My, how the misogynistic tables have turned.
OK, OK. So The Handmaid’s Tale’s Serena Joy doesn’t truly develop into a handmaid on this week’s episode. After all, thank goodness, she’s not subjected to the ritual rape that Gilead forces upon any girl chosen to put on crimson. But she is made to stay in a home the place she’s handled like rubbish, whereas a lady who hates her appoints herself mom to her child.
Karma, eh?
Meanwhile, Lawrence makes June a suggestion she will’t/doesn’t wish to refuse. Read on for the highlights of “Motherland.”
SERENA’S NEW LOW | Near the highest of the episode, we get our first have a look at “New Bethlehem,” Commander Lawrence’s housing improvement for individuals who’ve escaped Gilead. Or, because the pamphlet probably will say, “A modernized, strategically liberalized island where Gilead refugees can come home with amnesty and the promise of reuniting with long-lost family and friends.” Lawrence tells Nick and the opposite commanders who’re touring the positioning that he desires to challenge maturity, confidence and “moral fortitude” to the skin world. What’s extra, he’s planning a visit to Toronto to entice households into shifting again.
Speaking of Toronto: We be taught that Serena has been phoning June and Rita from the detention heart, hoping for some assist. They’ve been screening her calls. And after we lower to Mrs. Waterford, crying as she pumps breastmilk in a nook of the detention heart’s guests’ room, that evaluation appears correct.
The Wheelers are fostering Noah whereas Serena is in custody, and Alanis is there to gather the milk and be a judgmental jerk. As Mrs. Wheeler appears at Serena like she’s a chunk of chewed gum caught to the underside of her shoe, she relates that Ezra survived, due to the bulletproof vest he was sporting when Serena shot him. Serena tries to play on the youthful girl’s sympathies, saying “the pressure and the pregnancy” induced her to go a bit kooky. Alanis doesn’t actually care. Instead, she complains about how Noah cries all day and night time, and that they’re utilizing the cry-it-out technique with him to attempt to get him to hush. (“YOU CAN’T DO THAT WITH A BABY THAT YOUNG! THEY CAN’T SELF-SOOTHE!” I write indignantly in my notes. That poor kiddo.)
Then Alanis throws shade at Serena by implying that she doesn’t have the “mental toughness” vital for motherhood. “I have overthrown a country. And I have, against all odds, given birth to a very healthy baby. And not once have I lacked for mental toughness,” she grits out. They argue extra, but it surely comes down to 1 stark fact ultimately: “You’re in here,” Alanis says, “and I’m not.” Ouch.
HELLO AGAIN | June and Lawrence meet up throughout his journey north. He’s each extremely frank about his objectives in the beginning of Gilead (“Unfortunately, I had to use religious nutjobs as a delivery system” to avoid wasting humanity “and I underestimated their depravity, but it was triage, and it worked”) and his supply to deliver June again into the fold. Gilead received’t let Hannah out, however June is greater than welcome to develop into one in all New Bethlehen’s first residents. “No handmaids, no hangings… where one might visit their grown children running their own houses,” he dangles, bringing June to tears as she contemplates a reunion with Hannah. “You’re saying I can be with my daughter?” she wonders, and man, Elisabeth Moss’ studying on that one is really heartbreaking. Lawrence additionally places it on the market that Nick is working with him on this decision, and the he offers June a telephone so she will get in contact when she’s thought issues via.
Back at dwelling, she’s definitely contemplating the supply. Luke… positively isn’t. She factors out that Lawrence has repeatedly come via for her, and “he has been my friend,” whereas the American authorities hasn’t performed a lot for them. Their dialog ramps up into an argument that isn’t helped when Luke, who’s understandably pissed off by how a lot Gilead has blown up his household and altered his spouse on a basic stage, blurts out that she’s letting emotion cloud her judgment. “Of course you don’t understand what I feel,” she shoots again. “Look what you did to Serena and her baby.”
Yeowtch. June’s assertion is fascinating on a number of ranges. First, it positively falls into that class of (*8*) Second, June is kinda #GroupSerena on this one, which is a change, to say the very least. June doubles down, telling her husband that she didn’t ask for him to intervene. “Just let me protect you sometimes, please,” he begs. But she doesn’t soften. “The thing is, I don’t need your protection. I don’t need it,” she says. “Hannah does.”
JUNE CONSIDERS HER OPTIONS | June goes upstairs and soothes Nichole, who’s been roused from sleep as a result of anti-refugee protestors are honking exterior the home. June sings The Velvet Underground’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” which she used to sing to Hannah. “I want you to know her,” she whispers to the little woman. Just exterior the room, Luke overhears.
After June wakes up in Nichole’s mattress the following morning, she comes downstairs to seek out Tuello there. He’s not happy that the Architect of Gilead is canvassing refugee households in Toronto. “Lawrence’s goal is to kill off America, once and for all. You’re a get for them,” he says, calling June a “domino” who will kick off a catastrophic impact if she chooses to return. That’s when June decides she’s had nearly sufficient of people that weren’t handmaids telling her what’s and isn’t good for her re: Gilead. She calls for to know what Tuello is doing with the data they obtained for him in No Man’s Land; after attempting to cover behind “it’s classified,” he ultimately admits {that a} army motion is in play. But that obscure promise isn’t sufficient for June. “Lawrence is offering us Hannah,” she says angrily. “You are offering us NOTHING.”
Later, June consults Rita, asking her what she ought to do. Rita gently says she’d by no means return — however she additionally doesn’t have a baby on the within. “If there were a world where my son isn’t dead?” she wonders. “I would do anything to see him again. I would travel to the ends of the Earth.”
‘GUESS I’M A BETTER CHRISTIAN THAN YOU’ | Let’s examine in with Serena once more. Lawrence swings by to inform her that she’s being launched to Gilead custody, and she or he’ll return to a room on the Wheelers’ home. She is NOT pleased about that flip of occasions, and she or he’s gutted when he reminds her that Alanis and Ryan have authorized custody of Noah; principally, the one manner she will be with him is to play ball. She refuses to stay in the identical home as her little one’s “kidnappers,” crying and saying, “I’m not a handmaid.” Honey, it if walks like a duck, talks like a duck and has its human rights violated like a … OK, you get the place I used to be going with this one.
Serena’s subsequent customer is June. It’s clear that Mrs. Waterford thinks they’ve leveled up of their relationship, and she or he doesn’t hesitate to ask her former handmaid for assist discovering an advocate. “Serena, we’re not friends,” June says bluntly. In a quick however superior change, June makes it clear that she didn’t for one second forgive Serena, and that she helped with the delivery as a result of Noah “didn’t do anything wrong.” Still not utterly getting it, Serena brings up their “bond,” and June’s face principally has a patronizing “Oh, sweetie” written throughout it. “I turned the other cheek,” she explains. “Turns out after all this, I guess I’m a better Christian than you.” BOOM.
As Serena tries to course of that fact, she wonders aloud “How do you go and live in a house with a woman who’s trying to steal your baby?… How did you ever live with me?” So June tells her: Basically, your entire time, she was plotting her revenge. And, it kinda paid off? “Look at what happened to Fred, and look at you now,” June says. Who knew the detention heart would serve up such a satisfying array of simply desserts?! Before June leaves, she tells Serena which you could’t assist your little one in case you’re not with your little one. And that appears to cement one thing in her mind.
LAWRENCE’S CONSCIENCE | So when she subsequent meets with Lawrence, she calls for that he cease Gilead from marrying off Hannah. “Gilead’s gonna Gilead,” he replies glibly, including that the “arranged marriage” is “not too bad” by the regime’s requirements. This is an excessive amount of for June, who yells at him about the entire girls raped, tortured and abused “in a world YOU created, you sick f—k.” That hits him exhausting. Tearily, he says he was simply attempting to avoid wasting the world “and it got away from me,” and he’d erase all the pieces “just so I wouldn’t have Gilead on my conscience.” (Side observe: Bradley Whitford is basically, actually nice on this scene.)
June implores the commander to do SOMETHING, and he counters that New Bethlehem IS that one thing, a “nicer autocracy.” Still, not lengthy after their assembly, June receives a package deal with a DVD in it… and it’s footage of Hannah strolling via a glass passageway at what seems to be a faculty.
Remember how Luke and June’s earlier argument was powerful? It was nothing in comparison with the way in which they throw down about what to do re: New Bethlehem and the footage they’ve simply obtained. She yells that he hasn’t performed something for seven years, then quick apologizes. He places his foot down that he received’t deliver Nichole again into Gilead, then June counters that she’ll go alone. “We’re never going to be enough for you, are we?” he says, dejected, and June sobs. “She needs me, and I left her behind,” she cries as Luke takes her into his arms. “I abandoned her… I have to go back to her.”
In the tip, they take the footage to Tuello, who guarantees to throw each useful resource into finding Hannah however asks for a while earlier than June makes her closing determination. Elsewhere, Lawrence tells Nick he’s fairly positive June will transfer, and he presents Nick a submit within the improvement as his right-hand man. And elsewhere from there, Serena returns to the Wheelers’ place, the place they make it clear that she’s solely allowed to nurse Noah, and Alanis will carry out “all the duties of motherhood.” Even worse, Serena has to agree — out loud! — that she’s not match to be a mom. When Mrs. Waterford is ready to maintain her child, he nurses with abandon as she weeps and tells him she missed him a lot. (Side observe: Look at how that child is Yvonne Strahovski! This present’s child casting is ACES.)
‘WE FOUND HANNAH’| Every week later, there’s nonetheless no information from Tuello… till he calls June to say the phrases she’s been ready to listen to: “We found Hannah.” (!!!) He explains that they know the place the varsity is, they know the place she is, and so they have a plan. June’s pleasure overflows; she’s at a neighborhood market and winds up hugging the storekeeper earlier than operating dwelling, smiling. She bursts into the home and hugs Moira and Luke as she cries, “They’re gonna go get her!” Luke is overcome. Everyone is pleased, apart from me, who fears that any good factor on this present goes to be contaminated by Gilead’s poison.
In the final shot, we see Hannah at her college, engaged on some plantings. As the digicam pulls again… what’s the form of that planter? Interlocking Cs? US? Hit the feedback together with your theories.
Now it’s your flip. What did you consider the episode? Sound off within the feedback!
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