Alright, my question then is, if what Williams' does, in your opinion, merits the term plagiarism, what do you call the work of someone like James Horner who routinely took whole passages of Prokofiev, Khachaturian, and Britten and modified them only slightly.
Or Zimmer who was sued for infringing the copyright of…

Oh I don't know, McHattie seems about right. He's not famous enough to take you out of the moment, and he's good at projecting an intense sense of control. And in costume he weirdly reminds me of Bowie in The Prestige. He has that lean, somewhat ageless look, that works for a character like this. Malcolm McDowell is…

The only bit of his work that amounts to actual plagiarisation is a section from Star Wars that is pretty much an exact lift from The Rite of Spring. Everything else I would call more like inspirations.
Apart from that Williams has an unmistakable musical identity, his orchestral language is as recognisably his own…

You have to separate the book from the show here, because apart from the book being set at an indistinct point in the not so distant future, Atwood's dystopia is also somewhat satirical. There are elements in the book that feel more like Terry Gilliam's Brazil than Orwell's 1984.

I think my issue is more with the implausible conveniences afforded to Offred and Moira when they take risks. With the way some of them have talked. The actions by mayday itself seem perfectly realistic, so do the clandestine interactions, like those little scrnes between Nick and the James Beard nominated Martha.
Not…

Some of it was perfectly alright, I rather liked the Blondie/Philip Glass remix set to that protest scene in one of the earlier episodes, but yeah, a lot of it was really bad.

No, that's just the show, the wives are wearing teal, and the green on the Marthas is almost grey.

Serena seems like someone who is very comfortable dehumanising people and thinking of them only in terms of utility. Offred is a burden to her until she becomes useful as a surrogate. There other things going on as well of course, but to put it in terms recognisable to our society; she's probably terrible to…

Oh good lord, nothing got as much of an emotional reaction at our house as Offred just falling asleep with those letters strewn across the floor. It was the worst kind of 'let's have a character do something deeply stupid, just to build some tension'-moment, but of course she gets away with it. Just like talking to…

My concern is that if they're going to make this a show about 'the resistance' it's just going to make the whole thing to implausible.
I feel Miller and co. should do some research about life in places like East Germany, Afghanistan in the nineties, or occupied Europe in WW2 to get a real sense of what it's like to…

I mean that's the problem, isn't it? TV shows, if they go on for a while, need some sort of status quo to which things can return. Something that justifies why this story is being told with these characters.
It's hard to imagine Offred staying at the Waterfords while she starts working for the resistance or something…

If it was a miniseries, you could simply say 'that was flawed, but it had this and this going for it'. Instead it's more of a 'what the hell are they thinking?'-sort of reaction.
Mostly it seems like they're slowly gearing up to become a tv show about 'strong' female characters fighting the patriarchy.
And if it wasn't…

Not just that; when have religious conservatives ever demonstrated a sense of style? These are deeply unhip people, the show however wants to do that thing that they often do for nazis, and make them look sort of dangerously glamourous.

Yeah, exactly. Serena's 'thank you for your sacrifice' seemed wonderfully unthinking.

Problem is that following the book more closely leaves you with an almost entirely blank slate for the next season, I imagine that's a little scary for the people making the show. So you wind up with this weird mutant growth of the story. They started out with what seemed like an adaptation that got the feel of the…

The war seems have been pretty much won on the show though. It's a little harder to gage, since the show doesn't include the news broadcasts Atwood mentioned in the book, so it's harder to tell exactly what the state of the country is. But the fact that the USA seems to just be Hawaii and Alaska now indicates that…

That would be an interesting journey for her. Since it seemed she was a true believer before, watching her fundamentalism crumble in the face of the lived realisation of her beliefs could lead to some good stories. Especially since she seems smarter than her husband.
On the other hand it could all just manifest itself…

Part of it is that if you're certain of your grip on the oppressed population that you can allow them some leeway. The commanders have some built in release valves; rituals like the salvaging, or that slutshaming, all operate as an official way to channel pent up frustrations.
But outside of that it's obvious that no…

I think the methodical pace has a lot to do with Lynch's deep submersion in transcendental meditation.
The slowness forces you to really be mindful of what you're watching. Letting the full impact of each moment, each scene, really sink in.

The coffee guy was also Liz Lemon's agent on 30 Rock, where like Dougie he wore some perfectly oversized suits.