The Handmaid's Tale: The Crossing (4x03)

Too much? Yeah, maybe a tad.

Cons:

Like. We've got Handmaids dying via train. We've got Marthas pushed off buildings. We've got extreme physical and psychological torture. The thing that's brilliant about The Handmaid's Tale is how the society is structured like... a society, where people live "normal" "lives" and by that I mean they are terrified all the time, but they've also grown into routines. But by this point in the show, it seems like Gilead will do literally anything, including shooting a bunch of Handmaids as they try to flee, despite just saying that keeping them alive was the top priority. It's all over the top to the point where I think it shoots the moon, just a little. I'm horrified, yes, and I know I'm meant to be... but I'm also just drained past the point of coherent appreciation for what the show is trying to do.

Let's talk about June's psychological arc here, because I think there's something kind of odd with it. She refuses to break, even when her friends are being murdered in front of her. Then she sees Hannah, sees that her own daughter is afraid of her, and that causes her to cave, giving up the location of the other girls. Okay, makes sense so far. Then she tells Aunt Lydia that she's ready to die. Lydia says no, we're sending you to a breeding colony. And then... June gets to have a fun bridge kiss with Nick, and that invigorates her desire to live, to the point where she overpowers Lydia and runs with the other girls? She'd just said she was ready to die. Is this a suicide run? Did she expect to be gunned down as well? Because it doesn't seem like it. I guess what I'm saying is... this show has reached June's "breaking point" many times over, and every time it's not real, she always gets back up and keeps fighting. The cyclical nature of the storytelling can bog down some of the character development in this way.

I am really compelled by Nick and June's relationship and the complexities therein, but I think because of the grotesque amount of torture in the rest of this episode, I wasn't super sold on the big sweeping romance of their reunion. It felt tonally strange to me, even though I'm intrigued by these two people who have a real connection, and who have both committed atrocities since last seeing one another. I want more of them, I just don't quite know what that looks like, or how they make it fit.

Pros:

Elisabeth Moss did a great job acting and directing this installment. It's too much, too grim, too extreme to really have the impact I think they were going for, but it's stellar in how it's constructed nonetheless. I just wanted to say that upfront.

And there were moments where I felt like the horror was excellently deployed. Like... the one guy who's conducting the torture and then acting super pleasant and saying "it's lovely to meet you" was over the top in my opinion, and didn't strike the right tone. EXCEPT when he pushed a woman to her death off of the wall and said "too bad." That was excellent.

I also think Aunt Lydia's whole deal is an effective way of telling this sort of story about evil. Her ego and sense of self-worth is tied up in her relationship to her "girls." Even though Lydia and June are opposed in their goals and their methods, June is now adopting Janine and the other Handmaids as her "girls" and that creates a natural tension between the two. I loved the part where June was calling Lydia out on the real crux of the issue, that Lydia has failed them. Lydia's villainy has always been fascinating to me because she seems to have warped her own perceptions of reality to such a degree that she thinks she does care about them and that what she's doing is what's best. That's so scary to contemplate.

Like I said, I do love Nick, and I find his and June's relationship to be quite fascinating. Here, we see that Nick is willing to do whatever it takes to keep June alive, even if it means having Lawrence manipulate her, even if it means using Hannah. I don't blame Nick for it. I know he's doing what he can to keep June safe, and her child, too. But also... yikes! It's like June said in the last episode. Gilead makes it hard to be a good person. And Nick is trying, but he's also willing to cross a lot of lines to protect the person he cares about. June has made that kind of choice too, but she's also taken responsibility for more and more people, trying to help save the day in bigger and bigger ways.

Up in Canada, we get a little bit of time to see what's up with Luke. He's... angry, at June, in a way. And again, how can I really blame him? There was a moment when she had a chance to escape. And she made a different choice, knowing she would probably never see Luke or Moira ever again. Luke wants her to be okay. He wants her to survive. But how does he reckon with that reality? It's an interesting question and I'd love to see it explored more. We see how Moira and Luke are both struggling with their love for June and the situation they've found themselves in. It's not June's fault, but parts of it are due to her decisions.

So as we end, we've got Janine and June on the run, a whole swath of other Handmaids dead in the road, and I have truly no idea where things go from here. That can be the most exciting thing about this show, but it can also be frustrating in that often the answer seems to be "June gets captured again, bad things happen to her. She escapes. She gets captured again." How does the cycle end? How does this show stay healthy as it's marching into its fourth season? We'll find out if they manage to pull that off!

7.5/10