Scrabble is a word game, perfect for those with silver tongues and vast vocabularies. It’s also a game the characters in “The Handmaid’s Tale” do not play properly.
The new Hulu TV show, adapted from Margaret Atwood’s novel of the same name, frequently features two of its main characters partaking in games of Scrabble. Offred, played by Elisabeth Moss, faces off in tense, albeit brief, word games with the Commander, played by Joseph Fiennes.
These scenes are meant to be serious. The commander regularly invites Offred, disallowed from fraternizing with men otherwise, to secretly spar with him in his study at night. The meetings could be described as intimate, illicit and revealing.
But fans and viewers of the series have been harping on a different aspect of the Scrabble scenes: Offred and the Commander don’t play by the rules.
They also seem to have inordinately high scores ...
Some have said they’re just making up their own methods as they go ...
Others can’t believe these two players are getting such great letters every round ...
The lesson here is simple: Hulu, if you’re going to film people playing Scrabble, expect to get served.