On 2017 Un-Binge Watchable Television

So you know how I said on Tuesday that I was going to binge watch the shit out of the first three episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale? That didn't happen, and here's why.

Obviously I watched the first episode. And you know what? It was amazing. Elizabeth Moss is simmering and stunning and delivers a barnburner of a performance. The show is absolutely stunning. The choices made about what to expand from the book are apt. And Margaret Freaking Atwood has a cameo...

The thing is, the episode was SO good, SO weighty, SO deliberate, SO tense, SO… on the nose. It was un-binge watchable. We finished the first episode and I was like like “great, wow, so good, I need to go feel my feelings on my own…"

Because I have allllllll of the feels seeing this book come to the screen in a time like this, at the age I am at. I don’t remember exactly what I wrote when I named The Handmaid’s Tale as my favorite book on my Princeton college application, but I think it included something about strength and grit in the face of totalitarian patriarchy. At that point, I’d recently written an article on the Taliban in my school newspaper.

Not to be that hipster, but I’ve been obsessed with how modern gender politics relate to The Handmaid’s Tale since I was a teenager. And that was before I realized they don't teach you about the wage gap, or (lack of) maternity leave, or how the terror of Zika hits you differently when you're edging onto your mid-thirties and haven't had a kid yet.

So yes, show = good. But especially as we venture into our new political age where some on the left don’t consider abortion access an economic issue, and therefore not a progressive box our candidates really need to check... forgive me if I’m not mainlining this one.