The Handmaid's Tale: The Word (2x13)

Well... shit.

Cons:

I've been discussing this over the last few weeks, and unfortunately this finale did not necessarily fix the problem: June is stuck, and it's getting frustrating. I mean, I get it. She has an opportunity to escape but she doesn't, because of Hannah. I get that, but we've been in a rut all season with June being unable to escape, and while I'm happy that the baby and Emily got out, it's still frustrating that we're going in to a third season with our protagonist still repeating the same patterns.

I really wanted June to tell Emily that the baby's name was "Holly Nichole," giving respect to Serena with a middle name, but it really rubbed me the wrong way that she tells Emily to call the baby "Nichole." That's going a bit far. I know Serena did the right thing in this episode, and I know she's a victim in all of this too, but she's also a pretty terrible person, complicit in the mass rape and subjugation of her gender. I didn't want June to be so hasty in forgiving her for that.

Pros:

Let's start with Emily. There are some things here that I almost wanted to put into the "cons" section, because I do feel like Emily's story was a bit disjointed this season. As much as I complain about June's story running in circles, whenever we switch to another character, the cohesion is hard to achieve. We didn't check in with Moira and Luke in this finale, and Emily's story still feels like this weird little cul-de-sac, disconnected from June's story in such a way that when the two stories converge at the end, it's startling, and not necessarily all in a good way. But all that being said, Emily's story as a self-contained piece of this finale was really good.

Bradley Whitford is chilling as Commander Lawrence. His voice is just so iconic for me as Josh Lyman that I felt certain he couldn't be all bad. The scene where he's taking Emily in the car, while blasting "Walking on Broken Glass" was cinematic gold. See, I had no idea what was going to happen. I didn't think that Emily was about to die, but I couldn't be sure. And I didn't know if Lawrence was taking her to be punished, to be freed, to join a resistance group... it was a total mystery to me. Emily's fear was tangible and understandable. Probably the most scary part is when Lawrence's poor deranged wife tries to say goodbye to Emily - "it was nice knowing you!" In retrospect, it's clear that Lawrence has probably been helping people to escape for a while, but when you hear this woman say this cryptic thing, it's easy to assume the worst. I also like the fact that Lawrence seems to be a rebel against a system he helped to create, making his ethics extremely muddied and confused. He's not a good person, and is quite cruel to Emily even as he's helping her. He likes the psychological torture, even if he can't condone everything that Gilead is up to. That's fascinating. I wonder if we'll see more of that attitude moving forward.

This episode featured several examples of women striking back against their oppressors, and I'll talk about June and Serena in a moment, but let's start with Emily's shocking and brutal attack of Aunt Lydia. This felt inevitable and yet still surprising, which is the exact balance you want to strike with something like this. Aunt Lydia is a symbol of oppression for the Handmaids, but she is also specifically the woman who cut off Emily's clitoris and has kept her enslaved in such a horrific way. I don't believe that Aunt Lydia is really dead (I want more of this fascinating character), but this has got to be a turning point for a lot of people, and I'm excited to see where it goes from here.

Okay. Turning over to the Waterford side of things. Shit gets intense. I know I'm a broken record, but Serena Joy Waterford is just such a fascinating character. June shows her a bible that Eden had kept hidden. She had written notes all over it, trying to understand the word of God. The two women have a heated exchange about the fate of their daughter - how is she going to grow up in this oppressive, sexist society? And so Serena tries to make a change. This just breaks my heart, because here is a woman who helped to create this awful system, and who is trying to go about making a change in the lawful, correct way. She makes an appointment. She states her case. She boldly reads a passage from the bible, and for her efforts she gets her finger chopped off. It's... horrible. And it's a good case for why the law is not always just, and must be broken to achieve true justice.

So you have this moment where Serena tries so hard to make an example for her daughter, to enact positive change so that her baby girl might grow up at least learning how to read. And when that doesn't work? She lets her baby go. It's one of the most tense, heartbreaking scenes this show has ever pulled off. I loved the fact that June has no idea that it's coming, and suddenly Rita is telling her to take the baby and go. She gets a final nod of goodbye with Nick, and then she's out the door. Serena catches her, though. Think about this: if June and baby Holly had tried to escape before Eden's death, before Serena's finger gets chopped off, Serena's reaction to this would be to holler for the guards and take the baby. But in this moment, she's just desperate and sad, and feels like her child is all she has left in the world to care for. But when June tells her that she can get the baby out, and that her child cannot grow up in Gilead, Serena knows the truth of this. It's unavoidable. She says goodbye to her daughter, and she helps June and Holly/Nichole to escape. This scene was so beautiful, but it was also incredibly tense, because the minute that June handed the baby to Serena for the goodbye, I was worried that Serena was going to run back to the house and shout for help. Instead, we get this moment of connection that solidifies the strange, twisted bond between these two women. And Serena really does love that baby. It's heartbreaking to watch this goodbye, even given all of the evils Serena has helped to perpetuate.

There were so many beautiful, heartbreaking moments in this episode that compounded to make it feel like a finale, while also feeling like just another chapter in a longer story about these people's lives. One of my favorites is when June helps Nick to hold baby Holly, and we see them as a little tableau, a happy family. One thing that I don't talk about a lot when reviewing this show is the way in which children function as a symbol of hope, no matter what. See, Gilead is horrible, and most of the women participating in this system know that it's horrible, whether they're able to admit it or not. But even the Handmaids, who are being habitually raped, are usually happy when a successful pregnancy results in a healthy baby. No matter the horrors of this world, the one thing that is universally agreed upon is the need for more children. So when we see Nick, June, and the child they've created together, there's a reverence there that goes beyond even what you might normally expect for happy new parents.

Then there's something I do talk a lot about with this show, which is how good it is at creating an atmosphere that heightens the symbolic power of certain basic things. Like a woman picking up a bible and reading from it. This is nothing special without its context, but with the context, it's an incredibly brave, powerful, and subversive thing for Serena to have done. Or what about June slapping Fred? There's plenty of casual violence on TV shows. A man backhanding a woman, and that woman slapping him right back, is not particularly shocking in the landscape of television nowadays. But on this show, June doing that was INCREDIBLY powerful. I was so scared for her, even as I was cheering my approval. Later, when Fred comments that maybe they could try for another baby, and tries to use Hannah as leverage to get June to obey, June says, quite calmly: "go fuck yourself, Fred." The use of his first name, the casual swear-word, the blatant disrespect, is all so satisfying because of the structures of this society and the rules as we know them. June is a bad-ass.

As always, I feel like there's too much to talk about, and I don't want to ramble on and on. Suffice it to say, I continue to be incredibly impressed with this show and what it's able to accomplish. I'm keeping a close eye on the redundancy problem that I can see starting to creep in. I hope that next season we see June escape Gilead with Hannah, and I hope we don't have to wait until the end of the season to see it happen. I'd follow June's story up into Canada, or at the very least I'd follow her into a resistance group. I don't need another season of her being stuck with the Waterfords. I can't wait for more!

8/10