I’m Sorry, But I Just Can’t Deal With ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ in 2022

It is my solemn duty as a TV critic to give each and every new episode of television a fair chance to impress me. However, I’ve hit a wall. I’ve reached a point in my life where I simply cannot bear to watch any more of Hulu‘s The Handmaid’s Tale. I loved the early seasons as they brought Margaret Atwood‘s novel to life and expanded beyond the book’s pages. I watched as June (Elisabeth Moss) repeatedly came close to escaping Gilead, only to wind up back in a handmaid’s scarlet cloak. I tuned back in to see her finally taste freedom last season. But I just can’t bring myself to sit through The Handmaid’s Tale Season 5 as it premieres today on Hulu. I’m just tapped out on June’s story, feeling sympathy for an abuser like Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski), and believing that Janine (Madeline Brewer) could survive this long.

I’m sorry, but I want nothing to do with The Handmaid’s Tale Season 5. I’m done.

When The Handmaid’s Tale premiered on Hulu in April 2017, it tapped into the pervasive anxiety that gripped many women in the months following Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration. There were (completely well-founded!) fears that Trump would appoint a largely conservative Supreme Court that would roll back tenuously protected civil liberties like abortion rights and gay marriage. Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, set in a version of America that had been overtaken by Christofascists and renamed Gilead, offered a double whammy of warning and catharsis for folks at this specific historic moment.

The Handmaid’s Tale follows a woman who had grown up in modern America, but was now imprisoned in Gilead as a sex slave. She was known only as “Offred,” denoting that she belongs to a Commander named Fred. Her only crime? Being fertile in a time when birth rates had plummeted. She would be ritualistically raped in the hopes of conceiving a precious child. Her only solace? Repeating a bastardized Latin phrase that translated to “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

The first season of Hulu’s adaptation premiered to rapturous reviews and eight Emmys, including one for Elisabeth Moss as Offred/June and another for Outstanding Drama Series. The Handmaid’s Tale Season 2 pushed the narrative past the ending of Atwood’s book, but still managed to hook critics and viewers alike. Indeed, the show continued to earn Emmy nominations, but as the years went on, fewer and fewer wins. Hulu recently renewed The Handmaid’s Tale for its sixth and final season, meaning even the powers that be recognize the story is running out of steam.

2022 is not 2017. The zeitgeist that so electrified the first few seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale is gone. In its place is a culture that has dealt with five years of political polarization, an oversaturated television landscape, and a traumatizing global pandemic. Roe v. Wade has been overturned, leaving millions of women in states where it is illegal to even have a life-saving abortion. June’s story keeps getting more and more tragic, even after she escapes the horrors of Gilead. The Handmaid’s Tale Season 5 opens with June and company dealing with the fallout of Season 4’s finale — where June, Emily (Alexis Bledel), and other former handmaids beat Fred (Joseph Fiennes) to death and hang him.

To put it bluntly, I just can’t take any more of it. I can’t take the bleak color scheme or endless regurgitation of trauma. I can’t deal with another shot of Elisabeth Moss’s scowling face, perfectly set in a grimace designed to impress Emmy voters. I’m done with the crimson cloaks and white bonnets. I don’t want to see June do a single extraordinary superhero-like thing ever again. I just want the story to end already, but it keeps going and going and going, and now I can barely find a similarity between this dour slog and Atwood’s taut literary thriller. I’m just done.

And I feel bad about that! I feel like I should be giving showrunner Bruce Miller a fair shake. I should let the talented ensemble cast dazzle me with their incredible range for showing different shades of PTSD. I should just appreciate the show for what it is, and not for what it isn’t. But I cannot mentally bring myself to watch The Handmaid’s Tale without bringing five years of baggage into it that I’d rather just drop altogether. It’s time for me to just bid adieu to a show that was built for 2017, not 2022.

I’m officially done with The Handmaid’s Tale.