Update on my thoughts on The Handmaid's Tale. It's not entirely off-theme. There have been a few great episodes, including the ones done by Game of Thrones director Jeremy Podeswa. And I quite enjoyed the Emily story.
Spoilers to the very beginning of Season 3
Eden was a Juliet story. Young, passionate, not appreciating her life enough because of the box it was in. The whole time she was such a lonely character. She was high enough in the social ranking to be disliked by the underclasses, too young to be desirable to her husband, and too low to be seen as an equal by anyone in the upper classes. She was alone and miserable, and murdered by the state for a harmless act of passion. But her death did set a lot in motion, Serena found her bible and discovered Eden (now dead) was trying to learn about God, and Serena reading from the Bible saw her punished by maiming.
Also, meeting the closest thing to the head-honcho of Gilead is interesting. He doesn't believe in anything about Gilead (or doesn't seem to), but he designed the economy, and for a moment I thought he was the secret head of Mayday, but I think that theory's been quashed. Right now he seems like a eugenicist with moral scruples who markets himself as someone who has none. He is the most interesting character on the show right now.
I like most of the characters, but I don't get Nick, or I have a distaste for him. He's the main love interest of June in the show (aside from her husband, Luke). Nick is a bit of a mopey character who seems to be led around by the nose by everyone... and I want to slap him! He gets away with stuff he shouldn't... he's liked by everyone and even gets a promotion for what can only be described as insubordination and incompetence (kinda like the character Jim Halperton in The Office, everyone's favourite guy, who I disliked 😁)... Although maybe it wasn't a "promotion" so much as a method to do away with him quietly, he was promoted to commander, and his first assignment is to the front lines, where he'll likely be killed. Either way, he seems to be off the show for the time being.
Also, one thing to note is that this show is interesting to watch after Andor, they're both very well done shows about a struggle against tyranny. And Andor, I'll note, is a great show whether or not the viewer likes Star Wars. It's kind of like Rogue One in that sense, you don't need to be a fan or even like the genre to enjoy the film. I feel viewers sort of have to have some investment in the franchise, blockbusters, or sci-fi backdropped fantasy to enjoy any of the other films aside from Rogue one... Rogue One and Andor are unique, I think anyone could like them. They also make the original Star Wars film a fun watch, even if you didn't like it before.
And IMO, there's basically two ways fans go. First: I think many are interested in the Skywalker saga, and for them, the prequel trilogy, and the original sequels (Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi) are the films they like, while I think mostly everyone else (including myself) enjoyed the film The Last Jedi more than those. The Last Jedi is much more about The Force than anything else, fulfilling the prophecy. And it takes (and IMO) improves on many of the influences of the original Star Wars film. But the story is left unfinished... IMO, doesn't matter, I think the sunrise-Luke Death is a great sendoff for the end of the film. This film is heavily disliked by the Skywalker Saga internet fanbase, though; and for largely trivial and incidental reasons that they act like are these massive problems... like the film is some kind of heresy. A shame, I think it's a standout film that's generally more fun to watch than any of the others in the mainline series. It's got a 91% thumbs up from critics and scored 1.3 billion+ at the box office and most real-world people seem to like it.
Either way, my watch order for Star Wars went something like this: Andor → Rogue One → Star Wars → The Last Jedi, and it was a very enjoyable way to watch it. I'd watch the others, but I feel like the whole Skywalker Saga is a bit of a different story, and it didn't grab me the way it did other Star Wars fans - I got into Star Wars at a much older age, possibly too old for it to have any nostalgic grip on me. I'm not against watching the other films if other people want to, just not something I'll likely do if it's my decision. I also think that I might have liked it quite a lot if it was a little more (lets say) mature; think Oedipus Rex, the original "adversary is secretly his father" story... keep the Leia romance (Lucas deleted it) and advance it MUCH further during Empire Strikes Back, that would make Luke's melodramatic screaming reaction ("NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!") a lot more convincing after he found out he and Leia were very much related 😁.
Sure Oedipus would have been upset if he found out the adversary he killed was his estranged father, but without the bit about banging his mother, the gouging his own eyes out would have seemed quite a bit over the top.
Well, that got dark...
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
