Summary: In flashbacks, June's mother judges her for not doing more with her life. Later, June discovers her mother was taken into the colonies. In Little America, Luke, Erin and Moira live together but Moira is having troubles overcoming her past. June is taken by a man named Omar to save her. Omar and his family don't return from church so June leaves on her own. She gets on a plane to escape but the plane is shot down and June is captured.
The Good: It was nice to see what Moira and Luke are up to. Though their scenes were brief, they were pretty solid and painted a good picture. Moira should be content but she is unable to escape her traumas in Gilead which is a development I really love. Moira's story was really short though and was never the focal point of the episode. The bulk of the episode focused on June's attempted escape from Gilead and it was fun for the most part. We are introduced to Omar who is the man assigned to help out June and it is fascinating to learn more about him. His family introduces that not all fertile women are handmaids and that the lower-class women are downgraded to econowives, which is a very welcome bit of world-building. I am really enjoying the increased world-building this season now that we aren't enclosed in the Waterford residence. It's still not as fleshed out as I would like, but it's getting there with every new piece of information. But let's focus more on Omar's family itself for a moment and what it meant for June. Omar's son was the first child June has interacted with in a very, very long time so the moment was much more powerful than it ad any right to be, with Elisabeth Moss once again delivering. The rest of June's time in the apartment was just as good too. I like that June was curious and looked around the apartment a little bit. After all she has been living in a single building for a long time so any new location would be exciting for her. Furthermore, I thought the discovery of the Quran was a lovely moment. This show hasn't touched on its more religious side very much, so this was a refreshing new theme to explore. The idea of having to be a closet Muslim in a Christian society is pretty scary and because of that I hope that we see this family again to get more exploration on the topic. The ending of the episode was quite powerful too as June is ultimately caught after coming so close to escape. The show did a great job of making me believe that June may actually get away and that the show would take a different approach this season because it had spent so much time on June's escape. But it was all a red herring as the show once more doubled down on its misery as June was captured at the very end. Another new development is the introduction of June's mother. I thought this was a nice addition for the show as it gives more depth to June and allows us to understand her more by hinting at how her childhood was. I appreciate that the show didn't use flashbacks to blatantly show us June's childhood and instead let June's interactions with her mother as an adult tell us the story of their relationship. I like that it tied into the present storyline as well with June feeling some guilt over not listening to her mother and doing more as a woman to prevent the world from going to hell. I presume that this plot thread will continue through the season which will hopefully pay off with some powerful moments. I also hope that June's mother does appear in the colonies at some point as Cherry Jones is too good of an actress to only have for a single episode. The Bad: This episode was too dependent on coincidences. One of the more frustrating ones was the way that June's mother was revealed to be in the colonies. For one, how unlikely is it for her to still be alive? After all, this is the same government that murders all rebels as evidenced in "The Other Side", so why would they keep her alive? Worse though is the sheer coincidence that she would be shown on that presentation. Of the presumably hundreds or even thousands of women in the colonies, it just happened to be June's mother who was in the picture? That's too coincidental. But that wouldn't be a problem if there were only one or two coincidences. The problem is that this episode is literally built on coincidences. Literally everyone June needs to help her are conveniently caught exactly when she tries to escape. This happened last season too during the flashbacks of Luke and June's attempted escape. But this episode has the coincidence of Omar getting a text exactly when he was talking to June, the coincidence of Omar's family conveniently getting caught for something the day that June is there and also the coincidence of the pilot getting busted the time that June is escaping. All of this is way too much and doesn't make for satisfying storytelling, instead feeling cheap and manipulative. There were some other issues with this episode too. For one, June is pretty annoying as she listens to nobody and seems to just ride on the fact that she is a handmaid as an excuse for not listening which is frustrating. She shows no regard for Omar's family and doesn't come off as the least bit grateful. Omar tells her not to speak and she immediately talks to his wife and then later goes to talk with his child. Seriously? Furthermore, she is told to touch nothing and immediately touches everything. And then after that when the family goes to church, June pokes around with everything, moving things around and getting fingerprints everywhere. And then to cap it all off, she leaves her clothes in their apartment which would further incriminate them for anything if they were actually caught. All of this is ridiculously selfish and really made me annoyed with June which is the complete opposite of what the show is trying to make me feel. Another issue is how rushed the stories in Little America are. Apparently Erin talks now but all of that development happened off screen. I still don't care at all about her so this does absolutely nothing for me. Additionally, Moira's unhappiness in Little America felt glossed over. Sure we got one great scene, but we had no information given to us about anything. Is this Moira's job still? Why? Did she choose to do this or was she forced to do it for some reason? I have no clue why any of this is happening and because of that the scene falls flat for me. With a little more information given, the scene could have hit me with the intended effects. But instead it felt forced and rushed. Speaking of rushed, there's also June' decision to leave Hannah. This would have been powerful if June had actually thought about Hannah more than twice this season. Honestly the moment felt like a "oh crap I forgot about Hannah, oh well I'll just leave her" moment instead of something genuine and heartfelt. The Unknown: What text this Omar receive and why did it make him want to leave June? Did it have something to do with what happened to him and his family? Speaking of which, what actually did happen to his family? And who was that man who came to the door? So what determines if you become an econowife or a handmaid? What is the class standing for that? I have a hard time believing that June was a high-class citizen who was selected as a handmaid considering what her job was. Perhaps I'm just missing something. Best Moment: The twist ending with the plane being stopped was the most powerful moment for me and it was also one of the very few scenes which wasn't hampered by dumb writing. Character of the Episode: June. Conclusion: This episode had some good developments but it was poorly written. The over-reliance on coincidence as well as the unlikable portrayal of June hurt this a lot and made this a notable downgrade from the first 2 episodes. Score: 58
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
March 2024
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