The Handmaid's Tale Season 2 is as good as ever in making you feel bad

Slate

"The new season begins at the gallows and visits a slaughterhouse, a gulag, and various torture chambers before the second episode is through," says Willa Paskin. "In its first few episodes it transforms itself into a thriller, and the ratcheting tension makes it more difficult to watch than ever. And yet as the horrors mount and mount, as I felt sicker and sicker, I kept thinking of This Is Us, NBC’s hit family drama and cathartic cryfest about the essential decency and OK-ness of multicultural, liberal America in the age of Trump. Like This Is Us, though milking anxiety instead of tears, The Handmaid’s Tale deftly makes you feel sad, at a time when feeling sad feels kind of good, or at least right. Moreover, The Handmaid’s Tale suggests all this suffering has an end date: It won’t go on forever, just for as long as The Handmaid’s Tale is on the air. Revolution is just three, or four, or five seasons away."

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