On heavily populated shows like The Handmaid’s Tale, where some characters only appear intermittently but their actions are vital to plot advancement, those scenes that air after a voice proclaims “Previously on The Handmaid’s Tale” so often signpost what we’re about to see, a not-so-subtle whisper in your ear that the tiny conversation or interaction you saw a few episodes ago is a major plot hinge.
Did I still cry a little because this show manipulated me into believing June would never make her way to safety? You didn’t even need to ask.
The setup to get both of them there, in the midst of a bombing campaign during a ceasefire when they head out on their first reconnaissance and trading mission.
They end up at a resistance swap-meet at the Field Museum, a place for different rebel factions to barter meals and guns, baseball caps and handmaid cloaks that will immediately put giant targets on the wearers’ backs.
Trades are everywhere this episode, swaps both little and big, like the Cubs hat for the handmaid robes and all of Aunt Lydia’s sweet, delicious dirt in exchange for Lawrence’s seat at the table.
How is Aunt Lydia so belittled that she herself is tortured for 19 days, then so vital to the power structure that she is personally sent to June’s torture chamber, then charged with handling a group of clearly rebellious handmaids after their capture, and then put on Auntie probation? Make it make sense.
Until, that is, Lawrence is actually back on the board, where he strikes an agreement to allow NGOs into Chicago during the ceasefire, but then bomb the shit out of the city just before they arrive.
A cover of “Fix You,” the song Chris Martin wrote for his then-wife Gwyenth Paltrow about trying to pull her from the depression that followed her after her father’s death, should never have been allowed within 100 yards of this production.