The Handmaid's Tale Recap: Cursory Meet

A scene from The Handmaid'due south Tale. Photograph: George Kraychyk/Hulu

Almost whatever ritual can first to seem normal after a while. "You treat it like a job," begins the phonation-over in this episode'south opening scene, "an unpleasant job to be gotten through as fast as possible." It'due south June'southward vocalization, just Emily is the one lying on the bed, quietly enduring her Commander's monthly "duty," grimacing as he works his mode towards a cease. June'southward vocalization is measured: All this is now commonplace. The Handmaids have doors in their brains that they open up up while their Commanders invade their bodies, places where they can sink away and plough off their senses. Fiery and obstinate as she might be, when Emily'due south Commander keels over dead it doesn't throw her off. She stays reclining while his wife screams for aid: "Chances are amend if I lay on my back afterwards." Which is true. Of form, she gets a few practiced kicks in on his dead body, besides.

"The Last Ceremony" is an episode divided in 2: The start role deals with the rites and rituals of life in Gilead, and the 2nd studies what happens when those practices are upended. The Gilead machine hasn't been running precisely according to program — there was that pocket-sized matter of a blown-upward Red Center and dozens of dead citizens. But enough time has passed for the Gileadeans (Gileadites?) to accept settled into routine. If goose egg else, autocracies similar these are notable for their dedication to pomp and protocol in the face up of adversity.

When June goes into labor — or at least, believes she goes into labor — every person knows his or her part. The Handmaids prop pillows merely and so, unfold sheets, and ready bowls of ice. June changes into the requisite white gown, which one can but imagine would be stained across repair by the end of an at-abode nativity. Serena, too, is in white, gracefully mimicking the deep breathing of a standout Lamaze devotee. The other Wives surround her in back up, offer words of praise ("Y'all deserve this" being the virtually egregious) and lavishing her with pampering. There's even a goddamn harpist in the corner. Meanwhile, the Marthas scurry importantly, doling out food and floral arrangements, and the Commanders gather in Waterford's study, knocking back whiskies and chomping cigars. In Gilead, an outcome as momentous equally a birth is practically a sacrament, with all the accompanying pageantry.

Lying sedately on the flooring, happily breathing in the adoration and attention of the Wives around her, Serena is obviously displeased to discover that her starring role is being cut short. With June'south immediate dismissal, the spotlight would have stayed on Serena and her new infant, blessed and chosen by the Lord to deport his fruit. Only yet again, June has humiliated her, and when Serena walks in to find June lounging on her bed, posed similar a virgin queen surrounded by her ladies, something inside her snaps. No spicy tea, no thing how goddamn spicy, volition do to get this baby out.

(FYI, Aunt Lydia'south suggestions aren't annihilation to plow up your nose at, no affair how much Serena insists that there'due south only one "natural way" to encourage labor. On Jan 21, 2017, I walked nine miles for the Women's March in D.C. The next mean solar day, I went into labor at xi a.m., ii-and-a-half weeks early. Walking, along with spicy food, and yes, consensual sex, are the three most common recommendations on inducing labor. They could have merely cooked upwardly some hearty Thai nutrient for June.)

Serena and Fred have been at odds since he lashed her with his belt and humiliated her, merely they discover something to reunite them over again when June pushes him a bit too far past request if she tin can exist sent to Hannah's commune after the baby is born. The request, absolutely, is a big one, and information technology's hard to believe that June expects the Commander to really pull strings. This is the same adult female who ran away and was seconds from inbound Canadian airspace with what he believes is his baby on board. She hasn't given the Commander a lot of reasons to believe she'll sedately spotter her child grow up in another family unit's home. Just June also has next to zippo to lose. Why not attain back and see if she tin can tug on his heartstrings merely a bit?

Her mistake isn't in asking. Information technology's in asking, "If information technology is at all within your power," instead of implying that she knows he's powerful enough to make anything happen. Afterward his hospital stay and Serena's capable substitution in his place, the Commander is determined to prove himself, to remind Serena — and June — that information technology is he who holds the reins in their firm.

When June is called into the principal sleeping accommodation and Serena waits calmly on the bed, the scene is set like a horror movie. The Commander stays in the dark, his face entirely in shadow, until exactly the moment he is pulling autonomously his pants. The camera zooms in on Serena's tight hold on June'south hand. Even Serena'due south, "Nosotros need to help the baby come out naturally," has the air of a madwoman in the attic — someone who has totally lost touch with reality. June screams and writhes, and she calls out for the first fourth dimension, verbally protesting as she hasn't in the past. This isn't a part of the job that she has resigned herself to. She cannot sideslip abroad to that mental identify. This isn't a state-sanctioned barbarism. Information technology's a roughshod rape organized by a husband and married woman so that they might lay their hands on a stolen baby more rapidly. It'southward more than likely painful. And yet Serena'due south eyes are live for the starting time fourth dimension during a "ceremony": She gazes difficult at her hubby, and for a brief moment, just equally he climaxes, information technology almost appears that they might kiss.

Then comes the After, with June's body heaped on the bed like a corpse, then reclined on her ain bed, her limbs hanging like weights. The rules governing how Gilead functions have been cleaved, irreparably, and routine is no longer a beacon she can cling to.

No thing what has happened in her past, June is a victim anew. The debate over rape on tv has raged on for the past several seasons of some very high-profile shows — most notably, in Game of Thrones, in which a female lead was brutally raped by her own husband on their wedding night. Rape, critics say, is used merely for shock cistron, and far as well many narratively unnecessary rape scenes are at present included on Tv just to rile up viewers. The Handmaid'southward Tale has, at times, been guilty of brutalizing its female characters to a questionable betoken. And this scene tin can be read in a troubling way: Why is it so much more than upsetting to watch a rape in which a woman screams and begs than one in which a woman lies silent, equally Emily does? Are we meant to view one as more emotionally damaging than the other? Because we shouldn't. With whatever other show, I might be tempted to worry, but hither, the second rape feels purposeful, as if the scene is trying to shock usa, but only so we might remember merely how profoundly important it is that nosotros do not sacrifice whatever ground to gender bias, that we continue to treat every threat to a woman every bit valid, that we never forget just how roughshod information technology can exist when men decide how women'due south bodies should be handled.

And all the same, June'southward rape was not the hardest function of the episode to sentry.

I watched the scene of June's brief reunion with Hannah three times. The get-go fourth dimension I sobbed and then hard and lost myself so emotionally that I knew I needed another viewing. The second time, despite bracing myself, I still teared upwardly and felt a physical ache in my breast. The 3rd time, I must admit, I watched to make sure I wasn't exaggerating the scene's intensity in calorie-free of the current policies the U.S. government is enacting at our ain border — policies that rip children from their parents' arms and house them in cages as a form of "deterrence" against illegal immigration. Information technology's a strange thing knowing that your autonomous nation is committing atrocities that we one time only imagined took place in distant lands or in the pages of history books, and that our Attorney General is using the same faulty and delusional thinking as the officials running Gilead — that the Bible sanctions such behavior. This is the danger of blind adherence.

June has surely played this scene out over and over in her mind — the beautiful, tearful reunion with her abducted daughter, in which the two would encompass and reassure one some other and shake with profound joy. Instead, Hannah (who is played hither masterfully by Jordana Blake) hides behind her Martha, fearful at her mother's sudden reappearance afterwards years of separation, and then furious with her mother for leaving her, and so curious about her mother'due south pregnancy. Imagine the confusion any child would suffer after existence hoisted over to two strangers she's told are her new parents, and and then of a sudden seeing her existent mother return.

June's offerings to Hannah are some of the bravest any parent could muster: She tries to set her for a future that she believes she won't exist in that location to witness. "I just want to tell yous that I will e'er be your mommy. And daddy and I volition always love you lot," might exist the only words Hannah volition exist able to cling to as she grows up. When Hannah's emotional walls finally come up down and she lets out one plaintive, "Mommy," the impairment that Gilead has wrought reaches new heights. June's calm is a testimony to how much she knows, as a parent, that it is critical for her daughter'due south emotional well-beingness that she make their parting as unlike their separation in the forest as possible.

There couldn't be a ameliorate time for Americans to be exposed to the fundamental evil of separating a child from her parents. Yes, this is a idiot box show, a dark fantasy borne out of one genius's worried heed. But fine art exists to unclothe and redress reality in garments that will make its truth more apparent.

When Nick is dragged away by two unexpected Guardians and June is left alone, nine months meaning in a mansion in the middle of snowy, rural New England, the suspension of that moment is insufficiently insignificant.

The Handmaid's Tale Recap: Brief See