Cheat Work Thursday

NIGHT We're continuing from the last episode. June gets back from the market and hides the Jezebel's package behind the bathtub, and Serena is already waiting outside the door to award her with a strike on the face. Exhibit A is brought out: the short gold dress from Jezebel's. Serena drags June to the bathroom, forces her to pee on a stick and warns June that she better pray she’s pregnant. She herself sits on the floor, praying, bowing in front of the stick while waiting for the result. Without context, watching just that bowing scene, you’d want this woman to get whatever she’s wishing for. But no, I just saw her force a grown woman pee in front of her and yell “Don’t be a child!” when the woman couldn’t. So I just want some violent ends for her right now. June is pregnant. Changing her tone, Serena tells June that “He’s answered our prayers.” “You think I prayed for this? You think I prayed to bring a baby into this house?” June snickers, kneeling on the...

THE BRIDGE The episode starts with a send-off for Janine, who’s leaving for a new home as her posting with the Putnams is complete. It involves a prayer by Commander Putnam, a curtsey from his Handmaids-are-all-beneath-me Wife, and Janine's Handmaid friends lining up in front of the house, saying goodbye or something. “Don’t be sad,” Janine says to June. “He’s coming for me,” she adds, grinning. So. Janine needs help. But Aunt Lydia insists that Janine is tougher than they think and wants her to be an example to everyone. Good line: “I’m very proud of you. Go to them and be blessed. Go like an open flower .” -- Aunt Lydia to Janine when they arrive at Janine's new home. June approaches Alma and says she wants to help with Mayday, the resistance group she first heard from Emily. Alma asks June to go back to Jezebel's and retrieve a package at the bar, and it has to be that night. So it’s time to emergency-flirt with the Commander and tell him how exciting...

JEZEBELS The Commander enforces the law and the religion , just not on himself. I’ve heard this before in real life. But never mind that. Flashback goes to Nick — told ya, part of the problem. He was at a work agency, looking for a new job because he wasn’t able to keep his last four or something, and got kicked out of the office because he was holding the line and got into a fight with the person behind him. His “Career Counsellor” bought him coffee and introduced him to the fixer of the world's problem: Sons of Jacob ie Gilead. So we are introduced to another Gilead douche — a well-dressed man who speaks as if he's a decent guy and drops the word Bible here and there in a conversation. This douche was later seen with the Commander and another douche in a limo as part of the decision makers to “collect women to be impregnated by men of superior status, of course ”. “Maybe the wife should be there for the act. There is Scriptural precedent,” said Douche No 1. “'...

THE OTHER SIDE Luke is alive, and this episode brings us back to the time when June, Luke and Hannah were trying to escape -- a welcome break after six episodes of misogyny overload, to put it mildly. (I’m exhausted.) Luke was shot (sorry, I called this a ‘break’) and taken away by an ambulance, which then met with an accident, skidding off an icy road. Luke survived and was found by a group of runaway survivors while he was hiding in an abandoned shop. (Did Gilead Eyes round up each rebel / potential Handmaid this way? Two SUVs full of armed men to chase a family of three? That’s a lot of work and resources.) Going back to a few days earlier, June, Luke and Hannah were heading to Canada, making a stop to meet June's mother's old friend, who was going to help them cross the border. They were asked to ditch all their stuff and hide in the trunk on their way to the man’s cabin, where they were going to wait for a while and prepare before leaving. The short story is, whe...

A WOMAN’S PLACE The episode opens with Aunt Lydia supervising the Handmaids cleaning the wall aka Not-the-kind-with-coffee-and-Wi-Fi Hanging Out Spot. Some foreign government officials are visiting, and suddenly the God-fearing-and-prayer-before-rape Gilead is conscious of what looks good and what doesn't. If this is all mandated by God, what is there to cover? We've watched too many shows and news about imprisonment, kidnapping and abuse. At a glance, is the way Serena treating June the worst on the list? No. We’ve seen Silence of the Lambs. And yes, there shouldn't be a ranking here, they are all horrendous. I just want to describe Serena’s superpower: Being Abusive and Condescending While Still Thinking She's a Good Person. (Sure, it's not really foreign in real life.) In a previous episode, she handed June cookies like she was a three-year-old and told June that she was “a smart girl” like June had been raised in a cave and just got out; in this episode,...

FAITHFUL June flirts with the Commander at their Scrabble games to survive, and the Commander thinks he’s good at making June happy. He gives June an old magazine to read in his office, thinking he’s cute and the most chill guy in the world. In another meeting where June complains about him touching her thighs in the previous Ceremony (I’m shaking my head writing this), the Commander complains about women while flipping through the fashion magazine. “No woman was ever rich enough, young enough, pretty enough, good enough.” “We had choices then,” June replies. “I don’t know. You have respect, you have protection, you can fulfill your biological destiny in peace.” “ Biological destiny .” “Children. What else is there to live for?” “Love.” Of course, the Commander thinks love is no more than “a marketing campaign” and continues to threaten June, reminding her what love did to Emily. This guy thinks he’s the type that raises children. The theme when recapping the sh...

"DON'T LET THE BASTARD GRIND YOU DOWN" It's no news that women live at the mercy of men in Gilead -- to a point that the scene of Nick fetching ice for June is made as if they are having a moment. Please, it isn’t. Nick is part of the problem. He, too, is trying to stay alive, you say? Meh. Last episode, we saw the original Ofglen, whose real name we now learn is Emily, trying to bribe the Eye with her hand to escape (of course, to no avail). And this week, because there’s no such thing as a sterile man in Gilead, June is offered a  help by a doctor. One : there's no way to tell if that will actually save or cost her life. Two : letting a stranger, who checked your vagina when you told him you fainted, impregnate you -- not by your choice -- can be considered a help around here. I need a shower. We're also brought back to the Red Centre this episode, where, after learning the details of the Ceremony, June and Moira bound an Aunt in a boiler room, sto...

LATE Because this show is never going to give us a break, it continues to screw June by replacing Ofglen at the end of the last episode, and now we learn that the original Ofglen has been arrested. We also get a few flashbacks to the beginning of Gilead's power: June’s bank account was frozen, all women were fired from work, a barista called June a slut when her card was declined, and at one point there was a street protest. Imagine that: a protest . Jumping back to the current timeline, women don’t even dare to look up further than two feet in front of them. Comes a useful and scary reminder for real life: this mess did not start with a gun to the head. So, one afternoon, back from the usual shopping (grocery, not shoes!), June is surprised with a clearly special lunch in the kitchen, complete with a rose in a vase. These people thought she was pregnant. She gets to see Janine later that day when Serena goes to visit the Putnams. Janine is clearly so not well (“It can ...

BIRTH DAY No, I don't want to be this  angry. Come on, this is a TV show. We learned a lot in the first episode. And we were also introduced to many of the characters: Nick -- the Waterfords’ driver. Ofglen -- a Handmaid, gay, has a son with her partner (not sure where they are now, I may have missed this part), was a uni professor* before Gilead, and now is June’s shopping partner**. She told June that she's a member of a resistance group. Moira -- June’s best friend since before Gilead, gay, and we learned from the flashback that she was also sent to the training centre. June was told by Janine that Moira’s dead. Janine -- a Handmaid, lost an eye at the training centre for talking back to the Aunt, and is showing signs of mental breakdown from Gilead trauma. Luke -- June’s husband, presumed killed by Gilead’s police when they were chased and June got caught. Hannah -- June and Luke’s missing daughter, most probably taken away by the government. Fun facts: *Col...

OFFRED The Handmaid's Tale isn't good for my anger management. Based on a Margaret Atwood novel by the same name, the US is now the Republic of Gilead, ruled by its totalitarian government where, among other things, women are not allowed to work, read and be a normal human being. They are only expected to obey men and people in power, and fulfill their biological destiny ie to breed. Snickering at that will earn you a shock by a cattle prod or cost you an eyeball. During this dystopian time, the world suffers from severe pollution and a sharp decline in fertility rate, which is still not its biggest problem. Under Gilead, women are graded and classified like supermarket produce, as they should, obviously: Wives are married to the high ranking officials ie the Commanders. Aunts train the Handmaids in a special* training centre and oversee their postings afterwards. Marthas do house chores in the Commanders' homes. Handmaids are a handful of fertile women left, t...