The Colony Problem - The Handmaid’s Tale
Let me preface this by saying that Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a great show. Its first season is a downright masterpiece at times and its second season, so far at least, is very good and is mostly living up to expectations. It does have problems though. The second season doesn’t seem to have a coherent theme, at least yet, and I don’t think we get enough of certain characters. Those are minor issues though and are mostly left up to personal preference anyways. There is one problem, though, that I have not heard a single person bring up. I think that it kind of cripples the show in a few ways. That problem is with the Colonies.
The second episode of the second season, titled “Unwomen” is a speed bump for the rest of the season. The majority of the episode takes a break from the story of June, formerly known as Offred, and changes perspective to June’s friend, Emily. After the events of the last season, Emily and many of her other fellow handmaids are taken to the often rumored Colonies where they are forced to work in abhorrent conditions. The imagery and direction of these scenes are great and really puts the audience in the shoes of these people but the introduction of the Colonies as a plot device does a disservice to the overarching narrative of June.
The episode itself is fine but I find the mere introduction of the Colonies as a tangible place as off-putting -- to say the least. During the first season, the Colonies were threats yelled in handmaids’ faces by their aunts and feint nightmares of the handmaids themselves, and really never spoken aloud. Only one thing was known for sure -- it was torture. This allowed the viewer’s mind to wonder in horror about what the colonies could be. If given the space to do so, the mind can come up with the worst possible scenarios or make up excuses about what it doesn’t want itself to believe. Me? I thought they were fake. Maybe I’m just an optimist, but given the context clues, I surmised that the colonies were a threat, and that’s it. A 1984-style piece of propaganda. That is a minority opinion but the fact that I could have thought that in the first place shows the power of mystery in these dramas.
The colonies should have stayed a mystery. With them being a tangible reality that we see, it loses that dread that the viewer has whenever they are mentioned, even offhandedly. The colonies just lost all the mystery that made them interesting. Sure, it can be argued that this part of Gilead was shown to draw a strong parallel between the newfound country and the work camps of Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Russia, as it is obviously trying to do. I think that weakens the world-building of show, though. It’s not allowing for its own cruel and unusual identity to be shown, which I think is a shame. Instead, it’s borrowing from history, which can be powerful in its own right, but it has to sacrifice some of the uniqueness that it once had. The time should have instead be allotted to showing the power structure, the politics, or the individual lives of everyday people as its own world-building device instead spending that time on the colonies.
In both cases of split episodes with time given to this new Colony storyline, June’s story is exceptionally stronger than the anything else that the episode has to offer. This is especially true after the most recent episode dealing with the Colonies, titled “Seeds”. This episode is much better because of the theme of weddings, and feels more full and “worth it” as a result, but June’s story is still drastically more interesting. This problem, though, has allowed me to realize the real, main issue that I have with second season of the show. Basically, it can’t choose a perspective in which to tell the story.
In storytelling there is this idea of an audience surrogate which is basically the character in which the audience experiences the story. Any questions or confusion about the world or situation will be answered, if possible, through this character. From the start of the show, June was this character. She’s the literal narrator, after all. For a little while during the first season, any problems I had about the world-building -- mainly that I don’t know a whole lot about this world anyway -- I didn’t mind because there was this sense that the audience only knew as much information as June, our audience surrogate, knew.
But then we got an episode from Luke’s perspective. And, yeah, this episode is pretty solid and tells the audience more information about the state of the world than any of June’s backstory segments did. But is that a good thing? Isn’t the mystery in and of itself interesting? And should we need to be spoon fed this information through a secondary character? I don’t think so. I think that, with this specific story, the questions are a million times more interesting than the answers. I and a thousand other viewers could have easily surmised that The Colonies took inspiration from our own history and, given screen-time, would reflect that. But we didn’t just think that. During the first season it was anyone’s guess as to what the colonies actually were. And now that we know, it’s a little disappointing. Yes, it’s a dirty, decrepit, and disease-ridden place where the workers… dig… for something, but I don’t have any connection to these characters like I do June. Not only that, but the show can’t even decide on what the colonies’ main purpose is. If the show is going to show us these people at the colonies and what they are going through, I need some more context. I need the why. Right now it just feels… confused.
How could this have been done better? First of all, we should not see the colonies at all. In fact, I think we can rework the second season of the show, at least thus far, to keep that sense of mystery about certain subjects without infuriating the audience with lack of basic information. The key to this is Luke. All of the time going into the colonies in the current version of the story should instead be going to him finding out as much information that he can about Gilead -- how it works, its exact social structure, et cetera. Why is he doing this? I don’t know. Perhaps he starts engaging in the underground transport of handmaids and others trying to escape or maybe he even wants to contribute to the war effort this way. The reason doesn’t matter. But this would provide the audience with a secondary drip-feed of information while keeping it engaging because it gives Luke a goal, which is something his character is severely lacking at the moment.
I don’t think this should be the main bulk of the show, though. It should simply replace any and all time going towards the colony storyline which is interesting itself but has little to do with anything else that is happening. It should somehow relate back to the main character’s struggles but it just does not, at least yet. And that is the problem. The general lack of focus that these segments of the show has. Why should I care about Emily. Sure, her backstory is tragic in many ways and she is an engaging character. But there is no sense of stakes in her storyline. She is basically a main character at this point and the show hasn’t gone to lengths establishing that she could die, so I already know that it is going to turn out fine for her. This isn’t Game of Thrones, after all.
I’m bagging on this show a lot so I do need to repeat myself: this does not make The Handmaid’s Tale a bad show. At this point in time not much could considering that this season is a continuation of one of the greatest television experiences I have ever watched. It’s kind of hard to mess up the follow up to that. I just think that it could be a little better and there’s nothing wrong with that, right? The season is also not over so I might end up eating my words. Regardless, I still think my criticisms are at least valid.
