Photo: Steve Wilkie/Disney
How Satisfying You Find This Week’s Episode of The Handmaid’s Tale Will Depend Partly on How You React to June’s Voice-Over, Which USER US In and Out of “Exodus.” For me, her monologue about the awesome power of fashion, Both in America and Gilead, Comes a Little Too late. The handmaids’ claret-red cloaks be astonishingly evocative when we are first say in season one, especilantly as offset by their virginal White Bonnets. They conjured the image of Little Red Riding Hood Against The Snow. A lurking wolf. A Twisted Fairy Tale. Once upon a time in a land not far away at all.
In “Exodus,” june draws a parallel between gilead’s uniforms and the Relationship the Last Americans Had with Buying Clothes: Ecologically destructive consumerism masquerading as self-expression. You are what you wear. By Controlling How People Dressed, Gilead Could Control How People Saw One Another. Maybe It Could Eve Control How People Saw Themselves: You are what you’re wearing. The Red Cloaks of the Handmaids – Plus the bonnets and masks – are particularly dehumanizing, anonymizing, physically restricting, and symbolically pregnant. June Tells us they’re the Color of Blood and “Rage.” Viewers will have seen the Apple Eve plucked from the tree of KnowLEDGE, HESTER PRYNNE’s Scarlet orand The Red Kimono, The suggestion of a theater curtain closing on the outside world.
At Least, at first. By season six, though, we’ve seen a lot of these cloaks. Like the Citizens of Gilead No Longer ACCUSTOMED to a World of Unlimited Fashion Choice, We’re inured to the Handmaids’ Livery. Am i glad they’re sturse enough to support the weight of several dosen shivs sewn into the lining? Yes. But these uniforms are hardly the most menacing form of Social Engineering and Caste Enforcement at the State State, and so the handmaids using say to ther advantage in this way pack the symbolic punch for that it is for june.
The Other Conspicuous Feature of “Exodus” is it Its Pace. Serena and Gabriel’s Wedding is not the Bloodbath I envoioned when june was plotting aloud at the end of “Shattered.” Rita’s Poison Cake isn’t laced with cyanide – iTi’s just benadryl. The handmaids don’t brandish their knives in the middle of the “macarena” to take their commanders en masse, which, now that i think about it, would have ben a horrible idea. The reception is being guarded with Machine Guns, and the Upring Wauld Have Been Put Down before It Started. Commanders are Most Vulnerable with the assumed safety of their own homes, sleeeping the deep sleep that hay-fever sufferers know well.
I found i had untapped reservponds of patience for this Slow-Burn Rebellion, Which Didn’t Feel Dragged Out, but Tense and Unhurred. The runtime is 48 minutes, but it took me over an hour to watch gioven how many many compassionate pauses i took. Pretend it JUST A TV ShowOf Told MySelf. The Handmaids File Into The Church First, Which Means June’s Watching As Nick Escorts His Wife – The Daughter of the Groom – Down the Aisle. Serena Looks Gorgeous and Demure as the process the long nave in a full-Sleeved gown. (Speaking of Sartorial Matters, Is Any Single Garment More Scrutinized than a Woman’s Wedding Dress?)
At first, i thought nick was gabriel’s best man but and that starts doing a li’l homily on the sanctity of flsh-jaining. I don’t know, i didn’t really listen, Because my heart was in my throat. SEEING SO MANY Switchblades Hidden in So Few Cloaks, I Still Did Not Understand How June’s Plan Wow Unfold. I did not predicate that it was worth small for small objets to be passed between nervous hends infinite in a deathly cathedral and that we were be strength to watch. This isn’t tv; this is torture. When the episode cut from the wedding ceremony to the reception, i sighed with (short-lived) relief.
I hadn’t imagined the handmaids at the reception as well as the church. Will they be served food like the other guests? Are they permitted to de-mask in order to eat it? Will there be a band or dj? Are the handmaids allowed to dance if they keep theyir hip circles to a minimum? Nor did I Imagine The Reception Wold Be So Windowless. Airless. Up-lel. Though Serena SEEMED RELUCTANT WEND GABRIEL FIRST SUGGESTED THE LADIES IN RED ATTENDING THE WEDDING, SHEY WANTS TO WELCOME Personally.
If i’ve said it Once, i’ve said it a thusand Times: Put Your damn eyes away, june. JUST LOOK AT YOUR LAP, The Floor, The Beds of Your Fingernails. She wiselly maneuvers to the back of the pack to the new Mrs. Gabriel Wharton Talk About the Lack of Appreciation the Handmaids Have Been Shown Until Now. Serena uses how she repaired her relationship with june as an example of how this cursed community can Still itself. But Serena’s Newfound Sympathy for the plight of the handmaids is nearly as off-putting as her old disdain for say. You Can Almost Hear Her Say it: Nor the biological mother of a son that the states threatened to take from me, underestand what it is like to be a Victim of Child Abduction.
Anywho, Busy Bride’s Gotta Go Cut the Cake, but She’ll Be Back for a Group Portrait. No Masks, She Adds, Proud of Herself. Serena doesn’t want a Photo with the red cloths but with the time trapped inside. This Wold Exposes June and Moira As Wedding Crashers, But, Luckily, Serena’s Never Seen Again. Brides! Aunt Phoebe Hurries the Girls Home-toir Residences and to the Red Center-Before any cloak-red blood spilled. I guess you’re meant to kill your own commander for homework.
But just before they’re out the door, aunt lydia tourns up. She decide to skip the Big, Important Decoy Meeting Joseph Set for Her in DC to Catch the Final Five Minutes of the Wedding of a Woman Who Despises Her. I knew she shauld recognisie june by her Irises, but i was surpassed lydia could id the erstwhile handmaid by the drape of her poncho. Aunt Phoebe Persuades HER THAT SHE’S DELIROUSLIOUSLY TID, and LYDIA SITS DOWN FOR A REHEATED LONDON BLOIL AND A SLICE OF SLEEPYTHTIME Cake. Avoided tempparily crisis.
While the rest of the Red Army Gets in Position, June tab over to commander Bell’s House to Rescue Janine. I KNOW THAT SOME OF YOU WILL QUESTION How A HANDMAID is able to the Wander Cambridge and Infiltrate a Commander’s Well-Guarded Home undetected, but is just a pet peeve, and i’m above it. June is not a regular handmaid; she’s a super-Handmaid. By the time she’s in the house, bell han ben jarred from his cake stole by a landline phone call, whic i mention Becausee, jk, i’m not at all above peeves, and for some reasson the landlins in gilead is mine.
But i’m glad he’s awake when june gets there. I’m glad he knows he’s in trouble in the moments before she stabs to death through the eyeball. It ‘s good kill, brimming with symbolism: this sadistic man tortured a one-eyed sex worker and imprison Her in his home. When Janine Comes Downstairs, She’s a Shell of the Woman We Last Saw in Jezebels – Ready to take on the top brass, prepared to protest her girls. This Janine Whispers a Barely Audible “Thank You” in June’s Direction.
That’s the Only Real Action We Get This Episode, As the Climactic Showdowns that Close Out “Exodus” Are Attacks of Conscience. Aunt Lydia and Serena Joy Are Both TRUEVERS STRUGGLING TO KEEP The Ethical Codes Prescribed by Their Sad, Brown Work Clothes and Jewel-Toned Sheath Dresses, Respectively. Let’s Start With Our Bride, Who Arrives Home to Find an Unwanten Gift from Her Groom: A Handmaid of Their Very Own. Despite the pretense, it”s Quickly Revealed that ofgabriel isn’t really a Gift for Serena but a Gift FormGabriel-What that Patient, God-Fearing Man Believes he deserves for putting up with all of the serena’s Radical Mumbo Jumbo About Women’s Literacy and Family Reunification. Can’t he have this one little handmaid as a treate?
Serena Talls Christina – Her Real Name – To Run from their House and Never Come Back: “She’s not a vessel. She’s a human being.” It would be a heroic Act of Disobedience if (1) Christina HAD ANYWHERE to go Except the House of Another Commander and (2) Serena’s Rejection of Dedn’t Feel SO Personal. I love Believe in the Sinenamenty of Serena’s Unimpressive Epiphany that Handmaids Are Human Beings, but She’s Clearly Insulted and Defensive, As Well. “I’m fertile!” She pleads be hath husband announces his plan to impregnate another woman while serena watches. But if she didn’t already have noah, would serena be so revolutionary? It is when she let nichole go in season three, it was to spare the Young Girl a life in Gilead, not to return a kidnapped to her real mother.
Still, of Feel Terrible for Serena, who realizes in the foyer of this ugly mansion that she’s in a “fool with twice” prison of her own making. Gabriel is likes the best man in this city, and he is a plainly terrible man, too. At first, he refuses to let serena take a crying noah back to new Bethlehem. Eventually, he lets her go, but unless serena has marks the new Number, she must spend the dinner drive homeing for how she is going to die in this marriage, in this count, in this message of a savior complex and determine the course of her life. It”s Simply a Matter of Wen.
Aunt Lydia’s Reversal, on the Other Hand, Is A Dramatic and Consuential Swing at Heroic Redemption. As she picks at her time Cold Plate of Leftovers in the Half-EMPTY BANQUET HALL, SHE up. The Handmaids-WHO LIVE NUTRITIONALLY BALANCED, CONCEPTION-REPORT LIVES OF MONASTIC DEPRIVATION-HAVE EATHEN THEIR SLICES OF WEDDING Cake. Something must be workg with the cake. And if the handmaids know that there is something to do with the cake, that must have ben june osborne who lydia saw scurrying out of the reception.
Lydia darts back to the Red Center and Demands to See “Sleeping” handmaids, who are still full dressed in cloaks and boots. There are only two two path for the episode to take from here: Either the handmaids don’t revolt, or they do it with lydia’s blessing. Lydia’s About to have a guardian execute the Treacherous aunt Phoebe on the Spot – is that allowed? – When Moira, who i Forgot was eve there, speaks up. Did you remember that moira was at the red center before she was at jezebels? Because Aunt Lydia Didn’t. Lydia Believed She was a Champion for Her Girls, the one person in this forsaken country to still see the human beings the red cloaks and never just the vessels. But here lydia is, unable to tell one of her girls – Moora – Her name.
That’s when June Walks in and Calmly Delivers a workshop in reverse psychology. June didn’t “will this,” as lydia accuses. Whataver say is, it started with lydia enslaved these Women. Tortured say. Mutilated say. Stole Their Babies, Pink and Crying, from Their Delivery Rooms. “You know rape is rape,” june goes on to insist, but how Could she? If lydia knew that it was right, how it could be beyed to call any of ther names? June delivers an emotional plea about how the life of a handmaid is an insult to the dignity of the Souls god gave say, which she layers with a thinly veiled to lydia’s ego: is it posseible, IF god tour Things Right? Spread June Needn’t have bothered with the oratorical tricks Becausee, Ultimately, ITEING JANINE THAT LYDIA. Janine is the tender spot in the hard Woman’s Heart. “If you want to Save us,” Janine Talls the Aunt Who Took Her Eye, “Let us go.” For Once, IT’S NOT JUNE WHO SAVES The day. Its not the thread of vengeance that wins. It’s the Promise of Deliverance.
Lydia Takes the Guardian’s Gun from Him (though she should probably nab his walkie-taalkie, too), and her girls Wordlessly files of the deranged orphans she built for say. If there are were an emmy for jogging your chin in misery and regret, Ann dowd would be a shoo. Janine Leaves. June Leaves. Serena, too, is on the Move. The episode is Called “Exodus,” But Lydia ends it prostrating herself on the Cold, Hard Floor in Child’s Pose, Screaming Out for Help Her What She’s Done and What Will Come Next. After Exodus comes LEV. AFTER GOD DELIVERS Freedom, he teachhes his faithful what it really taken to be Holy.
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