Summary: June is forced to wait with Ofmatthew for months until her baby is born. Ofmatthew will likely die but the doctors are doing whatever they can to save her baby. June loses her sanity over time and nearly murders Ofmatthew in several instances but she is stopped each time. After she attempts to kill Serena, the doctor speaks with her and calms her a little. June finds herself again after Ofmatthew's child is born and she is allowed to leave. June chooses to stay until Ofmatthew dies and confesses she lost her way> She decides she is going to try to save the children of Gilead by helping them escape.
The Good: I thought that this episode captured June's fraying sanity really well. Opening the episode with her callously singing "Heaven is a Place on Earth" while Ofmatthew's life ebbs away ended up being a genius move. It set the tone excellently, and the episode's focus on June really helped the exploration of her mental state. June is pretty scary and unpredictable in all of her scenes and there were numerous moments where I was horrified by the things she was saying to everyone. Evidently, the time with Ofmatthew hadn't helped her brain at all and she only seemed to get worse. And then her worsening state led to that reckless attempt on Serena's life which was a low point for her character. When Serena is lecturing her to be stronger, that's a pretty big fall for who is likely the most stubborn and resilient character in this story. The rest of the episode had the tough task of taking June from this low point and bring her back to who she was before. I thought the show did a pretty good job too. The scene between June and the doctor was really strong and it nicely showed to us that there are good people still living in Gilead. The doctor also touched on the fact that there are people who object against the lack of human concerns that the authority in Gilead have as they seemingly disregarded his objections to keeping June locked up with Ofmatthew and isolated for months on end. It seems like Gilead simply believes that the lord will save anyone no matter what the situation. In the end, June recovered and it led to the terrific moment of her choosing to stay by Ofmatthew's side as she died. There, she gave a powerful speech of how she lost herself after Gilead took everything from her and that she plans to correct her mistakes by saving Ofmatthew's baby. The scene was powerful and it nicely reset June to her former self. The episode looked very pretty. The white colour scheme was perfect, giving June's hospital room an asylum-like feel. It fit nicely with her decaying state, as did everything else the episode did. Those jarring cuts from day to day were perfect at showing how the time has sort of blended together for June as she sits around doing absolutely nothing. The Bad: I have to ask if this episode and all of the storylines within it were actually necessary for the story as a whole. The entire story of June losing her mind really didn't result in anything significant. Ofmatthew's character could have been skipped entirely without any detriment to the story. June could have easily decided to save children with a different story that doesn't waste as much time as this one did. The whole arc of June going evil unfortunately feels pointless and I don't think that the show needed to go in this direction at all. Sure the story was fine, but watching this show stall its characters and plot for something like the 7th time was ridiculous and it really tried my patience. I'm certain that this story of June going evil was just a delaying tactic from the showrunners instead of the logical next step in the story and that makes me feel really unsatisfied coming out of this episode. Furthermore, the sloppy writing that accompanied Ofmatthew's character made it hard to care at all about her fate or how June feels about her as a person. The show relied too hard on its great acting prowess to give depth to what was a shallow, simplistic and unnecessary story and unfortunately acting isn't good enough to accomplish this. Additionally, this episode is painfully slow at times. Looking at it on paper, there isn't much going on in this episode and it relies too hard on its artistic style to keep us interested. Granted, I did enjoy the style of this episode a lot, but I was definitely feeling a little bored in several scenes, especially with the repetitive nature of many scenes. It also doesn't help that I wasn't as invested as I should have been in the story which made me lose interest much quicker. The key to great bottle episodes is making the viewer care about the single story that is being told while also evolving the story and changing the situation to make the episode feel fresh despite being crammed into a single location. This episode accomplishes only a little bit of this. There were a couple other things I disliked. Aunt Lydia's character radically changes again as she shares a sweet moment with Janine. The show needs to decide how Lydia is going to behave and stick with it. As a final gripe, I thought Serena randomly showing up while June was looking for somebody to kill was way too convenient. Why was she even visiting anyways, especially with how her last conversation with June went? The Unknown: Will Ofmatthew's baby survive? How does June plan to get children out of Gilead? Does she plan to use Lawrence? Best Moment: June confessing to Ofmattehw was really good. Character of the Episode: June. Conclusion: Despite this episode telling a strong story, it ended up being slow, tough to invest in and ultimately quite pointless. Even though the story was told competently and the episode was masterfully crafted, the episode failed to compel me as much as it should have. It's a shame because this episode itself is very good, but it's the unsuccessful overall story of this season that causes it to fall from a great episode to an average one at best. Score: 56
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
February 2024
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