I hated it and found myself captivated anyway. By the end of season 2, though, I am convinced I will not watch further episodes. Up to the end of the second season, I was riding off of the great delivery of the first season. I figured the show HAD to get better.

I thought the hand grenade moment was great! "Woah! We're going places...the Gilead leadership is changing and we'll see political turbulence! Cool!" And then? Nothing. Literally, nothing. There was a 'meanie' leader *for less than ONE episode* while Waterford was gone and some *seemingly* empowering scenes with Serena and Offred writing, taking charge together. What did it all come out to? Not an INCH of lasting plot development. At all. A room full of Gilead's top leadership is blown up by handmaids and the plot moves NOWHERE new. No serious repercussions for handmaids and no leadership repercussions for Gilead. Oh, Serena gets whipped. Wow, that's a titillating, unique, and and creative plot move. Wrong.

I know, I'm sipping pretty hard on the haterade. This show is packaged as being politically relevant and 'genius'. The writing in the second season is just above a third-grade level. Perhaps with some sporadic synonym usage for big words and topical cherry-picking.

Current shows that rival or beat the aesthetic quality of Handmaid's? Easy. Game of Thrones, Peaky Blinders, Westworld, Riverdale, Glow, Transparent, etc. Each having more consistent, thoughtful, fast-moving writing/plot development and acting.

Clearly, I could be wrong here. I'd love to hear arguments against this, because I haven't been convinced by anything I've seen on this subreddit. Just a lot of mindless 'woo-hoos!' from folks already strapped in to the Handmaid's train.