I get so annoyed when people tell me that I have to watch a few episodes of a TV show to get into it. Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale, which finished its fourth season this week, never had that problem. The Handmaid's Tale was crazy town from the jump—in its first few minutes, Elisabeth Moss and her whole damn family were being chased and hunted through the woods. A few episodes later, a bunch of women in red drapery were stoning a man to death. Boom. We're in it. The horror was breakneck. The tension was oppressive. It was masterful storytelling that had a direction. Debuting just a few months after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, there was also the undeniable benefit that this series served as a cautionary tale of then season two came. Then season three. What started as blunt narrative trauma turned into a vicious cycle of torture so casually relentless that it became psychologically numbing. The Handmaid's Tale was a critical juggernaut that devolved into a series where, for 10 hours a year, women were beaten, raped, and tortured on repeat until it became numbing. Ruminate on that. The televised abuse was so incessant that it somehow became both unbearable to watch and monotonous, all presumably in the name of noble storytelling. Prestige torture, if you will. Amid a reality where liberal progress had dramatically slowed, The Handmaid's Tale was somehow more stagnant in its progress. It was as if Hulu's series considered that its calling card. And yet here I am, four years after the first season, typing the words Season four of The Handmaid's Tale is excellent television. To be clear, that's not because it made good by building on the two terrible seasons that preceded it. Nor is it entirely because it fully reinvented itself through its storytelling. It's more to do with the fact that on rare occasions, a dud series can make good on itself years after it stopped being great, simply by remembering what it did idea of watching this season coming out of a pandemic felt like a special brand of torture, but the problem with a show like The Handmaid's Tale is that its first season was so powerful that you're always holding out hope that something great could emerge from the ashes. Turns out, that hope isn't unfounded. Picking up from the slight movement from season three, season four launched June into action, following her and several other characters across America to Chicago, and eventually, Canada. But what ultimately propelled Hulu's crown jewel out of its funk was more than a change of pace—it changed its entire attitude, remembering what made season one so content is imported from youTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web series rooted firmly in the throes of trauma became something meaningful when it started addressing grief and how that grief alienates survivors from the people in their lives. And for once, it allowed its characters to feel catharsis in a meaningful way. Those who have watched the finale know that first hand, as a cabal of women including June Moss and Emily Alexis Bledel beat the dog shit out of Fred Waterford as "You Don't Own Me," first heard in the pilot episode's closing scenes, played in the background. Hell, even back in Gilead as Janine Madeline Brewer co-exists with Aunt Lydia Ann Dowd, Janine manages to find some sense of agency. It's not that the series has resolved all of its storylines or become something new entirely; it's more that Bruce Miller and his writing team channeled all that energy going into torture scenes and drab shots of farmhouse-style chef's kitchens and instead moved on to the next chapter of these characters' psyches—a return to studying the motivation and desperation of each character in an unthinkable moment. Season one hinged on unpredictable tension, but it was more about what was happening in each character's head and less about seeing the ramifications of it. Season four proved that the same feeling could be evoked whether or not the mode of getting to it was torture. Seeing Serena Joy sitting on a lone Zoom call literally waiting for her dead husband to join did more for me than seeing her get her finger cut turn to nuance could be the saving grace for the Hulu series. That need to stick to what worked initially or what was perceived to work can become a rut for a TV show, and it's one that plagues good shows into oblivion. When I think of other shows that simply couldn't figure out how to become the next best version of itself, I think of Scandal's phenomenal first season and how it buckled under the pressure to keep pressing the "crazy" envelope. Or House of Cards, which insisted on becoming more and more sinister. The problem is this unfortunate misunderstanding of what makes a show good. Choosing Scandal's "crazy" over its smart writing; choosing House of Cards' evil over its dark study of a series tries to compound, not expand, it's tone, that tower has to eventually fall or be restructured. Even when a show manages to course correct see Orange is the New Black's pitch perfect seventh and final season tackling ICE and incarceration reform, it's often too little, too four seasons, did The Handmaid's Tale get itself back on tract in time? Too soon to tell, I suppose, but man did it feel good to see these women be pissed off and angry and three-dimensional. It felt good to move forward, geographically and emotionally. And yes, it felt good to see Rory Gilmore and Peggy Olson claw Fred Waterford to death, partly because the series gave us a minute to breathe between Kirkland is a writer for Esquire, where he focuses on television, pop culture, food, and the south; he is from East Tennessee and currently lives in Brooklyn, New content is imported from OpenWeb. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

el cuento de la criada temporada 4 amazon prime