'The Handmaid's Tale' goes very dark in 'Heroic' and there's still no signs of change.
The Handmaid's Tale goes to a very dark place in its latest outing. In Season 3, Episode 9 'Heroic' June almost loses her mind. I'm not entirely sure that by the end she really finds it again.
If nothing else, tonight's episode strips June of a great deal of her plot armor. After last week's bizarre, horrific episode, in which Ofmatthew shoots up the grocery store and gets shot down by Guardians, we find ourselves in the hospital, in a room every bit as stark and white and sanitized as the grocery store. June is here, humming a song to herself. She's been here for weeks, kneeling in prayer by Ofmatthew's side, forced by Aunt Lydia to stick by her shopping partner as she lays in a vegetative state while they make sure she still comes to term.
This was probably the best episode in weeks, with June really tailspinning into a very bleak place, with murderous and suicidal thoughts brought on by her isolation. That forced isolation is as cruel a punishment as any we've seen before, and June is obviously suffering badly for it. She retrieves a scalpel discarded by one of the nurses and plans to kill Ofmatthew because "it's the right thing to do" she tells Janine, in the hospital for her infected eye socket, but Janine stops her, recoiling from June's madness. "You've changed," she says. "I don't like it."
I'm not sure that I enjoyed this episode, exactly, but it was still quite good. June's inner monologue is fascinating, and Elisabeth Moss pulls off the insanity remarkably well. She ends up taking a swipe at Serena when she visits, but only ends up cutting herself in the struggle. Serena, obviously feeling pity for her former Handmaid, doesn't rat her out to the doctor, only telling him that June cut herself. The doctor comes in to stitch her up, and reveals that he's actually not as bad a person as she thought. He even knew her mother, who he describes as "scary."
Like everyone else, the doctor is surviving in a world gone mad. June challenges his decision to treat the baby but not the mother, and she has a point. But Ofmatthew is already too far gone.
There's some gratuitous awfulness, of course, this being The Handmaid's Tale. When they need to stop Ofmatthew's strokes, they cut a huge gash into her leg in order to pump her full of more liquids. Surely a normal IV would have done the same thing? But this show revels in its misery porn, and we watch with wide eyes, hooked on these moments of horror.
June finally gets to leave when the baby is born—premature but alive. She walks out into the open air and breaths in that glorious outdoors. Then she sees the girls all in pink, all in a line with Wives in blue, headed to the hospital for their tests. Gilead needs to know when they're fertile and who can, potentially, have babies. June spoke to one of these girls earlier, who told her she was able to have babies now—not yet, but in a few years when she's married.
"Is that what you want?" June asks—a question that this child has almost certainly never been asked before. She seems startled. "Oh yes," she replies. "So so much." But you can see the lie in her eyes.
So June sees these girls walking into the hospital and tells Aunt Lydia she's not ready to go home just yet. She needs to be by Ofmatthew's side. And is it just so she can apologize for being such a jerk to her? Or does she think she might see Hannah trotted in? Is Hannah even close to old enough yet? I guess I'm just not sure how June, after all this time in isolation and florescent agony, could choose to go back. Whatever the case, I do think that June grew somehow, that something shifted inside her that's needed shifting.
What do you think? What's your take on this strange decision? Not June's first inexplicable choice, but one that I can't quite puzzle out.
In the end, I'm wondering what can possibly happen in the final episode that will move this sluggish plot along. There is nothing like a revolution on the horizon. June promises Ofmatthew that she'll get her son out of Gilead. She'll get as many children as possible out. Not just Hannah any more, but all the children. She's becoming some kind of Schindler, determined to save as many from this horrorshow as possible. But how? What's her plan? Where's the narrative momentum?
'Heroic' was a good episode, better than the last few, but utterly miserable. Utterly devoid of any joy or hope or rebellion. I worry that I've become a broken record, but this show—even in its best moments—continues to run in place. It seems that by the end of Season 3 we will be in almost the exact same place we were at the beginning. June will be in Commander Lawrence's household. He will still be a fascinating and fickle member of Gilead's regime. June will be no closer to her goals.
Maybe this means that Season 4 will be full of action. We'll see the war in Chicago. We'll see the spark of rebellion we thought we would see in Season 3. The alternative is yet another slog, another hours-long descent into misery and pain. I'm not sure I can do it, dear readers. I'm not sure I have the fortitude.
Then again, perhaps next week something will happen.
Here's your soundtrack for this evening:
Let me know what you thought of this episode on Twitter or Facebook. Under his eye, or something. Blessed day. Peace and love.
