The Handmaid's Tale: Baggage (2x03)

Another solid episode, obviously. We're starting to get more and more glimpses of parts of the world not covered in the book, and it's very exciting.

Cons:

One of the things I really love about The Handmaid's Tale is its subtlety. It's so good at showing instead of telling. So on the rare occasions when something is a little too blunt, I feel like I should point it out. There's a moment in the voice-over where June despairs that her mother raised her to be a feminist, and now she sits around waiting to be rescued by men. That felt a little on the nose to me. The message was already clear. It already showed in the way that June is forced to blindly trust strange men who help her in her escape. I don't know that we needed to hear it spelled out that way.

I also wish we could have seen a bit more of what Moira and Luke are up to up in Canada. The scenes with them did a great job of showing Moira's troubles adjusting, but I didn't get a sense of their day-to-day. I want to learn more about what the world really looks like outside of the Gilead system.

Pros:

That said, I did enjoy seeing Moira, Luke, and that random blonde girl whose name I haven't learned yet. It's such a strange contrast to the rigidity and loneliness that we see in June's scenes. We see that Moira is able to go out and hook up with a random girl in a club, but that she doesn't get much out of the experience. I liked the brief exchange she had with another refugee, who had been part of the enforcers and had been forced to hang "gender traitors" against the wall, including a guy he had dated in college. It's interesting that Moira has decided to help assist with other people's escapes, even if she can't quite re-enter ordinary society successfully just yet.

The bulk of the episode focuses on June's continued plight, and flashes back to show her relationship with her mother. I find all of this to be so fascinating. It's common for a politically-minded young woman to butt heads with her mother, but typically it's the younger generation that is more liberal and extreme. In this case, June's mother is an activist, and she is disappointed that her daughter is "wasting her life" by being nothing more than an editor, who wants to get married and settle down. We see the endgame of society's decline, so we know that June's mother was right to protest the corruption of society and the government. She was right to be worried about gender equality. But June isn't wrong to want to get married and have kids and live a simple life working for a book publisher. The tension between them can get pretty intense. What June's mother said to her about how she shouldn't marry Luke was pretty horrible, and June was justified in telling her mother off for that. But when the world falls to pieces, it's easy to forgive such slights.

I really like the way that June's relationship with her mother is used as a way to contemplate June's own role as a mother. She waits around in a warehouse, but eventually she does take the opportunity to escape. By the end of the episode, she is making the decision to get out, which means leaving Hannah behind. This decision seems inconceivable in some ways, but it makes a certain amount of sense. June knows that Hannah is protected - children are the most precious resource Gilead has. And June knows she'd have no chance of ever being free if she walked back in to the belly of the beast.

We get some intriguing hints as to the world beyond June's experiences, as we see a family living together in the old way - a mother, father, and son. They have to go to Church and proclaim their devotion, but the woman, who is proven to be fertile, is not forced to be a Handmaid. We get some hints as to what this setup means. June insinuates that she became a Handmaid not just because of her fertility, but because of her sinfulness. She was an adulterer who broke up Luke's original marriage. I'd like to explore this idea more. What is it like for families who are living on the fringes of Gilead's insanely regimented society? How do they survive? What happens if they make a mistake? There's a heartbreaking scene where June finds a Quaran hidden inside the bed-frame of the family's house, showing that they are having to hide who they truly are just to remain safe. There has been a lot of commentary about the persecution of women and queer people in this show thus far, and I was glad to see some commentary about religious persecution as well, and how that would affect devout followers of non-Christian faiths.

The end of this episode shows June in another tough spot, as her escape is thwarted and she's been taken away. By whom? We don't know. It seems unclear whether she's going to be brought back into Aunt Lydia's custody, or whether this is some other shady organization working behind the scenes. I like not knowing. Obviously Season One didn't follow the blueprint from the book exactly, but Season Two is doing its own thing in a whole new way. I'm so nervous for June, for her unborn child, for Luke, for Moira... I can't wait to see what happens next.

8/10