Who do we think is having the worst time in this episode, titled “Together?†Arguably, Commander Putnam, who caught a bullet right between the eyeballs in the middle of breakfast, had the baddest of bad days. Then again, this demon-faced rapist was a true menace, so Under His Eye and By His Hand and all that. He had it coming. Luke certainly struggled too, at the hands of some paramilitary bounty hunters. And, of course, Serena Joy and Aunt Lydia, as always, inch ever closer to experiencing the reality of the world they have made.
Aunt Lydia hasn’t yet come to the understanding that “the Ceremony†is still rape even if you call it “the Ceremony,†but at least she reacts to the discovery of Esther’s pregnancy with appropriate horror. At the hospital, a doctor informs her that Esther’s “uterus-harvesting†procedure (side note: WTF?) has been postponed because she’s pregnant — which means Putnam must have raped her when Lydia left the two of them alone in his office. Now, if there is one person who might earnestly urge a rape victim to see her pregnancy as a blessing in disguise, I would have thought Aunt Lydia was that person. Instead, she tells Esther things like “You have nothing to be ashamed of†and “That’s terrible!†and “I’m sorry.†But nobody — not Janine, not Lawrence, not Esther — believes Aunt Lydia when she says she had no idea how Handmaids are treated by Commanders. Esther echoes Janine and calls bullshit, then promptly flies into a blind and totally justified rage.
Ever a deeply carceral woman, Aunt Lydia immediately reports Putnam to Commander Lawrence, who yawns like, Okay, and? But one conversation with Putnam later, Lawrence appears to change his mind because it’s not just that Putnam is unbearably gross about raping and impregnating a child; he’s also threatening Lawrence’s plans for New Bethlehem. And thus, Lawrence has Putnam dragged out of a restaurant in front of all his friends and his wife, thrown to the ground, sentenced to death, and summarily shot in the head by Nick. Surprise, asshole! While the shockingly graphic nature of the killing isn’t new for the show, this exact method is new for Gilead, which is extremely inconsistent with its executions.
I doubt that even June, who is walking Luke through the fundamentals of surviving captivity and the Gilead justice system, could predict how Gilead plans to execute her, and possibly Luke, if they are sent back. In fact, she says as much in this hour in the first voice-over soliloquy we’ve gotten from her in a while. But that’s later. First, June has to literally sniff out the identity of her and Luke’s captors. (They’re still together, by the way.) She’s getting a whiff of something chemical, which tells her these dudes are likely not from Gilead because chemicals are toxic to God, as any Christian fundamentalist anti-vaxxer will tell you.
Anyway, they’re taken to some undisclosed location, they get mugshots, and June gives her captors her real name — a weird move. The kidnappers also make note of her ear tag, which she is still wearing (hey, remember when she literally cut open her cartilage to get that thing removed during her first escape?) and ask who she “belongs to.†So they’re not Gilead, but they’re also not good. In their adjoining holding pens, June is cracking wise about the relative roominess of this cage, all things considered, while Luke panics and paces and screams about how insane this all is, getting on everybody’s nerves. Be cool, man, goddamn. Nobody has the bandwidth to coach Luke through his feelings of masculine inadequacy right now, least of all June. She gets him to man down, temporarily, but when she warns him not to fight the guards, of course he doesn’t listen. And of course — of course — the guards subsequently beat him bloody and nearly strangle him to death. It’s a scene of familiar horror, I guess to remind us of the brutality we all live with in the real world, but I don’t know if the show needed a Black man’s abused body to make this point.
As long as we’re on the subject of familiar horrors, why don’t we check in with Serena. Our girl is now fully living the life of a Handmaid, and she is not having a great time! Once, it was Mrs. Waterford cutting flowers with Offred and making thinly veiled threats. Now, Serena is helping prune roses at the Wheelers’ house while Mrs. Wheeler makes subtle observations like “I just love that the more you cut back some flowers, the more they bloom.†But unlike Offred, Serena doesn’t get to leave the house to go to the doctor. Instead, the Wheelers have set up an entire gynecologist’s office — excuse me, “birthing suite†— upstairs, complete with a gynecologist. As the appointment wraps up, Dr. Creep says the very last thing you want to hear from your OB/GYN: “Would you like to have dinner with me?†It’s okay, he asked the Wheelers’ permission first. Ugh, ick, ack, blaurgh, vomit, gag, ew ew ew ew.
“Together†is really putting in the work to get me to empathize with Serena because I actually laughed when she tells a visibly disappointed Mrs. Wheeler, “I’m not going to date my gynecologist,†upon Alanis’s implication that she can’t stay single. What’s more: Serena’s thinking she may not even get married right away. “This isn’t actually Gilead, is it?†And then Mrs. Wheeler sends her to her room. I mean, it doesn’t not feel like divine punishment.
When Mr. Wheeler summons her later, I half expected we’re about to play Scrabble. But no, he simply wants to inform his prisoner-guest that his guys have captured June Osbourne (mystery solved, sort of) and that he’s sending Ezra to go “deal with her properly.†Serena seizes her chance. She begs Wheeler to let her go with them because she deserves to watch June die personally after what she did. Somehow this works? I’m not necessarily mad at this because it does bring us to the third-act twist I’d been hoping we would get, but how much longer are we expected to believe Serena can get men to do anything she asks just by, like, batting her lashes or something? (Perfect example from later in the episode: the gun. Why would Ezra just hand her the gun?)
Yes, it’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for, folks: Serena and June are finally reunited in a highly strained and wonderfully bonkers assemblage of story lines. June tells Luke never to give up hope and says she won’t say good-bye. (I would find this speech more poignant if I hadn’t heard the same one in a thousand other movies and TV shows. It’s the “We’ve got company†of tearful good-bye speeches.) Once again, they’re ripped from each other’s arms and shoved into separate vans, and as June monologues about the randomness of death for a little narrative misdirect, Serena is having contractions in the back of Ezra’s car.
June’s Gilead Wagon stops, Ezra appears, and June is taken outside, where she blinks in the sunlight for a moment before she hears the fire alarm of the mind telling her Serena is right behind her. “Are you fucking serious?†asks June. Same question here, babe. Serena blows whatever magic dust she’s using in Ezra’s face and orders him to cut June’s bindings so she can pray. Serena also asks Ezra if she can be the one to shoot June to death, and the man just hands her the fully loaded gun. My brother in Christ, are you fucking serious?
So here we have Serena forcing June to pray at gunpoint, which kind of feels like it shouldn’t count as far as prayers go. June demonstrates the importance of knowing one’s audience and tells Serena she’s praying for their children: “Dear God, may they do better than we did.†Serena says “Amen†and …
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You didn’t really think Serena was going to shoot June, did you? If she did, who would drive the getaway car? Serena turns around and shoots Ezra instead, which he did not see coming, bafflingly. She forces June behind the wheel because she’s too pregnant to drive, and our twisted Thelma and Louise are officially off and running. What an episode.
Other Gileadditions
• As Putnam’s body gets strung up on the wall, Janine says she wishes she could have watched. Does this mean Janine is coming around to Aunt Lydia’s punitive worldview? What would June’s bad therapist say?
• We did get a single scene with Nick and his wife, who remains confusing. She’s also pregnant, so congrats to them.
• WHERE ARE THEY TAKING LUKE?