I’m not going to finish mapping The Handmaid’s Tale because the misogyny doesn’t have a narrative purpose so it just becomes watching misogyny for the sake of watching misogyny.

I’m really not into that.

Last time I said that [t]his show is becoming less about the writing and more about the powerful acting that its players bring to the table. But without a good narrative backbone, there is no place to hang any of the theatrical meat. Watching the rest of Season 2, I still stand by that: The acting and production are strong and do offset the weak writing but weak writing will ruin a show. Season 2 wants to be feminist by showing you how awful women are treated but it’s not feminist because misogyny for the sake of misogyny is still misogyny. Bad things still need to move plot and character arcs or what is it good for.

Season 2 is still weak for other reasons. Want a list? Here’s a list:

• June is not the protagonist of Season 2. Serena is.
• June barely gets a character arc. She decides to abandon Hannah but then decides to stay to get her. But we do not see any development around that conflict, implying that a pregnant woman does not have agency.
• Apparently having her second daughter reminded June of her first one all in the last episode. That’s really bad writing to have the reminder be so far away from the exposition. Trust that the audience doesn’t remember what the reminder is supposed to be for in the chaos of the fire and trying to get out of Gilead so the payoff is wtf.
• Serena gets redemption. After she holds June down to be raped. Okay then.
• Eden was fridged for Serena’s development.
• Thank the Marthas for coordinating the escape but there was no leadup to why.

The sloppy writing doesn’t create a framework where the misogyny and violence (and rape) has purpose or consequences. Yes, June is going to bring down this horrific society and save her daughter but we didn’t need another season of How Horrible Misogyny Is. We needed explicit development of plot and character. Yes, we know that June felt defeated after being recaptured but how does the narrative show that journey from defeat to defiant episode after episode? It wasn’t there.

If the protagonist doesn’t have a character arc, how can we as the audience make that journey and catharsis with them? We couldn’t. Instead, we sympathize with a rapist.

Mapping The Handmaid’s Tale, Season 2, Episodes 7-8

It’s been many weeks since we have last converged here and honestly, I am starting to lose interest in maintaining this interest because there is an explicit rape scene about 25 minutes into the 10th episode. But I’ll stay until the end of this round. We’ll see if I’ll be around for the next. This show is not just about misogyny but it is misogynist and that’s just not interesting or entertainment.

Anyway, last week, a self-sacrificing Handmaid blew up and killed a bunch of Commanders. Yay. But Fred is still alive. Sigh.

• There are tons of historic graveyards in Greater Boston but Gilead likely made one especially for themselves. Where would they find that much land and space? Not in Boston proper, definitely. Placing it is difficult but it would certainly be out of Cambridge. You don’t have to go very far either. Belmont, the next town over, has a very open cemetary. (“After”, Ep. 7)
• On the drive back to Fred’s home, there are a long line of people hung at their houses. For me, this supports the Belmont graveyard theory, because the neighborhood feels like West Cambridge (but without fences). (“After”, Ep. 7)
• There are many contemporary coffee shops with blackboard menues and glass doors but I am particularly reminded of Caffe Nero at Downtown Crossing. (“After”, Ep. 7)
• There aren’t enough clues to determine where the childbirth class is but it’s a well-maintained space. (“After”, Ep. 7)
• There aren’t enough clues to determine exactly where Fred was being hospitalized either. But won’t be surprised if it’s a very secure location at a place like MGH. (“Women’s Work”, Ep. 8)

Fred is abusive. Big non-surprise. He relishes in power. All women, including Serena, are shown to be less than people and it’s finally explicit not just for all the other women but for the Wives as well. The Handmaids are objects up to the men’s deaths. The Wives do not exist outside their husbands. When women work together and usurp the power of men, they are punished, abused.

When women are lesbians, they die.

There is definitely a difference between analyzing misogyny and being misogynist. This show always has danced around that very fine line. However, now the show is playing into lesbophobic tropes and having explicit abuse on screen. What are we supposed to think of it? Are we supposed to mourn for these women? What are we coming back every week to experience but more spiritual misogynist battering? Do we need to put ourselves through this trauma to understand misogyny is bad? What is the narrative purpose of these scenes?

Serena’s punishment is narratively sound. Moira’s dead fiancée is not. There is no reason to have a dead lesbian other than for tragedy porn. They could have had a happy Moira and Odette. (Though by the name, one could predict that she was going to die anyway.)

This show is becoming less about the writing and more about the powerful acting that its players bring to the table. But without a good narrative backbone, there is no place to hang any of the theatrical meat.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to yet another installment of A Show About Hating Women And Feminism. Last week, we were relieved to see June again. This week ended with a BANG. You’ll just have to watch to see.

• The new Red Center is ambiguously placed. They could have remodeled MGH, for all I know. But the walkways in the interior feel a lot like Harvard Kennedy School.
• “Does anyone remember the name of that place on Bolyston? They had great brunch.” “I’m from Framingham.”
• Bolyston is a major street in Boston proper with lots of fancy restaurants. You’re not likely to find an “earthy-crunchy” place there. However, if you walk a little bit, you can find The Friendly Toast, which has great brunch and fun names. But for the true granola experience, you should go to Life Alive in Central.
• Cambridge, not Boston, had a Magnolia’s ten years ago. There is currently a Magnolia Bakery at Faneuil Hall. Neither of them have banana nut pancakes though. (But the Friendly Toast does!)
• Framingham is about an hour southwest from Boston.
• The college where Serena speaks is the same one where Emily teaches, which is already speculated to be MIT or BU.

Other then the very weird and disturbing sex, this show has a lot of critique about feminism. Atwood has come out saying that feminism doesn’t mean that women are always right. Clearly, some women in the show get it wrong. If you are an abuser and a woman, you are an abuser who happens to be a woman. Your womanhood doesn’t make your actions feminist. The show forces us to evaluate women and feminism, not in the lens of feminism and womanhood are good but with insight on how people use power to push their values. June’s mother was a second wave marcher. Serena is a passionate, conservative, religious firebrand. Resistance protestors are vile and rude, though correct. These are all different aspects of feminism and they are all ugly.

We should critique feminism. However, if all examples of feminism are bad, then the narrative is saying that feminism is bad. Without an explicit example of how feminism can also be good, the narrative is more maligning feminism than inspecting it. As important it is to understand that women and feminism are not perfect, one needs to frame how feminism also does good or we’re just reinforcing misogynist stereotypes.

In our previous installment, we learned that June almost escaped but got recaptured. It was such a depressing episode, I couldn’t bring myself to pull out the one location indicator. This week gives us more hope and one other location, but since we’re gonna be on a theme kick, I’ll also be talking about another narrative highlight: Color.

But first, what we’re all here for, where the hell in Boston are we:

• Again and again, I’ve said that there is no concrete wall along the Charles. But this is their setting and they’re just gonna have people hung on a fictional wall by the river instead of the actual wall around Harvard Yard. (“Other Women”, Ep. 4)
• Westminster is north(west) but it’s not “a few miles” away. It’s about 50 miles away. (“Seeds”, Ep. 5)
• A friend suggested that the Prayvaganza is prolly at Brattle Theatre but I think it’s Harvard’s Agassiz Theatre.

In Gilead, women are given roles and then are marked by color. In Season 2 of Misogynist Hell In Real Life, the scenes are tinted by color, depending on which woman or role is highlighted in the scene. Handmaids are red, Wives are blue, Marthas are (desaturated) green, Aunts are brown, Econopeople are grey, and women who are not yet assigned roles are white. In the opening shot of “Other Women”, June is dressed in white. As other women and their worries, emotions, and needs come to the foreground, the scene is bathed in different colors. When June is chained, she is glowing white. When June is choked by Serena, there is a blue tinge. When Aunt Lydia calls for breakfast, the screen is brown. When the Martha Rita refuses the letters, the scene is a desaturated green. When Offred walks downstairs in the red light, she is suddenly obedient, playing the role of Handmaid. When Serena fights with Aunt Lydia, the colors in the scene fight, from blue to brown to blue. When Serena lets her hair down and smokes, the screen is overcast with blue. When Serena sneaks into Offred’s room to touch the baby, the screen is blue blue blue.

Red for slavery. Blue for abuse. Green for servitude. Brown for order. Grey for submission. White for truth.

Colors tell us which women and roles have power in the scene. So when Offred tucks her head under the white sheet, we suddenly see June again, the woman who rebelled, the woman she always has been even when playing the Handmaid. We see now that her pliance was a ploy.

Her strength couldn’t be killed.

However, as wonderful as storytelling through color is, the show relies too much on the visual narrative instead of plot-driven character development.

We have to ask what spurred the change and what brought June back. At face value, June was so distraught that her actions killed a man and ruined lives that she became a submissive Handmaid. She was resigned to her fate, even to the point of burning those letters she’s been hiding. The red of the flames glowed in the sink. Then Nick comes and puts the fire out. Later, Nick also finds Offred in the rain and saves her from dying from miscarriage. Then June comes back. By theme and by plot, Nick rescues June. At the center of the season, a man saves a woman.

How do we interpret this? That she couldn’t save herself? Or that no one can suffer so much alone and stay strong? The arc of Nick’s and June’s relationship feels broken, only existing to move action in each episode.

Last week, we have hope for June’s escape. This week .. well you should just watch and find out.

Locations are now few and far between so I anticipate the list getting small. So time to talk about themes! Not that setting doesn’t reflect them as it should in all good storytelling but that there are things I’ve been wanting to talk about but there has just been so much setting exposition, it’s been all about location location location.

• The Take Back The Night march in 1978 happened on Commonwealth Avenue and passed by Fenway. Little did June know that she was part of history.
• There is an airstrip west of Worcester. It’s the Worcester Regional Airport.

That said ..

Boston has a very extensive history of activism, some radical and some not. That June’s mother is part of the Greater Boston activist scene helps me connect with her. But her hardlined resistance against June’s decisions puts me off. Isn’t the point of fighting for a freer world helping the next generation have freer choices? The divide is very real and feels like the divide between second wave (freedom from men) and third wave (freedom to choose) feminism. The contrast also parallels Gildean oppression: Freedom from vs freedom to.

I also just have lots of feelings about a lesbian black woman being raped to the point where she can’t really enjoy sex with women anymore and chooses to live as her Jezebel name. Trauma still lives with you after you escape the situation.

Oppressive societies force the oppressed to make terrible choices to survive. June leaves her daughter. She inflincts trauma upon Hannah. But does June really have a choice. Would fighting to rescue Hannah be effective. Or would it be better to come back alive and with help. Who knows. And it’s a hard decision. So maybe we don’t blame each other for the choices to survive but join together to fight the system that forces these choices.

Because in an oppressive society, our choices aren’t free.

Welcome to another ten episodes of Fictional Misogynist Hellhole. In the previous installment, we learned about the pleasantly unpleasant facade that Cambridge turned into. Now we are faced with the ugly brutality of the society the Commanders have created, how the rich and powerful oppress the rest to maintain their vision and lifestyle.

But first we pick up where we left off. No, June isn’t going to freedom because that would have been the end to the series. Instead, she’s gonna ride the Trauma Train some more. Good times.

• The mass hanging obviously takes place in a stadium. Ruling out Fenway Park and Harvard Stadium because both are located across the Charles and women aren’t allowed there. Thus the stadium is likely MIT’s Henry G. Steinbrenner Stadium even though Fenway is a much better visual match. ETA: A friend told me that “Fenway” is visible in the stadium. Well that’s a lore contradiction with how women can’t be in Boston. (“June”, Ep. 1)
• There are numerous Walgreens locations in Greater Boston. However, since we know that Luke and June live north of the Charles but not in Somerville, we can surmise that they either live in Central or Inman Square. (“June”, Ep. 1)
• The courtyard where the Handmaidens were forcibly punished is likely Lowell House. The visuals match and it has a bell tower and a dining hall. (“June”, Ep. 1)
• University Children’s Hospital doesn’t exist but Boston Children’s Hospital does. (“June”, Ep.1)
• There is only one place where there is an overpass in Back Bay and that’s near Commonwealth and Charlesgate West. That area is mostly residential and there are no parking lots with loading bays. The visual corresponds more to East Cambridge or Dorchester. (“June”, Ep. 1)
• The Boston Globe just last year moved to the financial district so the drive with the passing visuals would be amiss. Previously, the Globe was at Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester, which would be a much better match for temporal narrative. The drive from Back Bay to FiDi is not THAT long. (“Unwomen”, Ep. 2)
• It’s unclear whether Emily is a professor in Greater Boston but if she were, since her buildling has glass walls, it implies MIT or BU. (“Unwomen”, Ep. 2)

More and more we see the slow transition from our society to Gilead and we understand the the small steps where our freedoms have been removed. It’s a slippery slope, one that we’re on right now. And we should be aware that when people talk about liberty and freedoms, who are those freedoms for and what would be the cost. If the new society is also oppressive, what is the point.

And when people rise up and rebel against you, maybe their reasons are legitimate and many.

Last time we were marveling at how THMT is so on the nose with men and their double standards for women. Amazing how there are good respectable women and there are bad punishable women but there are also the secret underworld where being bad is rewarded (but only if you are bad in ways that please men). Oh what a dystopian fictional future this is. Oh how scary to think that this may ever happen. Oh bless my dear heart how can this level of hypocritical misogyny and slut-shaming could ever exist.

The world may never know.

Most of the setting establishment is already done so the new settings are setting the tone for specific scenes. At this point, the tv plot is so not the book plot so we’re gonna be trekking on new ground but for the sake of this feature, we’re just gonna stay in Greater Boston.

• This show suffers from a variation of “Friends” Rent Control in that houses, yards, and properties are all made larger than they are in real life. The mansion in the opening shot could exist in freakin’ Lancaster but we call that Central Massachusetts, not Greater Boston. (“The Bridge”, Ep. 9)
• The Handmaidens are walking in Cambridge along the Charles River doing errands but Memorial Drive is bounded by an interstate and the walking path is does not have any cute wooden overhangs. (“The Bridge”, Ep. 9)
• The street sign is just a bunch of numbers, not the name of a real street. But at least they got the design correct. (“The Bridge”, Ep. 9)
• The Red Center is canonically a high school and the most likely candidate is Cambridge Rindge and Latin School on Broadway, just outside of Harvard Square. (“Night”, Ep. 10)
• “They arrested three more Marthas in the West End.” (“Night”, Ep. 10)
• The Salvaging canonically happens in good ol’ Harvard Yard right in front of good ol’ Widener. Again, it’s not quite the Yard since there are no walking paths and Widener is a big ass library. Also, you can’t see the Charles River from the Yard so it’s all a fabrication. (“Night”, Ep. 10)

There we have it. The end of the first season. June gets tagged like an animal (because women are animals in Gilead) and she gets sent off to who knows where. Is she saved? Is she going to be punished for not punishing another of her own? We’ll find out soon.

I stopped writing about Life As Female Sex Slaves because my life got busy but now that Year Two Of Being A Sex Slave is out, it’s time to dig up my notes and finish Year One: Introduction To Sex Slave Horror Fest.

This episode of Using Women As Sex Slaves wasn’t really about that but instead it was about what was it like being a man in such a society. Then we get an episode in which women are sex slaves but not for babies but pleasure. I am so tired of all this sex slavery but sex sells I guess (unless you are asinine enough to pass legislation that harms sex workers) and being commodified for your body just how it is to be a woman in this world. (In the last episode of The Future With Sex Slaves, it was clear that women would prefer to force others to be sex slaves rather than be decent people.)

• The woods are so very New England. Lots of tree cover. Couldn’t identify the trees at a glance but the foliage feels familiar and that’s what counts. (“The Other Side”, Ep. 7)
• Route 201 is entirely in Maine. Luke and June prolly took Route 1 from Boston. The river is prolly the Kennebec River, which does run along Route 201. (“The Other Side”, Ep. 7)
• Snow falls earlier in northern New England than southern New England. Also, Boston is a coastal city so the climate is warmer compared to Maine. Given the snow, I would place the date around late November, likely before Thanksgiving. (“The Other Side”, Ep. 7)
• The drink Luke spits out in the abandoned home is prolly a photoshopped Real Coconut Water. Coconut water goes bad super fast when left out so nope on the drinking. For all you coconut water haters, you can just hate somewhere else and leave me with this delicious drink. (“The Other Side”, Ep. 7)
• In the trunk, June and Luke likely travelled over the BU bridge. Not an exact match but that feel is right. Also, the bridge connects Boston to Cambridge, very close to Harvard Square. (“The Other Side”, Ep. 7)
• “Do you remember the sublet we had in Somerville? This [trunk] is bigger.” (“The Other Side”, Ep. 7)
• Scarlett Woods Assisted Living doesn’t exist. But Scarlett Woods is a golf course in Toronto. (“The Other Side”, Ep. 7)
• Worthy Path Career Counseling doesn’t exist but the stuggle with job searching in this economy does. (“Jezebels”, Ep. 8)
• The buildlings in the background during the car ride are indistinct but we know that they are driving from mid-Cambridge where Harvard is into Boston. There are multiple ways to do that, but the there is only one part of town where you go under highways and a train track and that’s the border of East Cambridge and Boston near the Charles MGH T Station. However, you will have crossed the Charles River much earlier at Lechmere Canal. (“Jezebels”, Ep. 8)
• The hotel in Boston doesn’t exist either but the Park Plaza is a good spiritual approximation, even if it’s downtown, not Back Bay. For a fancy Back Bay hotel, the Copley Square Hotel has that same atmosphere. (“Jezebels”, Ep. 8)

This is fictional sex slavery and certainly there is real life sex slavery but the point is that the policing of women occurs in many forms and for all female social roles. Whether you are a Wife, Handmaiden, or Jezebel, you are not a free woman. Fine let’s have “freedom from”. But there is anything anyone should have freedom from, it’s freedom from oppresssion and slavery.

It’s not dissociation in the classical sense but it is dissociation in the sense that I could not feel connected to my emotions. I know that I am driving down Route 120 but I can’t place which emotion goes with which memory because there are just so many memories. Am I driving home from a late night at the bookstore or am I driving with my family for brunch or am I driving hands clutched on the wheel wondering where am I what am I even doing here barely holding back a sob.

My memories are colorful shadows with no form, wafts of delicious fragrance with no recipes. I feel but I don’t know what I’m feeling it for. Because I can’t remember. It’s so hard to remember.

But my childhood whispered to me Exit 18 and take a left. My adolescence screamed as I rolled past Great Hollow Road. I was too optimistic coming back here. I had forgotten. But with my hands on the wheel, trees swaying above me, the sweet scent of the valley, I remember. I remember this emotion, how much I wanted to die.