The Handmaid's Tale: No Man’s Land (5x07)

Okay, let's not waste any time, and dive right in!

Cons:

I detected this odd whiff of... conservativism to today's episode? I don't entirely know where I'm going with this so hold on while I think it through... but basically June's speech to Serena about how her baby belongs with her was all very... biological determinism-y. Serena is the only face and smell and person that Noah knows. He came from her. They belong together. I don't know, it just suddenly struck me how sinister this show is about having the villainous bad crowd specifically be people who are adopting-by-force, while the good, right, moral thing is always for a baby to stay with its birthmother. Obviously within the context of the show, Gilead's actions are monstrous, and no child should be ripped away from its family in that manner. But adoption writ large isn't a moral evil, and this episode made me kind of feel like they were implying that? Am I being too sensitive to this? I don't know...

I'm about to pay a lot of compliments to the characterization and performance of our two leading ladies, but I do want to reiterate a point I've made before and I'm sure I'll make again, which is that both of these women have been historically protected by their whiteness, and they continue to be so. Serena is a rapist and slavery apologist among other vile crimes. June is able to get away with her (completely justified) defiance in part because she is a white, straight woman. It's a refrain I want to keep saying because this show is so focused on its political message, it so clearly wants to be read as commentary on our current moment, and yet it often misses some of the biggest, most obvious areas of intersectionality in its storytelling.

Pros:

But okay. Setting that aside for a moment, just in terms of a raw, real, performance-based review... this episode went hard, and I was riveted every second. The bond between Serena and June is enormously twisted, and to be clear, June is 100% Serena's victim in the larger sense. Even now, even with June having killed Fred, the power has always been Serena's, she has always been the one to perpetrate huge crimes against June's person. And yet... and yet, June is strong, and vindictive, and has a mean streak, June spent this episode with Serena entirely at her mercy once Serena's labor really got going. And in the end, June, unwittingly, led Serena right into a trap. There is no clear cut way to talk about this relationship. There is, in my opinion, a clear bad guy and good guy, but that doesn't mean all of the murkiness goes away.

The Handmaid's Tale can often be really over the top, in a lot of obvious ways, but I appreciated the restraint and the ambiguity that this episode left on the table. My favorite moment was probably Serena asking June why she hadn't killed her when she had a chance during one of the protests at the Gilead Cultural Center. "Why Fred, and not me?" she asks. June's answer: "I didn't want to." There is no larger explanation. There couldn't be. Her hatred for Serena is real, and serious, and the harm she did was extreme. But they are together the victims of Fred Waterford, and that's real too. There's a brief moment in the flashback where we see a Handmaid's birthing ceremony, where June and Serena share a moment of solidarity over the silliness of the ritual, the way the prospective "mother" fakes her labor pains along with the Handmaid. There is something between these two women, these women who are both clever, smarter than the men they ended up with, and you can see that solidarity peaking through all the rest of the trauma.

And at this point, what does it matter? Serena is alone, she's run away from the protection of both Canada and now Gilead. She has her son and that is all. June killed Fred. June saved Serena and Noah. There are no cosmic scales to balance these actions on.

Another moment of subtlety that I enjoyed was when June is holding the newborn in her arms, and Serena is asking if he's okay. There's this moment, just a flicker of one, where you think: June could do anything right now. She could kill Serena, she could kill the baby, she could run off with the baby and leave Serena to die alone... but you don't really fear that she'll do it. It's like you can see June think it and discard the thought, all without a word being said.

I also like that Serena is baffled and overwhelmed by new motherhood, frightened by the hospital setting, the sterility of it, but taking comfort in June's reassurances. Is Serena going to understand that it wasn't June who betrayed her? She calls for her help in the end, but when she has a chance to think it through, will she understand that it was Luke, and not June, who decided to have her arrested and separated from Noah? This is a great tension to carry forward.

I could go on about the little moments that I thought were interesting and enjoyable. I liked Serena turning to the bible and thinking of herself as giving up baby Moses for June. I like June's explanation that she was treated as nothing more than a vessel for God's plan, and that she will not take Serena's baby and leave her to die, perpetuating that awful cycle. She's not saving Serena for Serena, who June believes deserves to die. She's saving her for a higher purpose. I also liked this small moment where Serena rolled her eyes at the hospital for giving her antibiotics. A little reminder of the anti-science ideology behind Gilead's evangelism. Ditto with the "evolution" moment, where June brought it up and Serena seemed openly amused that she would consider such a thing to be true.

So that's that. As we end the episode, Serena is being taken to a detention center, and her child is going into the system. I genuinely have no idea what's going to happen from here! Will June be mad at Luke for what he did, even though it makes perfect sense for him to have done it? We'll find out!

9/10