*RUST RATING: 🤰🏼🤰🏼🤰🏼🤰🏼 (4/4) Child Wanting Women

Flash Summary

In the near future, a Christian fundamentalist military dictatorship controls all aspects of society and worldwide infertility is rampant. Women are thus valued only by their ability to conceive. Fertile females, known as “Handmaids”, are handed out to the upper class trophy wives who can’t get knocked up. Barren trophy wives then pass the Handmaids over to their horny husbands to rape until a child is conceived.

The Players

Elisabeth Moss

Bring on the nominations and awards for Elisabeth Moss! Let’s just get this out of the way: Moss is fucking amazing! Every episode, every appearance, every time! Moss plays the central character “Offred” (her given Handmaid name as a result of her being the Handmaid “of Fred” Waterford).

Here is the set up: Offred attempted to flee the country with her husband and little girl. Her husband was killed and her daughter was taken away to whereabouts unknown. Offred was subsequently sent to Handmaiden reform school and then given to Commander Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) and his barren trophy wife Joy (Yvonne Strahovski) to “help” them conceive a child.

Moss owns this role. She transforms a seemingly one dimensional character into a full blown vivid, complicated, and tortured soul. Moss utilizes her visual emotive presence to convey much more than any piece of dialogue could.

Yvonne Strahovski

Yvonne Strahovski plays the cold hearted and desperate Mrs. Waterford. Strahovski gives Moss a run for her money in the acting department. At times you hate her and at other times you’ll find yourself sympathizing with her. Strahovski is able to go from cool and calm to explosive rage at the turn of a dime. Mrs. Waterford needs Offred to give her the one thing she can’t give her husband: a child. It also doesn’t help that Mr. Waterford is more interested in Offred than with her. She is thus left to partake in a delicate dance between keeping Offred and keeping her husband.

Joseph Fiennes

Joseph Fiennes plays the self-absorbed sociopath Commander Fred Waterford who has a history of using his Handmaids for more than just procreation – a fact that often gets him into trouble with both his wife and his political peers.

Fiennes carefully portrays Waterford with a mysterious progression throughout the season. At times he seems to be a good guy, treating Offred with care and being sensitive to his wife’s pain. Then the next moment, he’s the bad guy, treating Offred as a piece of meat and reprimanding his wife. We are left wondering who is the real Mr. Waterford.