.
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Or if, like me, you're already invested and just need to know what happens to Elisabeth Moss' brilliantly acted handmaid Offred, after last season's surprising finale.
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But they appear to have employed it as inspiration for the handmaid system as a whole, not as part of any black character's perspective in particular.
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The book frames Gilead as something odd that happened in the past, and Offred's testimony of her time as a handmaid is considered an historical artifact.
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The book is narrated by one such Handmaid, known to us only as Offred, because she is indentured to a wealthy and powerful man named Fred.
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Moss spoke to Radio Four's Jenni Murray about the show's impact in the U.S., where the Handmaid costume has become a powerful symbol of the Resistance.
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She's a Handmaid — a fertile woman who's been forced into sexual slavery by Gilead's fundamentalist Christian government, in a world where birth rates have fallen dramatically.
|
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The rise of Gilead was an extreme response to a collapsing birthrate, and the handmaid role was supposedly created for the sole purpose of redistributing fertility.
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Maisel" "Silicon Valley" "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series: Anthony Anderson in "black-ish" Ted Danson in "The Good Place" Larry David in "Curb Your Enthusiasm" Donald Glover in "Atlanta" Bill Hader in "Barry" William H. Macy in "Shameless" Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in "Game of Thrones" Peter Dinklage in "Game of Thrones" Mandy Patinkin in "Homeland" David Harbour in "Stranger Things" Matt Smith in "The Crown" Joseph Fiennes in "The Handmaid&aposs Tale" Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series: Claire Foy in "The Crown" Tatiana Maslany in "Orphan Black" Elisabeth Moss in "The Handmaid&aposs Tale" Sandra Oh in "Killing Eve" Keri Russell in "The Americans" Evan Rachel Wood in "Westworld" Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series Lena Headey in "Game of Thrones" Millie Bobby Brown in "Stranger Things" Vanessa Kirby in "The Crown" Alexis Bledel in "The Handmaid&aposs Tale" Ann Dowd in "The Handmaid&aposs Tale" Yvonne Strahovski in "The Handmaid&aposs Tale" Thandie Newton in "Westworld" Outstanding Comedy Series: "Atlanta" "Barry" "black-ish" "Curb Your Enthusiasm" "GLOW" "The Marvelous Mrs.
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This sexed-up handmaid costume makes light of a harmful misogynistic culture that actively allows and encourages the rape and denigration of women, which is beyond gross.
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In Season One, the story was focused on exposition of the new world as well as our main character, Offred (June) and her life as a Handmaid.
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And yet, she not only survives into the second season but manages to make her way back to Gilead, thanks to a suicide bomb–induced handmaid shortage.
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Hulu's award-winning adaptation of the book starring Elizabeth Moss has even inspired protest movements in which women have donned the standard red uniform of a handmaid.
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Consider us loyal soldiers of the Handmaid Army, waiting at the ready to join the May Day rebellion the minute Season 2 hits Hulu on April 26.
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Behind this image of a docile kneeling handmaid and an obedient wife is a seething military might – that could, hypothetically, march into Canada and take the baby.
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As the handmaid contemplates the joy of being outside for a FULL HOUR of fresh air, her mistress packs her off into the backseat of a car.
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Which is why these protesters hit the senate in full creepy handmaid regalia: to illustrate the very fucked-up future towards which our country is rapidly hurtling.
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For the pro-choice protestors who storm state capitals dressed in red handmaid habits, the concept of surrogacy has come to stand in for all this unfreedom.
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I'd much rather live in a world where no one had to dress up like a handmaid as protest, that it could be completely meaningless or strange.
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The "Handmaid," one of the few fertile women in the military regime, presents her body for him, lying silently on her back while he thrusts into her.
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First of all, these women are in work camps because they were deemed dangerous to a society that has just felt the full force of handmaid rage.
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You saw women dressed up as characters from the Handmaid&aposs Tale, which is the fictional miniseries about a misogynistic dystopia where women are forced into sexual slavery.
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"It gave the scene so much more depth," Kiri explained of the multi-colored cords, which are meant to signify the symbiosis between handmaid and wife during pregnancy.
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In the scene, the handmaids are forced to kneel in the rain holding rocks in their outstretched arms as punishment for refusing to stone another handmaid to death.
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Since she's arrived without an escort, the pilot (Trevor Hayes) isn't convinced June is actually the handmaid he's meant to transport until she shows him her wounded ear.
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The finale of the first season saw Offred (Elisabeth Moss) find freedom — or perhaps not — as she left behind the home where she once served as a Handmaid.
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T. Fagbenle), best friend Moira (Samira Wiley), and former handmaid Emily (Alexis Bledel) struggle with expatriate life, and with the knowledge of who and what they've left behind.
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Elisabeth Moss stars in the series as June, a handmaid and former happily married wife and mother, who narrates as she becomes more deeply involved in the resistance.
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Atwood's protagonist, Offred, is a Handmaid—a fallen woman who is forced to bear children for righteous couples—and the book follows her sufferings under the Gilead regime.
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And the actress who plays the ill-fated handmaid, Madeline Brewer, prepared for the horrors of her character and those particularly disturbing scenes by speaking with rape survivors.
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In keeping with its iconic authors, the next episode presents Margaret Atwood, who discusses her dystopian novels The Handmaid&aposs Tale and its long-awaited sequel The Testaments.
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No wonder then, that a fellow rebellious handmaid, Emily (Alexis Bledel) stabs Lydia and shoves her down a flight of stairs at the end of the second season.
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Season 2 is already confirmed, and as of Thursday The Hollywood Reporter confirmed Alexis Bledel will return as Emily, the handmaid who kickstarted Offred's rebellion in Season 1.
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A wife and her handmaid acting as allies to exert power within Gilead, and in the process returning to the intellectual labor they both once cherished, sounds transgressive.
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Pornography was the locus of Gilead's anti-sex agenda in the book; in the series, the pious headmistress at the handmaid training center spits a mention of Tinder.
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On the show, the couple who imprison Offred as their Handmaid, Commander Waterford and his wife, Serena, are played by attractive actors in their forties and thirties, respectively.
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And Joseph Fiennes and Yvonne Strahovski play the Commander who takes Offred as his Handmaid and the Commander's wife, Serena, whose marriage doubles as a kind of prison.
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In the book, Offred becomes a Handmaid because her husband had been married once before, and that makes their marriage null and void and under Gileadean sexual purity laws.
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The Waterfords rape their handmaid June (Elisabeth Moss) in the name of reproduction throughout the series—but one particular assault in Season 2 took us to a new place.
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Season 3 picks up right after the season 2 finale, with June opting not to flee to Canada with her baby daughter Nichole and fellow handmaid Emily (Alexis Bledel).
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How great was that extended, incredibly creepy wide shot of June and Luke at their "innocent" lunch, with the children in their Handmaid-red coats frolicking in the background?
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When June got out of the car to see Janine standing on the bridge railing — her Handmaid robe streaking the blank white sky with scarlet — it didn't feel shocking.
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Such engagement serves as a reminder that Orthodoxy need not be opposed to every aspect of modern Western economics, but that Christianity should not simply be capitalism's handmaid either.
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Leslie Jones in the "Saturday Night Live" season finale tore into conservative states that are spearheading restrictive abortion laws — while dressed as a handmaid for the "Weekend Update" segment.
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The Salvaging The climax of the episode comes when the girls are tasked with punishing a rapist who assaulted a pregnant Handmaid — a "salvaging," as Atwood's book calls it.
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Some of the smartest moments in the show—like Ofglen's story, and one featuring a Handmaid named Janine—are radical edits from the book, making a passive plot active.
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She's not being taught to read or being taught anything about the world, but she's probably been given religious lessons about what Wives are versus Marthas versus a Handmaid.
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If June ever encounters this Econowife again, the woman might very well be a handmaid by then, stripped of her beautiful son just as June was stripped of Hannah.
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Next weekend the only competition is Paramount&aposs gritty revenge tale "The Rhythm Section," starring Blake Lively as an assassin and directed by Reed Morano ("The Handmaid&aposs Tale").
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Gerald McRaney won in 2017 for his turn as Dr. K on "This Is Us," and Alexis Bledel took home an award for her gutsy portrayal of handmaid Ofglen.
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In The Handmaid's Tale, Aunt Lydia was a sadistic cipher, a monster who took palpable pleasure in helping grind Offred down as she trained Offred to become a Handmaid.
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Samira Wiley of Orange Is the New Black turns up as Moira, an old friend of Offred's whose presence as a fellow Handmaid becomes an important lifeline for Offred.
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That's why we should turn our attention to the deeply controversial and newly pregnant Ofmatthew (Ashleigh LaThrop), a woman set to give birth to her fourth child as a handmaid.
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Referred to as the "Brave Red Maiden Costume" it is very clearly modeled after the white bonnet and red caped handmaid characters on Hulu's award-winning drama The Handmaid's Tale.
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The main character, June — known in her position as "Offred," and played by Elisabeth Moss — is a "handmaid" whose new existence revolves around being impregnated by her "commander" (Joseph Fiennes).
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The Outline in Offred's Room As a handmaid in the fictional nation of Gilead, Offred is bound not only by treacherous laws, but also a repressive system of societal codes.
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Moss spoke to Murray about the symbolism of the iconic Handmaid's uniform saying: "This Handmaid, this bonnet has become an iconic symbol of where we don't want to go."Â
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Offred was married to man named Luke, best friends with Moira (Samira Wiley) — a handmaid who was condemned for being lesbian — and living life as a book publisher in Massachusetts.
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The TV adaptation follows Offred (Moss) — whom I prefer to call by her non-prisoner name, June — a woman trapped as a "handmaid" in the religiously fanatical Republic of Gilead.
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Part of that mission puts him in contact with Wallace himself, who speaks in riddle-like sentences while sending his closest handmaid, Luv (Sylvia Hoeks), to do his nasty bidding.
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The novel's cultural appeal has also gotten a boost from the award-winning television adaptation, starring Elisabeth Moss as the handmaid Offred, which has been renewed for a third season.
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This may not be purely an act of malice: I get the sense that Serena scared herself by identifying so deeply with her handmaid while Waterford was in the hospital.
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More important (for the geopolitics of this alternate reality, if not for the show's main characters), Nick passes Luke the Mayday letters Offred almost burned during her "obedient handmaid" phase.
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I cannot begin to imagine what it would be like to have created a fictional character that has since taken on as much social and political weight as Atwood's Handmaid.
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Flanked by people in handmaid costumes, they stood in front of the "hanging wall," which is used by the show's fascist government to display the bodies of executed citizens. Dark!
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Her rapturous glance at the pen in her hand is symbolic of her own return to power and reflects her act of Handmaid name-sharing rebellion from earlier in the episode.
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When we last saw Elizabeth Moss — er, Offred — in Hulu's hit series "The Handmaid's Tale," she was being led away by Guardians after her protest of the treatment of another handmaid.
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We see Alexis Bledel, also a handmaid, with a gag over her terrified face being escorted by men in uniform, Offred being hit with a whip and many other disturbing scenes.
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Brewer plays the role of Janine, a handmaid in Gilead, the dystopian world that exists after religious and conservative extremists took over what used to be the United States of America.
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When Serena shows more sympathy for the hostess than the handmaid, the camera zooms in on June's face as she shakes her head in a disgusted "Why do I bother?" look.
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A Handmaid known as Ofwarren thinks the wall looks strange without the bodies: "I guess you get used to things being one way," she observes, as blood washes off the concrete.
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We are witness to this new world order through the eyes of Offred, a woman torn from her daughter and forced to work as a "handmaid" for Commander Waterford (Joseph Fiennes).
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"Nolite te bastardes carborundorum" is both the title of the most recent Handmaid's Tale episode and the phrase Offred finds carved into her closet, a message left by the previous handmaid.
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After being assigned to be the handmaid of Commander Joseph Lawrence's (Bradley Whitford) ramshackle household, it's Emily's (Alexis Bledel) burden to discover just what makes her new Commander so utterly idiosyncratic.
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In fact, it seems as though Handmaid's Tale purposefully began weakening the self-declared commander weeks ago with "Seeds," which ended with a fiery explosion set off by a handmaid (Tattiawna Jones).
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They're like the dark inverse of the pink pussy hat worn at the Women's March: Instead of shouting out women's power, Handmaid outfits whisper darkly of the looming horror of women's oppression.
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Fred, who's far less a part of this ceremony than he knew, stands in the study with the other Commanders — one of whom has a wife, not a handmaid, who is pregnant.
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Scott added that Jasmine was essentially the only female character in the whole film, so adding a handmaid/best friend will give the new film — and, in turn, Jasmine — a different vibe.
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Elena Lipsiea, a Planned Parenthood volunteer who was dressed as a handmaid from the Hulu show, told CNN she was contacted by Planned Parenthood about an opportunity to participate in Tuesday's protest.
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If you put aside the fact that Elisabeth Moss is no one's ugly older sister, Offred is as much the Leah as she is the handmaid to Serena's privileged but sterile Rachel.
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In the Margaret Atwood novel the Hulu TV series is based on, readers can deduce that Offred — a "Handmaid" who is kept in sexual slavery in a religious theocracy — is probably named June.
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Offred, played by Elisabeth Moss, is also a handmaid who is trying to navigate a male-dominated world where punishment is brutal for those that don't follow the rules — women just like Moira.
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The former Gilead captive has fled the dangerous republic for Toronto, Canada's Little America refugee neighborhood, where she now lives with the aforementioned Luke, and a new acquaintance, escaped handmaid Erin (Erin Way).
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So, the Waterfords each have problems with their servants: Serena is disappointed by her difficult handmaid (who, little does she know, might've lost a baby), and the Commander is jealous of his driver.
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We follow June most closely, but we see the experience of other handmaids as well, including that of Emily, a handmaid June meets in her new life, and Moira, June's longtime best friend.
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Commander Joseph Lawrence (newly-minted creep specialist Bradley Whitford) is somehow connected to that Railroad since he helped brand new murderer Emily, his recently obtained handmaid, join in on the escape plan afoot.
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Days after the Alabama ban was signed, 1,000 people showed up for a rally in Huntsville and protesters wearing red "Handmaid" costumes have become a staple of statehouse protests in Montgomery (and elsewhere).
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She travels with her fellow handmaid Ofglen (Alexis Bledel) to pick up food at a grocery store that seems straight out of a 1950s Sears catalog, with chipper music and blindingly white décor.
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When The Handmaid's Tale first introduced the idea that there could be something subversive and powerful about being a Handmaid, back in episode four with that triumphant power walk, it did so clumsily.
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The HBO series is returning to face formidable competition: "The Handmaid&aposs Tale," the dystopian sci-fi series that claimed top drama honors last year, drew 20 bids, with "Westworld" close by, with 21.
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By the end of the episode, it becomes clear that June — who has chosen to stay in Gilead instead of escaping to Canada with fellow handmaid Emily (Alexis Bledel) — has another adversary in Gilead.
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There will be other contests to scrutinize when Samira Wiley ("Handmaid&aposs Tale") and Ryan Eggold ("The Blacklist," upcoming "New Amsterdam") announce nominees for the 70th Primetime Emmy Awards beginning at 11:163 a.m.
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And, it was just as hair-raisingly unsettling to film Serena's delusional, awkward celebration as you would expect — just ask the actress who brings gossipy handmaid-slash-secret spy Alma to life, Nina Kiri.
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Variety reported that The Handmaid Tale's Elisabeth Moss will play Rosemary Kennedy, the elder sister of Senator Robert Kennedy and President John F. Kennedy, in an upcoming movie called A Letter From Rosemary Kennedy.
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"Oh fuck" But Offred sums it up best with her simple, two-word utterance when she realizes that her only ally, Ofglen, has been replaced with a new Handmaid, with no warning or explanation.
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Meanwhile, Rita nearly has a heart attack when she brings Offred her breakfast and finds her lying on the floor, which, given the later realization that the previous handmaid died by suicide, is understandable.
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We know what comes next for Emily: Handmaid-dom, working for Mayday, having a lover, driving a car into an Eye, undergoing a clitoridectomy, and then being sent to the Colonies, where she is now.
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Either, she is heading towards her punishment for refusing to murder fellow handmaid Janine (Madeline Brewer), or June's secret boyfriend Nick Blaine (Max Minghella) is helping the mother of his unborn child escape to safety.
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Offred remembers what life was like before the US became Gilead, but as the book begins, she's been a Handmaid for five years, and her daily existence has become mundane to the point of boredom.
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On the one hand, Handmaid outfits have become powerful protest symbols: They show up when states try to pass laws restricting abortion access, and they were a presence at Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
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In a parallel sequence, a lesbian Handmaid named Ofglen (played, silently, by the terrific Alexis Bledel) is gagged and kidnapped by the Secret Police, forced to see her lover hanged, and then given a clitoridectomy.
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Or whatever days "Sabrina" is set in: The show has a '50s retro aesthetic, from the cars to the crinoline, but modern sensibilities about feminism, gender expression and the costs of serving as Satan's handmaid.
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After the narrating Handmaid disappears offstage, headed to an uncertain fate, an appendix informs us that the testimony we've just read is an artifact from a fallen civilization: The all-powerful Gilead is no more.
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Sometimes they carried signs with the dog-Latin phrase " Nolite te bastardes carborundorum ," which, in Atwood's novel, is scribbled in Offred's closet, a message from a previous Handmaid: Don't let the bastards grind you down.
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As "Women's Work" closes, Hodgson's diagnosis — that there are no medical causes for "Angela's" apparently deadly illness — helps save the child, whose real name is Charlotte and whose real mother is tragic handmaid Janine (Madeline Brewer).
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I'm not sure what happened to the sense of dread season one conjured so effortlessly, when anything would be done to save a Handmaid (much less a pregnant one!), leading to several fates worse than death.
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Atwood's book introduced the idea of queer people being considered "gender traitors" almost in passing, with Moira's sexuality being a relative non-factor in her Handmaid status while gay men's decaying bodies swung from the wall.
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A lot of Hollywood liberals again rehashing on the entire idea that we are living in a handmaid&aposs tale and so there is a lot of, you know, it won&apost be on (ph) drama.
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It strains credibility that a woman who has shown constant rebellion against Gilead's values, culminating in her literally murdering a Guardian, would be brought back from the Colonies to return to her role as a handmaid.
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Soon after the protests in Texas, Emily Morgan of New Hampshire recognized the potential to expand the Handmaid protests across the country to state legislatures where politicians had proposed new measures to roll back abortion protections.
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For weeks, Serena Joy, a woman, wielded her husband Fred Waterford's (Joseph Fiennes) power in his name as he recuperated in the hospital after a handmaid blew up a Gilead center, murdering a number of commanders.
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For his recent cruise show, at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, Michele sent a long pink-and-purple frock down the runway that suggested a Margaret Atwood handmaid living in the land of My Little Pony.
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She may even have been told that it was her mother's fault, that her mother is a fallen woman who then has been given the chance of redemption by serving the state, by being a Handmaid.
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And Holly is still reliant on her birth mother's milk, a biological reality that punctures Serena's mommy illusions and (along with his apparent obsession with Offred) leads Waterford to bring the handmaid back into his home.
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It was his infertile wife, Rachel, who offered up her handmaid to bear his children, in the perverse act of faith that gave the sex slaves of Gilead both their Judeo-Christian precedent and their name.
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Members of the group swear a lifelong oath of loyalty, called a covenant, to one another, and are assigned and are accountable to a personal adviser, called a "head" for men and a "handmaid" for women.
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Fertile women who violate Gilead's sexual purity laws are forced into life as indentured childbearing slaves, or Handmaids, and the story of one very typical and ordinary Handmaid, Offred, was the story of The Handmaid's Tale.
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The tensest moments in season 1 took place inside the confines of the Waterfords' home,where June/Offred was forced to submit to rape on a regular basis in order to fulfill her duty as a handmaid.
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Even June's day-to-day is fraught as Fred The Rapist (Joseph Fiennes) decides in "Woman's Role" to further their already inappropriate relationship with by requesting the handmaid kiss him "like [she] means it" after an argument.
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The sight of even a dozen women wearing the handmaid costume, while staying silent and keeping their heads down, offers a stark contrast to a group of mostly white men deliberating over what happens to their bodies.
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One of the women who spoke to fellow protesters, but declined to identify herself, dressed as a handmaid shared that she had had an abortion in the past, and patted her visibly pregnant stomach as she spoke.
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Based on the 1985 novel by Margaret Atwood, the series stars Moss as Offred, a handmaid in a totalitarian theocracy called the Republic of Gilead, in which women are stripped of their rights and turned into sexual slaves.
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When The Daily Beast broke a story in April about a New Hampshire lawmaker who secretly set up a misogynist subreddit group called The Red Pill, Morgan organized a protest where all the participants would wear Handmaid costumes.
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Moss plays Offred, one of the few remaining fertile women who is a handmaid in the Commander's household, one of the caste of women forced into sexual servitude as a last desperate attempt to repopulate a devastated world.
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In March, a group of women in Texas dressed up in blood-red robes and white caps, the traditional garb of a Handmaid, to protest a group of proposed bills that would tighten abortion laws in the state.
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There's never before been any discussion of the child she had that convinced Gilead she would be a good Handmaid, and if there's been any mention of Odette before this episode, I have to admit I missed it.
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If you qualify, you get access to all content on Hulu, which includes original programming like "The Handmaid&aposs Tale," old and new TV favorites like "Grey&aposs Anatomy" and "This is Us," and movies spanning all genres.
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If you qualify, you get access to all content on Hulu, which includes original programming like "The Handmaid&aposs Tale," old and new TV favorites like "Grey&aposs Anatomy" and "This Is Us," and movies spanning all genres.
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It's also proven there's a real connection between these two, when June has a meltdown over the handmaid trade deal, since she lied to the international politicians and claimed to be happy as a subjugated woman who's raped monthly.
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There's order in everything in The Handmaid's Tale, from the rehearsed, standard responses the handmaids greet one another with to the disturbing pregnancy "ceremony" that places Offred's head in Serena's lap as the Commander has sex with his handmaid.
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And in a pointed move, the flashbacks in "Other Women" detail the ripple effects that June and Luke's infidelity had on their lives and beyond, from Luke's stung ex-wife confronting them to June's eventual imprisonment as a Handmaid.
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In the TV adaptation, in a seeming attempt at deference to contemporary concerns about representation, Gilead is uneasily and halfheartedly post-racial; Moira, June's best friend, who is also a Handmaid, is played by Samira Wiley, who is black.
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Fred's wife Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski) begins "Women's Work" getting reacquainted with the hard-working and hard-writing woman she was before Gilead, all with the help of her "handmaid" (read: abductee) June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss), a former book editor.
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But as we've seen in the Emmy-winning show's second season, which drew to a close this week, it was just another battle in the conjoined lives of Serena, a Commander's wife, and June, her Handmaid (who is called Offred).
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In fact, one of my favorite moments of "Baggage" happens when Moira comes home from her soulless bathroom hookup, her housemate/fellow ex-Handmaid deadpans, "blessed be the Fruit Loops," and Moira bursts out laughing like she can barely believe it.
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In idly thinking about it while watching this episode, I realized that a super-easy fix for this story might have been to make Janine the Handmaid who has finally had enough of June's bullshit and who dies for June's sins.
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They're mostly the women who surround her: the so-called "Aunts" who train her to become a Handmaid; Serena Joy, the Wife who rules the household; and the other Handmaids, all of whom are held responsible for policing one another's conduct.
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She is both literally and figuratively blinded by the wings that are part of her handmaid uniform, never allowed to see outside its periphery — and it's a potent metaphor for how we oppress women by limiting their access to information.
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She convinces him to hide her in his home and again behaves impulsively; she is captured and returned to the Waterfords while Omar is hanged, his wife forced to become a Handmaid, and his son is sent away from his home.
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It's told in the voice of a forced birth surrogate, or Handmaid, whom we know only as Offred (for "Of-Fred," the name of the Commander who owns her); she's stuck inside her head, desperately making dark jokes to stay sane.
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Handmaid June (played by Elisabeth Moss), having turned down a rare the chance to escape Gilead with her newborn, decides to remain to fight back against a society where women are banned from reading and writing and forced into servitude.
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In her new role, she plays the character of Offred — a woman forced to live as a "handmaid" and valued only for her fertility — in the alternate reality of the series, which is based on Margaret Atwood's classic 1985 novel.
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"Sleep with her so that she can bear children for me and I too can build a family through her," she says to Jacob, and he does, eventually taking the handmaid of his other wife, Leah, who is Rachel's sister.
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Between that, Moira's escape to Canada, Serena trying to keep her Handmaid in line by almost literally dangling June's daughter in front of her as collateral, and the Handmaids' refusal to stone Janine to death, there's a lot to talk about.
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Not only have knitted and hand-sewn crafts like "pussy hats" and Handmaid robes become an increasingly visible (and sometimes controversial) part of the resistance to the Trump administration, but fiber arts have long been a means of resistance — remember the AIDS quilt?
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Under the laws of the Republic of Gilead (formerly known as the United States of America), high-ranking couples unable to have children are given a handmaid, a woman whose sole purpose in this new society is to deliver a healthy baby.
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" He's introduced, as he was in the first book, by Professor Maryanne Crescent Moon, and her words lightly nod to the mania for Handmaid costumes: Moon tells her fellow-academics about a planned Gilead reënactment, but advises them "not to get carried away.
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Now dubbed Offred, she is called a "Handmaid," and she is valued only for her fertility, for the fact that she once gave birth to a daughter, even in the midst of a fertility crisis, even as the world was falling apart.
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I reread the book after watching the Handmaid's Tale pilot and was surprised to realize that the first episode contains moments that don't crop up until way further in the story — like that crucial, brutal Scavenging of a man who allegedly raped a Handmaid.
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A fertile "Handmaid" who conceives will (likely) be spared further degradation and cruelty: zaps of a cattle prod, terrifying interrogations over infractions of the social contract by which she is now bound, or exile to perform clean-up duty in the environmentally contaminated colonies.
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From a bulletproof warrior, to a cunning handmaid, to a group of women who brought friendship and laughs to the big screen, 2017 has been a historic year for female characters and creators -- a year that many hope is the start of more to come.
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Where the first season was all white backgrounds with the Handmaid reds screaming against them, the new Handmaid's Tale is working with a bluer palette: all those lush floral tableaux like the ones at this week's baby shower, with something twisted and traumatic lurking underneath.
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At five weeks pregnant, the handmaid Offred (Elisabeth Moss) is shuttled away in a black van, clinging to the hope that where she is headed will be better than where she came from: imprisoned in the home of Commander Fred and his wife, Serena Joy.
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As such, none have quite the raw intensity of Offred's shock journey from regular American woman to Handmaid concubine in a sinister theocracy, though one of the strands does pose juicy questions around survival, complicity, and manipulation when all the choices around you are bad.
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Offred is a Handmaid, forced to live as a breeding concubine; each month, she is ceremonially raped by her Commander, a man of high status, in the interest of rebuilding a population that has dwindled owing to secular immorality, environmental toxicity, and super-S.T.D.s.
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"Handmaid&aposs Tale" star Elisabeth Moss, winner of last year&aposs top drama actress award, is likely to end up competing one more time against another Elizabeth — Claire Foy&aposs British queen in Netflix&aposs "The Crown," with Foy abdicating the role as the saga progresses.
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I'm finding myself a little discouraged by this week's "invincible" theme in combination with last week's ending, which seemed to be attempting to find something empowering and subversive in the act of being a Handmaid and didn't provide enough distance to make that attitude read as ironic.
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The narrative of Hulu's series The Handmaid's Tale, based on the bestseller by Margaret Atwood, follows a young woman who had a family, a job, and a name of her own, but in a society ruled by a patriarchal regime has been forced to become a handmaid.
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As when Offred walks into the handmaid training facility for the first time and locks eyes with Moira (Samira Wiley), a close friend from college: The memory of Moira becomes an anchor for Offred once she finds herself in the home of Fred and Serena Joy.
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At first, Elisabeth Moss brings a nice, "Handmaid"-ish energy to the role of Cecilia, a woman who leaves her abusive husband, Adrian, a Tony Stark-like tech entrepreneur with a specialization in optics, and who comes to believe that his subsequent suicide is a fake.
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Offred's new realization contrasts nicely with this episode's dueling flashbacks — to Offred in her life as June, hanging out at a winter carnival with her husband and daughter, then of June and Moira attempting to escape the Handmaid training facility, with only the latter making it out.
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This may be an outcome Aunt Lydia and the others in charge of Gilead once feared, but as we saw in a flashback to June's first day as a Handmaid, those in power also assumed they could shock and beat the fight out of the Handmaids.
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She brings June to see a pregnant handmaid named Ofwyatt (Alana Pancyr), who's chained to a pole in the middle of an eerily bare room, affixed with a weirdly homey carpet and bed (like if 25% of a New England bedroom were transported into the middle of a warehouse).
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And, in another move that really makes me hope the show knows what it's doing here, both the Martha who dies and the Handmaid June threatens are women of color, which stands out on a show whose depiction of race has long been its most self-evidently troubling element.
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Highlights included the unexpected, self-aware opening monologue, the greatness of the visual gag of Vanessa Bayer as the handmaid who had her eye removed, Leslie Jones teasing Colin Jost, that awkward and hilarious Morning Joe send up, the return (sort of) of Kellyanne Conway, and Chris Pine trying to vogue.
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As the series opens, Moss' character (one of the few women who can still become pregnant) is captured by the government and enslaved as a "handmaid" — which means she's forced to have sex with one of the regime's commanders (Joseph Fiennes) in the hopes that she will bear his child.
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As harrowing as the scenes of Offred's life as a handmaid can be, we might still be able to hold them at arm's length, to treat them as a purely speculative exercise — if not for the flashbacks, which depict life "before," showing how the world got from here to there.
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Daniela tried to get her to explain, but the woman refused, and after that Daniela began to have dreams: She was the handmaid of a queen of an ancient nation; she carried lilies for her mistress' late husband after his heart stopped in Bangkok; she modeled for a minor Flemish painter.
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This isn't the first time handmaids have been trivialized since the show was released in 2017Previously, the lingerie website Yandy was forced to recall a Handmaid Halloween costume after intense backlash and fans of the show deemed Kylie Jenner "tone deaf" when she hosted a "Handmaid's Tale"-themed party for a friend.
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And because she's played by such a great actor (seriously, look at what Elisabeth Moss is doing in that nonsense scene where she talks to the other Handmaid about being pregnant — she's so good!) and the show's signature star, it has to keep feeding her material when a more interesting story is elsewhere.
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Critics note that the show's casting of one black actress as a handmaid makes little sense, particularly if white supremacy is part of the Republic: "The Handmaid's Tale is a classic example of the problem with settling for diversity that exists out of a desire to be 'color-blind,'" Angelica Jade Bastien wrote at Vulture.
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We're talking about The Handmaid Tale's home base, which houses Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes), a serial rapist and self-styled fancy man, his pacifying wife Serena Joy Waterford (Yvonne Strahovski), and June Osbourne (Elisabeth Moss), the woman the couple has kidnapped under a state-sanctioned sex trafficking program and use as both a sex slave and walking baby incubator.
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And along for the ride are Iago (voiced by Alan Tudyk, who is not Gilbert Gottfried), the iconic magic carpet (simply known as Carpet, and the true MVP of the movie), and of course, Genie (Smith), who gets a human love interest in Jasmine's handmaid Dalia (Nasim Pedrad, low-key the funniest person in this movie).
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But from the moment the series debuted in 2017 to the moment I started having the dream the next year, The Handmaid's Tale felt magnetic to some part of me, particularly its story of a handmaid named Emily, who watched her wife and son flee to Canada, then found herself suffering a fate worse than death.
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I'm looking forward to seeing more of the mute Handmaid in future episodes (great catch that they must have cut out her tongue, I hadn't put that together), but I also enjoyed Zoe, the self-sacrificing leader who you could tell immediately would have to die, and Christine, the nun who does not give a single fuck.
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During her first aria, when she tells her handmaid Alisa (Deborah Nansteel) that she keeps seeing the ghost of a young woman slain by a jealous lover in the waters of a fountain at the castle, Ms. Peretyatko-Mariotti conveyed the emotional shakiness of her fragile character by injecting the ornate vocal lines with a touch of skittishness.
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A Republican Party that ran in 2020 with a boring Midwestern guy (albeit, yes, one sure to be trailed by protesters in Handmaid outfits) as the steward of prosperity would not necessarily be worse off than a party lashed to its current leader; if Gerald Ford could almost win in Nixon's shadow, why not Pence in Trump's?
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Considering that it cuts between timelines — one in the present, when June is living as Offred, and one in the past, before the rise of the Republic of Gilead and its Handmaid program — it would be very strange to have characters in the past never refer to June by name (especially when we see the first meeting between June and her husband).
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And by setting up the central conflict as being not between Offred and her society, but between June (the woman who would burn down everything) and Offred (the woman who doesn't realize how much she's already been changed by her time as a Handmaid), it's evident the series has thought at length about how to leave itself room to maneuver.
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The camera pans between the small room where handmaid June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss) was imprisoned, the study where she bonded with her captor, Commander Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes), over tense games of Scrabble, and the master bedroom where he repeatedly raped June with the goal of producing a baby that his wife, Serena (Yvonne Strahovski), could claim as her own.
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But let's start with the thing I didn't buy, which was June finally telling Emily her name (because Emily is back in the Boston area after the explosion last week killed enough Handmaids that Gilead is pulling back Handmaids it sent to the Colonies) — and then telling another Handmaid, which leads to a quiet rebellion of names spreading throughout the supermarket.
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She is called Daisy when she is in Canada and goes by Jade after she is smuggled into Gilead, but her real name is suggested early on in her portion of the narrative, when she rants about Baby Nicole, the child of a Handmaid and a Commander who became a national figure after her mother smuggled her into Canada and disappeared.
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At rallies over the past week, tribalism tended to be more intense among protesters who had little contact with people who were different than them politically, like Daryna Yakusha, 33, an IT worker from Gaithersburg, Md., who carried a sign that said "Resist Despair" at the Women's March in Washington, while dressed as a handmaid from the Margaret Atwood book.
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Check out some of the 80-plus replies to a tweet last month by prominent feminist writer Sady Doyle promoting a piece she wrote denouncing TERFs (some accused Doyle of being a handmaid of the patriarchy, a common insult lobbed at cis women who ally with trans people), or check the inevitable replies to my tweet sharing this piece when it goes online.
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But at the same time, if we get to a few episodes from now, and June is gunning down every other Handmaid around to the tune of Bill Withers's "Lovely Day" as the rest of the cast applauds for her, and showrunner Bruce Miller looks directly into the camera and gives a thumbs-up — well, I can't say I wasn't warned.
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The series follows June/Offred (Elisabeth Moss) as she lives as a handmaid in the totalitarian, extremist Christian country of Gilead, where women are stripped of many of their human rights (they are brutally punished for reading, for example) and handmaids are forced to help repopulate the world's dwindling population in a monthly "ceremony" where they're raped by commanders in the presence of the commanders' wives.
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But what's surprising and a little uncanny about the episode is a sequence near its end, in which protagonist June, a Handmaid kept in sexual slavery by the state (and also referred to as "Offred"), is given a chance to meet with the daughter she had taken from her way back in the series' pilot, as she attempted to flee the theocratic nation of Gilead for the relative safety of Canada.
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After accepting his award, Mathis bestowed chapter president Sam Maddox with a handsome box set of the Bible on CD. Amanda Bynum and her son K.B. Instead of an afterparty — the G Spot, a laundromat/gas station/drag bar in town, was closed — Lane Clemons, who had organized the Handmaid counterprotest at the Moore rally, held court on the deck in front of Patti Sue's now-darkened lake, where citronella candles barely deterred the gnats.
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And due to the season's weird structural choices — where these last three episodes are a story that can lift pretty cleanly out of the plot as a whole, seemingly bringing us right back to a place where June wants to hurt Gilead again — it's all but inevitable that we'll forget Natalie (the dying Handmaid the other characters refer to as Ofmatthew) as soon as the show moves on to the next thing.
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Despite the novel's current air of timeliness, the contours of the dystopian future that Atwood imagined in the eighties do not map closely onto the present moment—although recent news images of asylum seekers fleeing across the U.S. border into Canada have a chilling resonance with the opening moments of the television series, which shows Moss, not yet enlisted as a Handmaid, attempting to escape from the U.S. to its northern neighbor, where democracy prevails.
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This is probably the episode of The Handmaid's Tale where I most felt like the show was marking time a little bit (all those shots of a thing that might happen, only for it not to happen), which feels weird to say about an episode where a Handmaid ran over someone with a car, but that's perhaps because the relationship between Offred and Nick didn't feel as inevitable to me as I think it was supposed to.
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