Summary: June convinces Eleanor to not kill Lawrence since she needs him. June begins putting her plan to save the kids into motion, but it gets screwed when Lawrence flees. When he returns, Lawrence reveals that he doesn't have the authority to get anybody out of Gilead now that he is being watched. June convinces him to take her to Jezebel's where she can speak with Billy, the contact that was helping get the kids out. After offering him Lawrence's house, she leaves Billy to think on the deal. June is seen by Winslow. Winslow tries to rape her and June fights back, ultimately killing him. June is smuggled out of Jezebel's while the Marthas dispose of the evidence. June and Lawrence prepare for war. Fred and Serena meet with Tuello who drives them into Canada where they are promptly arrested.
The Good: The Lawrences remain one of the best parts of this season. I'm really enjoying this slow transformation of Lawrence from a criminal to hero. While the middle of the season lost the plot surrounding Lawrence, this episode did a much better job of showing the conflict within him as he struggles to push himself over the edge to actively helping June's cause. The scene with him and Eleanor at the beginning is excellent, some good follow-up on the significant events from the last episode. To contrast Lawrence being vulnerable at the beginning of the episode, we get the end of the episode where Lawrence has seemingly resigned himself to his new role as he prepares to fully oppose Gilead, siding himself with June. Speaking of June, her story is great in this episode. She is working very hard to actually do something, which is very refreshing. If June had shown this same determination to save Hannah/escape Gilead, I think that some of June's earlier storylines could have been better. Needless to say, her urgency in this episode added a lot of tension, and I was invested in her scenes with Billy and the Marthas. The climax of June's story is horrific, yet awesome. Winslow is shown as pure evil here, and honestly I was originally groaning because I thought that June would just be raped here as the show spins its wheels yet again by making Winslow the most boring character ever, a literal clone of Fred. Instead, the show goes in a surprising new direction as June brutally murders Winslow, showing that she is done being the victim now. This murder propels the plot in a big way as Gilead will likely be after June and Lawrence for a crime. It took 11 episodes, but finally there has been some change in the stakes and the world this season. Speaking of change, Fred and Serena's story is very good and also leads to a big, game-changing ending. We get to see Fred and Serena bonding again and their scenes are actually quite good here. I liked seeing them reflect on where they could have been without Gilead, plus we even got Fred coming to terms with him being sterile. It's a nice moment for them and serves as their peak moment before their fall at the end of the episode. In the end, Tuello doesn't care about the Waterfords at all and instead chooses to arrest them, finally giving these two some consequences for the awful things they have done. Plus, there is possibly a hidden story in play here which is pretty interesting (see: The Unknown). The Bad: It's hard to care about what happens in this episode unfortunately. Sure, this was easily the most dramatic, exciting and game-changing episode of the season, but I wasn't feeling as excited as I should have been. The set-up to the key moments in this episode was botched horribly in different ways. I'll start with June killing Winslow. Winslow's death suffers from him being a shallow and boring character, making his attempted rape of June a much less interesting scene than if somebody like Fred was going to rape her instead. Winslow wasn't set up as a character in any way, and he came off as more of a means to an end than an actual player in the story like he was supposed to. He simply existed to die, and I think that's a really poor reason to introduce a new character. It's a shame that he did nothing interesting at all before dying. Furthermore, killing Winslow isn't the pivotal moment for June that it should be. She has been breaking rules left and right this season and facing no consequences. So why should we care if she killed Winslow? I'm certain she is going to get away scot-free in the end. Additionally, we have seen June openly rebel many times before, so this scene isn't as impactful as it tries to be. Fred and Serena getting their comeuppance is good but I think it took far too long for the story to get here. Had this happened back at the end of season 2 when the Waterford story was still interesting to me, I would have reacted to this much more positively than I did now. The Unknown: Who will come after Lawrence and June? How will they escape safely? Will Billy take June's offer for Lawrence's house? How is June going to get Lawrence to give up his house to Billy? How does she plan to get Gilead to accept this deal? Did Serena set Fred up to be arrested? It doesn't seem that way based on her reactions, but the hints are there to suggest that everything that Serena did after coming from Canada was to arrest Fred. We haven't seen Canada since that episode so many Luke was in on the plot. Best Moment: Winslow's death was a real surprise and it changes the story in a big way. Character of the Episode: June. Conclusion: This was a big episode but I thought it left a lot to be desired. By all rights, this should have been way better than it actually was and I think that the sloppy plot movement going into this episode made it really hard to invest myself in the key moments. It was still a good episode, but it should have been better. Score: 60
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
March 2024
Categories
All
|