Welcome to Episode 6 of season 2 of The Handmaid’s Tale! If you haven’t watched the episode yet, please do so and then come back here.
{SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SPOILERS} from here on out . . .
And here…
we…
go.
This week opens with Offred still in the hospital – she’s getting an ultrasound. Turns out she had a uterine hemorrhage. The doctor asks her if she had any complications with her first pregnancy. Offred smartly replies (for Serena’s benefit) “With Hannah?”
The doctor shows Serena the baby on ultrasound, it’s moving around. Serena pulls the screen back and asks Offred if she’d like to see. WHAT IS YOUR GAME, YOU MONSTER?
Back home, Offred gets a warm welcome from Rita. Nick’s child-bride, Eden, is there too looking lost and so, so young.
Offred tells Nick they can’t keep sneaking around, they “have to be smart.” He doesn’t want to stop and neither does she. Rita stumbles in with some soup for Offred and a snide remark for Nick in the vein of “stop flirting with Offred and go hang with your child-bride.”
At a construction site for a newer and bigger Red Center (I mean the bigger the better, right ladies?) Aunt Lydia walks and talks with Fred about how willful both his wife and Handmaid are. They share a chuckle at the willfullness of the two women in the Waterford home that Fred has boned. Chortle chortle, ha ha.
At Nick’s, his child-bride asks him how the dinner she cooked tastes and then she also tells him how happy she is that he is her daddy-husband now. Barf.
They haven’t engaged in “THE ACT,” clearly. She thinks they should because God expects it. Nick’s like “uh, you’re an infant” and goes outside to smoke.
Serena instructs Offred to sleep in the sitting room, so she doesn’t have to climb stairs. Serena intends to stay up all night right next to her and knit. Does she plan on sleeping? Ever? She is just that crazy. Serena really thinks they’re in this pregnancy together. More than anything, I think even more than the baby, Serena wants a girlfriend. It makes me sad for her, in spite of how much I despise her.
She asks Offred, “What’s it like to feel that life inside of you?”
Offred invites Serena to come and feel her belly. NOBEL PEACE PRIZE level charity, if you ask me. I wouldn’t even answer her. I’d just be like, “It’s fine, goodniiiiiiiiiiiiiight” and then I’d cartoon-snore for way too long.
Flashback to Serena BEFORE sh*t got real and it became Gilead as we know it to now be. She’s prepping for a speech she’s about to give at a college campus. She does not receive a warm welcome at all. There’s a lot of yelling and booing and vuvuzela blowing. Think Ann Coulter at UC Berkeley (if that would’ve ever actually happened).
Someone stands up and calls her a “Nazi c*nt” and I’m like, YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS, yelling it at my TV.
Then people start throwing things at her and I become slightly less on board. Let her say what she wants to say, then call her a Nazi c*nt. But don’t throw things at her.
Back in the present, Fred is in the kitchen having a snack when Offred comes in to get some water. She stops to ask him if he’s mad at her.
Their conversation is so normal that it’s creepy as h*ll. Like a couple of exes on really friendly terms. Ew.
As Offred makes her couch bed in the morning, the child-bride wanders in and says she feels stupid and that Nick hates her. Typical pre-teen b.s. Offred reassures her that Nick doesn’t hate her. She tells her to relax and calm down. Child-bride doesn’t understand why Nick hasn’t done it to her yet. This girl is so indoctrinated, she says she “can’t wait. It’s our duty to God.”
Then, she says, “What if he’s a gender traitor?”
OMFG. This kid. Is. So. Dangerous.
Offred holds herself back, knowing how dangerous this is and how careful she has to be. She tells her that’s not true. OMG the acting. Elisabeth Moss, OMG. Off the charts amazing!!
Serena calls Offred into the kitchen. Surprise! She’s arranged a luncheon for her with her Handmaid friends. What is happening? Serena’s acting like a mother who set up a play date for her daughter. The desperation is just dripping off of her. She wants Offred to like her. Truly.
She SERVES them lunch. The Handmaids start chatting about restaurants from before – before Gilead. Offred and Serena realize they loved the same brunch spot.
Offred invites the Handmaids to feel the baby move, but not Serena. I can almost see Serena thinking to herself, “They think I’m a Nazi c*nt” as she leaves the room.
Serena goes to her greenhouse and tends to her babies, her plant babies, because at least they like her. I’m not crying. You’re crying.
She’s a horrible person who wants to have a baby to love her and girlfriends to love her more than anything in the world.
Flashback to the college campus again – on her way out she insists on speaking, despite the protestors.
AND THEN YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THIS.
Her assistant is shot. Then SERENA IS SHOT. IN THE WOMB. Get it? The womb. Explains quite a bit.
Back in the present, Serena leads Offred upstairs to the nursery. It’s fully prepped and ready for Offred and Nick’s baby. She tells Offred she (Serena) is going to be “the best mother I can be to my child.” Offred takes pity on her and just says “Thank you for showing me the nursery” not “f*ck off you psycho, I’m taking this baby and leaving first chance I get.”
Again, the acting in this scene is UNREAL. Yvonne Strahovski is also INCREDIBLE. So great.
Offred asks if she can see Hannah. She won’t tell anyone. Serena says, “Absolutely not” but it is actually killing her to say that. She realizes Offred will never like her, will never be her friend. Not now, not ever. And THAT is what makes her cry. The loneliness from these two women is palpable and heartbreaking.
Offred storms downstairs – Nick catches her. Offred tells him he needs o sleep with the child-bride or she’s going to report him. She warns him about how dangerous she is. He says, “She’s 15 years old.” Offred replies, “Oh, you have to f*ck somebody you don’t want to?!” with a ton of sarcasm.
Nick tells her he loves her.
At Nick’s, he and child-bride pray before they participate in The Act (capital T, capital A). The sheet with the hole in it is draped over her. It’s super romantic. And… The Act commences just as she tells him “You’re gonna be a great father, Nick.” Uy.
Fred finds Serena in her greenhouse, where she’s been all afternoon tending to her plants that don’t hate her. They might be the only living things that don’t.
They discuss Offred.
In a flashback, Serena is in the hospital after having been shot. She crafts the speech Fred is to give to the press about her being shot. We’re reminded that she’s the brains in this duo. He starts to cry and says,
“I never should’ve let you start speaking in public.”
She whips his hand off her hand and tells him to stop it, “Be a man.” Wow. Okay. Her sexist views hold in all directions. Got it.
Later, out in the woods, Fred confronts the guy who tried to shoot his wife. He’s tied up with a gag in his mouth. There’s a woman next to him, also tied up and gagged. Fred takes out his gun and asks the guy, “Do you know what it was like to see my wife in pain? To pray to God to save her?”
Then he shoots the guy’s wife and whispers,
“Now you do.”
This is what happens when we hyper-masculate men. Let’s all promise to stop doing this.
In the present, in the middle of the night, Fred comes into Offred’s room. He gives her a picture of Hannah. Then he says he’s missed her as he touches her belly.
He kisses her, tells her he wants her. She’s “worried about the baby” so it stops.
After he leaves, she clutches Hannah’s picture and stares at it while she cries.
In the morning, Fred welcomes Gilead bigwigs to the Super Terrific Brand New Red Center.
Nick finds Commander Price and tells him he has to be reassigned, he can’t take it at the Waterford house. Commander Price agrees to do it, to reassign Nick. Why? Huh? Just like that? That was too easy.
At the Waterford home, Offred pushes her food around on a plate while Serena knits and tells her to eat all of her food. The mother/daughter dynamic is weirding me out.
Child-bride wanders in and asks Serena if she needs anything. Serena uses this as an opportunity to teach child-bride she is “above” Offred in the pecking order. Because she’s a “married woman of faith” and Offred isn’t.
She instructs child-bride to drop the knitting needles on the floor so Offred can pick them up for her.
But, awwww, Offred “felt a cramp” so she can’t pick up those stupid knitting needles, you Nazi c*nt.
Upstairs, Offred stares at that picture of Hannah, smiling.
Fred gives a speech at the Super Terrific Brand New Red Center to a bunch of Commanders, while a bunch of Handmaids wait just outside the glass auditorium. He goes on and on about morality. One of the Handmaids (is it Alma? Or Ofglen?) gets out of formation and goes inside the room.
She holds up her hand and shows the Handmaids something she’s holding. IT. IS. A DETONATOR. They all turn and run away from the building.
The Handmaid runs toward Fred at full speed with her hand in the air, finger on the detonator.
PAUSE.
PAUSE.
STOP. HOLD UP.
I had to run around my living room for 2-3 minutes. No biggie. It’s perfectly normal.
She detonated a bomb!!!!!!!!!!! A BOMB!
The whole building blew up! Fred and all those Commanders got blown up! Was Nick in there too?
It appears the revolution has finally begun. #ResistSister
……………..
What’d you think about this episode? Let me know in the comments below or contact me on Twitter! Looking forward to next week, episode 7!
Nevertheless, she persists.
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